Lexical tone is a linguistic feature which can present difficulties for second language learners wanting to revitalize their heritage language. This is true not only from the standpoint of understanding and pronunciation, but also because tone is often under-documented and resources are limited or too technical to be useful to community members.…

Chinese characters have been an obstacle preventing the development of Chinese proficiency for learners of Chinese whose native language does not have characters. A substantial literature review identified linguistic, pedagogical, and political factors as causes such difficulties. Tone changes represent different meanings of a word. Compound…