A lot of speakers of Western languages have trouble with getting Chinese tones right, even years into learning the language, and even with the tones clearly marked over the vowels in the pinyin (/romanised) version.
One of them will consistently do a rising tone for a sound in the middle of the sentence, even if that character is in the falling tone, and do the last sound in the sentence in a falling tone, even if that character is in the rising tone. She is applying her Western language rules to the Chinese language.
A Chinese native-speaker learning English consistently adds a vowel to a consonant, much like the Italians, so she ends up saying “didder” for “did”, “atter” for “at”, among a long list of others. However often I correct her, she goes back to uttering an extra sound after a consonant.
Last week, I was teaching her “neither…nor…” and “either…or…”. Guess what she did? She consistently gave me “neith…nor…” and “eith…or…”. How perverse is that?!
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