[Tomisimo]

I've never studied Chinese, but I was told that it's pretty simple in some aspects, such as there are no verb conjugations at all, no different tenses etc, but the hard part is tone, you can say the same sounds with a different tone and it means something totally different. I can't remember the example exactly but it was something like

ma

with a rising tone, falling tone, and a curved tone, all mean something different like mom, horse etc.

is this right?