How can I memorise easily the four tones? I am still trying to memorise tones of Chinese words. In another post I gave a link for 3rd tone words. When I will have written sentences that are easy to remember, I think I will succeed in fixing a lot of my pronunciation.

For other tones, I plan to make sentences with the same pinyin which gives different words. For example, shi gives:


With the first tone: to lose, wet, division
With the second tone: to pick up, stone, to know
With the fourth tone matter, scholar, persimmon


My question is: what are the pinyin most often used for frequently used words?
Words do not generally have tones. Characters have tones, and they are integral to the character.

Memorizing batches of characters with certain tones is like memorizing batches of characters with certain pronunciations, that is, rather pointless.

When memorizing a character, you memorize its strokes and components, its pinyin transliterations, its tones (often more than one), and a number of common words formed by it.