The more vocabulary you learn, the more you will find similar syllables with different tones.
In general, the "standardized" language tries to avoid this problem by encouraging the use of compound words where one syllable might do. That's why pinyin without tone numbers, for example in a chat, can actually be understood quite well. But with a larger universe of potential words, for example subject specific terms, it's hard or impossible without the tones, and at some point even tones don't work and you need the characters.
Chinese is a language with very low redundancy and very high information content per phoneme. If a listener misses one phoneme, be it through noise or whatever, the chance is higher to miss all the information, as compared to, say English or Spanish, where you can often delete whole syllables or multiple letters without losing the information.
I've heard hearing aids are really bad at distinguishing frequencies and locations. I don't know why exactly, but you might want to research that subject further. You might want to choose your next hearing aid for better "Chinese performance".
The Human ear does a Fourier transformation [extremely rough explanation] by sending the sound through a helix. Along that tube, sensing hairs are triggered by different frequencies. Depending on the hearing aids, that process can be mangled up.
In general, the "standardized" language tries to avoid this problem by encouraging the use of compound words where one syllable might do. That's why pinyin without tone numbers, for example in a chat, can actually be understood quite well. But with a larger universe of potential words, for example subject specific terms, it's hard or impossible without the tones, and at some point even tones don't work and you need the characters.
Chinese is a language with very low redundancy and very high information content per phoneme. If a listener misses one phoneme, be it through noise or whatever, the chance is higher to miss all the information, as compared to, say English or Spanish, where you can often delete whole syllables or multiple letters without losing the information.
I've heard hearing aids are really bad at distinguishing frequencies and locations. I don't know why exactly, but you might want to research that subject further. You might want to choose your next hearing aid for better "Chinese performance".
The Human ear does a Fourier transformation [extremely rough explanation] by sending the sound through a helix. Along that tube, sensing hairs are triggered by different frequencies. Depending on the hearing aids, that process can be mangled up.