PGSan

My bum’s white already !

From where in Asia, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, Turkestan, Turkey. Please be more specific. (Oh, I know, you meant Laos:-).

Pretty much the same as, for example, English then?

Similar to me! I did get an aid in the good ol’ NHS but found it helped very little, but your mileage may vary. On tones, I treat them like stress/emphasis in English, seems to work well (I was taught Mandarin this way, no idea what they recommend for Cantonese with7? tones!).