Questions about tones.

[Demonic_Duck]

I agree with 陈德聪 above, but I can also sympathise with Jeremy feeling that way as a beginner (hell, I often feel that way even having already been learning for over two years). Chinese does indeed pack a lot of information into a relatively small number of phonemes - especially when you factor in influence from dialects reducing the amount of differentiation (s/sh, n/l, -n/-ng etc.)

 

The result is that you do indeed need to pay a lot of attention to context, because without context you have no hope. I'd highly recommend you find native speakers to practice with, most likely in a language exchange. They don't have to be trained teachers, but ideally you want someone patient and enthusiastic about sharing their language. Whenever they say something you find ambiguous, ask for clarification (this could be because you didn't successfully pick out the tone, or it could be because you didn't successfully infer from context). Even Chinese people do this with neologisms or unfamiliar slang, which are often formed by shortening words to single characters and then putting those together (e.g. 麦霸 "mic-hog (at karaoke)" = 麦克风之霸王 "hegemon of the microphone").