I may well be wrong! Mende is a tonal language (I think!) which is why I was wondering about it. I just know, having tried to repeat words with hilarious consequences, that you may think you’re saying it right, but you’re actually saying something completely different. It does need a bit of explanation to understand why exactly the same word can mean 3 different things depending on how you pronounce it.
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I gave up all thoughts of learning Mandarin when I found out I was likely to try to say someone looked lovely and actually liken them to a trash can!!!
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In my limited experience of tonal languages, one of the things that I believe would be a little easier with our approach is the way that meaning is helped by context - so where you can make plenty of mistakes if you’re just trying to say individual words in isolation with the correct tone (because that’s very unfamiliar to speakers of non-tonal languages) you’re much more likely to have a decent stab at it in the flow of a sentence, because tone is very important to all of us in sentence contexts.
Just read that last phrase with a strong Australian upswing at the end to turn it into an unnecessary question and you’ll see what I mean…
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Yes, but only in Queensland, Aran
Edit: yes, but only in Queensland, Aran? 
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The example from Slovene: Gori na gori gori. What do you think it means?
OK, it means Up on the mountain it burns (something) or It’s a fire up on the mountain. It’s just the way you say that word “gori” what makes a difference.
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