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by mmaniac 744 days ago
The functional load of tones (that is, the importance of a pronunciation difference for distinguishing words) in Chinese is comparable to that of vowels[1]

"Depending on how you view tones" dismisses the important phonemic value of tones. Writing Chinese completely phonetically includes writing the tones.

[1]https://faculty.washington.edu/levow/papers/fltonemandarin.p...