[muawiyah]

I always thought there were 4 Chinese tones (that I could hear anyway). Seems there are 8, and may well have been more in the past.

The Hokien language (spoken widely from Thailand, through Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as in Hokien and Taiwan) has "regional dialects" that use ALL 8 old form tones! Of course they also have a vocabulary that is about 30% Dutch in origin. Makes for some interesting listening!

[TheCipher]

I always thought there were 4 Chinese tones (that I could hear anyway). Seems there are 8, and may well have been more in the past.

There is no "Chinese". There are dialects- Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. Mandarin - the official language of China - has 4 tones.