it is complicated to learn pronunciation by reading the explaination. It would be so much easier if you could find a Chinese buddy show you the pronunciation, anyways, if I have to explain it by words, here you go 1. 你好supposed to be ni3 hao3, however if you say two 3 tone characters together, it takes too long, thus you say ni2 hao3 instead 2. when you say a 3rd tone character alone or if it is the last characters of the vocabulary, you always pronunciate the full 3rd tone ( well you can take it as it last longer when you say it) 3 when you say the 3rd tone character in a vocabulary, for example 我们 ( wo3 men), wo3 you dont say the full 3rd tone, which means sounds shorter I hope it helps but the best I would suggest you ask a Chinese to show you

What the textbook is talking about is the "change of tones", which in my experience is something you really have to learn by ear. All the explanations they give you will only get you confused. (May as well say "If it's Tuesday, and there's a blind man on the corner, then this tone becomes another tone...sort of...depending on the case.") IMHO: You'd be far better off learning the tone for each character "as is" for now, and then worrying about how to combine them later on. The only real exceptions to this rule I can think of are perhaps 一 （yī） and 不 (bù), which are used frequently and change tones regularly and logically. Or you can do it the hard way, and try to remember things like "A 3rd tone followed closely by a second tone becomes a half third tone, which sounds like a quickly articulated and somewhat reduced 4th tone." (This particular rule didn't work for me at all, but I can now pronounce Shàolín perfectly.) ;)

I didn't know our pronunciation is so complex.

Isn't the verb 来自 (láizì) meaning "to come from a place" an example of a Chinese word which is more than one syllable? At least, that is the verb which several native Chinese speakers told me I should be using in my notebook entry. Or should that be considered as two words? Wiktionary lists the whole unit as a single word / verb though. See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/来自

no, that only depends on the words, these reading rules are incorrect