Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is varies greatly from other languages that people inside west have experimented with get to grips with before trying to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more. mandarin chinese language is strange in some ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. You need to no alphabet as being the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead an image defines every word; or rather a series of what is termed as strokes. For example, three stokes that together make a square means mouth, one combination of strokes that type of depicts a woman holding a kid means mother as a result on. But right after don’t end and then there. The grammar is largely made up of the things is called flakes. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it proper question, adding guo after a sentence means that which it happens in the past. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo mum? Communicates the question: have you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that this type of. Even the sounds of spoken Chinese are completely different from western counterparts.

Chinese spoken test is not only defined by syllables as western words are. Hugely for mother in English is just 6 different sounds noted by each character; M, O, T, H, E and R. In Chinese there is two syllables, not four characters, ma and ma. The twist is that “mama” can be pronounced in twenty-five different ways. Each of the two syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, creating a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and 1 means mother. The tones are called tones but they are not tones because A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. Most important tone is a rather steady high toss. The second is a rising pitch. 3rd tone goes down and then inside. The fourth is a clear, crisp decline in pitch from high to low. The fifth is called the neutral tone and does not actually possess a modulation form.

All that sounds bloody difficult, go for walks . is, at least at first. How exactly do you best go about arriving to grips with them? Because of course salvaging possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is much better her English. I also know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China for less than three years; he often searches for your English word to explain something and ends up saying it Japanese. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as is certainly bloody different.