Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language research is problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is varies greatly from other languages that people on west have aimed to get to grips with before hoping to learn mandarin chinese Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more complicated. Mandarin is strange for most ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. There isn’t any no alphabet as the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead a graphic defines every word; or rather a set of what referred to as strokes. For example, three stokes that together make a square means mouth, one combination of strokes that regarding depicts a woman holding a kid means mother as a result on. But distinctions between don’t end on that point. The grammar is largely made up of what is called contaminants. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it ideal question, adding guo after a sentence means that so it happens in the past. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo master of arts? Communicates the question: have you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that these. Even the sounds of spoken Chinese are completely different from western counterparts.

Chinese spoken words are not only based on syllables as western words are. Utilized 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 means. Each of the two syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, developing a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and merely one means mother. The tones are called tones but are generally not tones like A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. The first tone is a rather steady high address. The second is a rising pitch. 3rd workout tone goes down and then -up. The fourth is a pointy decline in pitch from high to low. The fifth is called the neutral tone and does not actually have a modulation form.

All that sounds bloody difficult, and it is, at least at first. So how do you best go about beginning to grips with the program? Because of course moment has come possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is better than her English. In addition know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China for just three years; he often searches for the English word to describe something and upward saying it Truly. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as it is bloody different.

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