Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is different from other languages that people inside west have attempt to get to grips with before shopping learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more troublesome. Mandarin is strange in any ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. There isn’t any no alphabet just as the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead images defines every word; or rather a set of what is addressed strokes. For example, three stokes that together make a square means mouth, one combination of strokes that associated with depicts a woman holding a kid means mother while on. But distinctions between don’t end several. The grammar is largely made up in the is called particles. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it into a question, adding guo after a sentence means that that it happens in the past. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo mummy? Communicates the question: possibly you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that your. 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. Truly 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 2 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 might not tones because A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. The first tone is a slightly steady high throw. The second is a rising pitch. Method to tone goes down and then inside. 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, as well as is, at least at first. So how do you best go about arriving for grips with out? Because of course it’s very possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is compared to her English. Furthermore know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China for less than three years; he often searches for the English word to explain something and ends up saying it Chinese language. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as it’s not bloody different.