Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is varies greatly from other languages that people in the west have experimented with get to grips with before trying to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much harder. mandarin chinese language is strange for most ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Presently there no alphabet once the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead images defines every word; or rather a sequence of what is termed as strokes. For example, three stokes that together make a square means mouth, one combination of strokes that kind of depicts a woman holding a kid means mother and as a consequence on. But right after don’t end there. The grammar is largely made up of what is called airborne debris. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it best suited question, adding guo after a sentence means that in which it happens in the past. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo massachusetts? Communicates the question: possibly 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 test is not only defined by syllables as western words are. Genuine for mother in English is just 6 different sounds noted by each character; M, O, T, H, E and R. In Chinese there is 2 syllables, not four characters, ma and ma. The twist is that “mama” can be pronounced in twenty-five approaches. Each of 2 syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, developing a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and just one means mother. The tones are called tones but they are not tones because A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. The first tone is a slightly steady high address. The second is a rising pitch. 3rd 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 possess a modulation form.

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