Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is distinctive from other languages that people inside west have made an effort to get to grips with before trying to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more troublesome. Mandarin is strange for most ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Is undoubtedly no alphabet once the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead images 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 associated with depicts a woman holding a kid means mother and as a consequence on. But right after don’t end on that point. The grammar is largely made up of the items is called particles. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it ideal question, adding guo after a sentence means that which it happens in items on the market. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo massachusetts? Communicates the question: an individual have 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 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 two syllables, not four characters, ma and ma. The twist is that “mama” can be pronounced in twenty-five approaches. Each of the two syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, making a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and 1 means mother. The tones are called tones but considerable not tones like A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. The first tone is a slightly steady high pitch. The second is a rising pitch. Method to tone goes down and then move up. The fourth is a sharp decline in pitch from high to low. The fifth is called the neutral tone will not not actually possess a modulation form.

All that sounds bloody difficult, as well as is, at least at first. So how to speak chinese do you best go about arriving for grips with them? Because of course moment has come possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is much better than her English. Furthermore 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 upward saying it Truly. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese is not so much bloody difficult as is certainly bloody different.