Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is very different from other languages that people in west have tried to get to grips with before necessary . learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more. speak mandarin chinese is strange in some ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Presently there no alphabet as being the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead dreams 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 regarding depicts a woman holding a kid means mother and so on. But distinctions between don’t end on that point. The grammar is largely made up of what is called airborne debris. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it into a question, adding guo after a sentence means that which it happens in in the marketplace. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo master of arts? Communicates the question: perhaps you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that this. 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. 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 means. Each of 2 syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, creating a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and merely one means mother. The tones are called tones but they are not tones because A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. Quite tone is a somewhat steady high set up. The second is a rising pitch. 3rd workout tone goes down and then out. The fourth is a clear, crisp decline in pitch from high to low. The fifth is called the neutral tone will not not actually have a modulation form.

All that sounds bloody difficult, go for walks . is, at least at first. How exactly do you best go about beginning to grips with them? Because of course it’s very 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 for less than three years; he often searches for the English word to describe something and upward saying it Truly. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese is not so much bloody difficult as it’s not bloody different.