Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because mandarin chinese language is distinctive from other languages that people in west have made an effort to get to grips with before necessary . learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much stronger. Mandarin is strange in any ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Is undoubtedly no alphabet once the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead dreams defines every word; or rather a series of what is addressed 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 goods is called flakes. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it proper question, adding guo after a sentence means that which it happens in items on the market. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo ma? Communicates the question: possibly you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that the. 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. The word 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 various ways. 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 are generally not tones while A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. The very tone is a slightly steady high address. The second is a rising pitch. The third tone goes down and then up. The fourth is a clear 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, and it is, at least at first. Exactly how do you best go about arriving for grips with them? Because of course salvaging possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is much better than her English. In addition 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 ends up saying it Chinese language. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as it is bloody different.