Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

speak mandarin chinese language research is problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is distinctive from other languages that people on west have tried to get to grips with before shopping learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much harder. Mandarin is strange associated with ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Presently there no alphabet once the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead dreams defines every word; or rather a string of what is called strokes. For example, three stokes that together make a square means mouth, one combination of strokes that sort of depicts a woman holding a kid means mother while on. But distinctions between don’t end generally there. The grammar is largely made up of the things is called contaminants. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it ideal question, adding guo after a sentence means that that it happens in in the marketplace. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo ma? Communicates the question: a person 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 test is not only based on 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 2 syllables, not four characters, ma and ma. The twist is that “mama” can be pronounced in twenty-five methods. Each of the two syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, developing a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and one means mother. The tones are called tones but are generally not tones regarding A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. The very tone is a slightly steady high set up. The second is a rising pitch. The third tone goes down and then up. The fourth is a sharp 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, and it is, at least at first. Exactly how do you best go about arriving for grips with the program? Because of course usually 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 for just three years; he often searches for that English word to describe something and ends up saying it Japanese. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese is not so much bloody difficult as is actually bloody different.