Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language research is problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is varies greatly from other languages that people on west have experimented with get to grips with before trying to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more troublesome. Mandarin is strange in many ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. There is no alphabet given that the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead images defines every word; or rather a series of what is 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 so on. But the differences don’t end several. The grammar is largely made up in the is called fibers. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it suitable question, adding guo after a sentence means that that it happens in the past. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo mum? Communicates the question: have you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that your. 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 different ways. Each of 2 syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, developing a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and only one means mother. The tones are called tones but are generally not tones while A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. The first tone is a slightly steady high pitch. The second is a rising pitch. The third tone goes down and then move up. The fourth is a clear 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, go for walks . is, at least at first. Exactly how do you best go about arriving for 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 combined with the three years; he often searches for your English word to explain something and ends up saying it Offshore. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as is certainly bloody different.