Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language research is problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is distinctive from other languages that people in west have experimented with get to grips with before desiring to learn Chinese, not because learning mandarin chinese language is much stronger. Mandarin is strange for most ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. There isn’t any no alphabet once the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead dreams defines every word; or rather a set of what is strokes. For example, three stokes that together make a square means mouth, one combination of strokes that type of depicts a woman holding a kid means mother as a result on. But distinctions between don’t end 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 going without shoes happens in the past. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo mummy? Communicates the question: perhaps you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that this type of. 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. 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 different ways. Each of 2 syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, creating a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and one means mother. The tones are called tones but they are 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 inside. 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 visiting grips with them? 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 explain something and upward saying it Truly. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as it’s not bloody different.