Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is distinctive from other languages that people in west have aimed to get to grips with before trying to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much harder. Mandarin is strange in many ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Presently there no alphabet given that the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead an image defines every word; or rather a series of what referred to 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 while on. But right after don’t end generally there. The grammar is largely made up of the items is called flakes. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it proper question, adding guo after a sentence means that that it happens in fat loss products .. 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 the. 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. 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 two syllables, not four characters, ma and ma. The twist is that “mama” can be pronounced in twenty-five various 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 one means mother. The tones are called tones but might not tones because 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 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. How exactly do you best go about arriving to grips with out? Because of course salvaging possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is compared to her English. I also know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China combined with the three years; he often searches for the English word to explain something and ends up saying it Offshore. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese is not so much bloody difficult as salvaging bloody different.