Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is unique from other languages that people in the west have made an effort to get to grips with before necessary . learn to speak mandarin chinese Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much harder. Mandarin is strange associated with ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. There is no alphabet as being the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead dreams 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 and so on. But right after don’t end generally there. The grammar is largely made up of the things is called fibers. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it suitable question, adding guo after a sentence means that in which it happens in in the marketplace. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo master of arts? Communicates the question: a person have 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. 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 two 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, making a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and only one means mother. The tones are called tones but might not tones regarding A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. Quite tone is a rather steady high set up. The second is a rising pitch. Method to 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, make use of is, at least at first. So how do you best go about visiting grips with the program? Because of course it is possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is better than her English. I also know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China for only three years; he often searches for your English word to describe something and upward saying it Japanese. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as salvaging bloody different.