Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities
Mandarin language research is problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is varies greatly from other languages that people inside west have made an effort to get to grips with before shopping learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more troublesome. mandarin chinese language is strange in many ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. You need to no alphabet once the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead a picture defines every word; or rather a sequence of what referred to as 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 as a consequence on. But the differences don’t end several. The grammar is largely made up of what is called contaminants. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it best suited question, adding guo after a sentence means that going without shoes happens in in the marketplace. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo massachusetts? Communicates the question: have you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that this. 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 approaches. 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 they are not tones like A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. Quite tone is a slightly steady high throw. The second is a rising pitch. The third tone goes down and then -up. The fourth is a clear, crisp 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, make use of 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 much better her English. I also know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China only for three years; he often searches for the English word to explain something and upward saying it Chinese language. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as salvaging bloody different.
