Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities
Mandarin language research is problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is very different from other languages that people in west have attempt to get to grips with before hoping to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much stronger. Mandarin is strange associated with ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Presently there no alphabet given that the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead a picture defines every word; or rather a set of what referred to as 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 and so on. But right after don’t end 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 ideal question, adding guo after a sentence means that that it happens in items on the market. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo mum? Communicates the question: an individual 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. Hugely 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, creating a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and merely one means mother. The tones are called tones but these not tones regarding A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. Most important tone is a rather steady high set up. The second is a rising pitch. 3rd workout tone goes down and then up. The fourth is a pointy decline in pitch from high to low. The fifth is called the neutral tone will not not actually have a modulation form.
All that sounds bloody difficult, of course you can is, at least at first. How exactly do you best go about beginning to 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 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 Offshore. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as it’s not bloody different.
