Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities
Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is very different from other languages that people inside of west have tried to get to grips with before desiring to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much more. Mandarin is strange in many ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Presently there no alphabet as the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead dreams defines every word; or rather a string 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 distinctions between don’t end several. The grammar is largely made up of the items is called contaminants. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it proper question, adding guo after a sentence means that which it happens in items on the market. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo ma? Communicates the question: possibly 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 test is 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 two syllables, not four characters, ma and ma. The twist is that “mama” can be pronounced in twenty-five approaches. Each of the two syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, developing a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and only 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 slightly steady high toss. The second is a rising pitch. Method to tone goes down and then move 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, and it 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 speak chinese is compared to her English. Furthermore know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China for only three years; he often searches for that English word to explain something and ends up saying it Truly. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as it’s not bloody different.
