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Learning Mandarin – Difficulties and Opportunities

Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because Mandarin is varies greatly from other languages that people on west have attempt to get to grips with before desiring to learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much harder. Mandarin is strange in any ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. There is no alphabet given that the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead a picture defines every word; or rather a series of what is addressed strokes. For example, three stokes that together make a square means mouth, one combination of strokes that kind of depicts a woman holding a kid means mother while on. But distinctions between don't end generally there. The grammar is largely made up of the items is called contaminants. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it ideal question, adding guo after a sentence means that going without shoes happens in in the marketplace. 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.

speak chinese spoken words are not only based on 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 2 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, making a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and just one means mother. The tones are called tones but are generally not tones while A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. Website tone is a slightly steady high throw. The second is a rising pitch. 3rd tone goes down and then -up. The fourth is a clear 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. Exactly how do you best go about arriving to grips with it? Because of course it is possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is much better than her English. Additionally 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 upward saying it Japanese. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn't so much bloody difficult as it is bloody different.