Introduction to Mandarin

1. Introduction to Mandarin A functional language

3. What is pinyin? Pinyin is the most widely-used system of writing Mandarin Chinese and uses the Latin alphabet. It is a great tool to help you learn the accurate pronunciation of Mandarin words. First, you need to learn how to read pinyin, as Mandarin contains some sounds which do not exist in English. Don’t worry if you don’t get it right first time, learning pinyin needs a fair bit of practice.

4. Consonants These consonants are similar to their English equivalents: f, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, w, y These are not unfamiliar sounds to speakers of English: b – like p in spare d – like t in stand g – like g in girl

5. These consonant sounds are more difficult: c – like ts in tentsch – like ch in chair, but with the mouth in a round shape and the tongue further backh – like h in him but with a bit more fiction in the throat q – like ch in chair, but with the tongue further forward x – between s and sh, though there is no sound in English which is the same as the sound x in Chinese. Place the front of your tongue behind the lower front teeth, then let the air pass through zh – like j in jump, but with the tongue further back r – like r in rough, but with the tongue curled upwardsj – like j in joke but with the tongue nearer the teeth

6. What are tones? Chinese is a tonal language. This means the pitch or tone in which a sound is said affects the meaning.

7. Are tones important? Yes, because the same sound when said in different tones can mean very different things. For example, depending on the way you say it, ‘tang’ can mean soup or sugar, ‘mai’ can mean buy or sell, and ‘ji’ can mean chicken or machine, amongst other things. Although this might sound very alien to speakers of non-tonal languages like English, learning how to pronounce Chinese tones can be a fun part of studying the language.

8. How many tones are there? In Mandarin Chinese, there are four basic tones and a fifth neutral tone. Each syllable in each word has one of these tones. You can tell which tone to give a syllable from by the marks above the vowels in pinyin.

9. The first tone (or high-level tone) • This is high and remains level.

10. The second tone (or rising tone) This goes up and is abrupt (raise your eyebrows while saying it).

11. The third tone (or falling-rising tone) This falls in pitch and then goes up again (drop your chin onto your neck and raise it again).

12. The fourth tone (or falling tone) This falls in pitch from a high to a low level (stomp your foot gently).

13. There is also a neutral (or toneless) tone, which is pronounced very weakly. The neutral tone has no mark above the vowel.

14. What are Chinese characters? Chinese characters are the system of symbols used to write Chinese. Unlike an alphabet which represents only sounds, each Chinese character has a unique meaning.

15. How old are they? The earliest recognisable characters date back over 5,000 years, and were discovered carved into tortoise shells and cattle bones. This makes written Chinese the oldest system of writing in continuous use as a living language.

16. Are they all pictures? Yes and no.Many early Chinese characters were indeed visual representations of concrete things and objects. Some of these are still in use today in simplified, stylised forms, such as fire 火, tree 木, and the mountain 山. These characters are called pictographs. Let's look at these and some of the other types of Chinese characters in more detail.

17. Pictographs Chinese characters have been around for a long time. Although it may be difficult to see at first glance how the character 日 resembles the sun, we can see how it has evolved over time into its present form by looking at the more ancient form. For example (ancient to modern): Sun

18. Tree Mountain Horse

19. Ideographs Of course, a written language needs to convey ideas as well as things, so another group of characters illustrate abstract concepts such as one 一, two 二, above 上and below 下. These characters are called ideographs.

20. Meaning / meaning compounds These are characters which convey ideas and concepts by combining two or more pictographs. You may sometimes see them referred to as associative compounds. 女 (woman) ＋ 子 (child) ＝ 好 (good) 日 (sun) ＋ 月 (moon) ＝ 明 (bright) 木 (tree) ＋木 (tree) ＝林 (forest) 木 (tree) ＋ 日 (sun) ＝ 東 (east – you see the sun through the branches of the trees when it rises in the east)

21. Sound / meaning compounds Also called pictophonetic compounds, these make up the majority of Chinese characters. Here, a single character is made up of two or more parts, one of which gives a clue to what the character sounds like when it is read aloud, and the other parts giving a clue to the meaning. 木 (means: tree) ＋ 风 (pronounced: feng) ＝ 枫 (means maple tree, pronounced feng) 女 (means: woman) ＋马 (pronounced: ma) ＝ 妈(means mother, pronounced ma)

22. How many characters are there? Altogether there are over 50,000 characters, though a comprehensive modern dictionary will rarely list over 20,000 in use. An educated Chinese person will know about 8,000 characters, but you will only need about 2-3,000 to be able to read a newspaper.

23. So are all Chinese words made up of single characters? No. Most words in Chinese are actually made up of a combination of characters. For example when you combine fire 火 and vehicle 车 you get 火车 – 'fire vehicle', or as we know it in English; train. Similarly, if you combine electric 电 with vision 视 you get 'electric vision' 电视 – in English; television. 'Electric speech' is 电话 – telephone, 'electric brain' 电脑 – computer, and 'electric shadow' 电影 – film.

24. What are 'simplified' and 'traditional' characters? In the 1950s and 1960s, a number of characters were simplified by the Chinese government in order to make them easier to learn and improve literacy rates in the country. These are known as 'simplified characters' as opposed to 'traditional characters', which are still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

25. 东 国 岁 東 國 嵗

26. Chinese characters and Chinese culture The other thing to remember is that to the Chinese, their writing system is an important part of their culture. Its uniqueness and longevity give people an immense source of pride. As Chinese characters are so ancient, they contain insights into ways of thought that are thousands of years old, and allow people to read classical literature from the time of Confucius. The writing of well-formed, beautiful characters is also considered important, and calligraphy is considered an art form itself in its own right. Master calligraphers spend their lives honing their talents and paint huge characters or poems on scrolls.

27. Is the same system of Chinese characters used around the world? China is a vast country and regional Chinese dialects can sound as different to each other as English and German, but they are all written with the same system of Chinese characters. Chinese characters can help people speaking widely different dialects communicate effectively, because the writing system is meaning-based and not sound-based. So while the word for ‘one’ in Mandarin is pronounced ‘yi’, and in Cantonese (the dialect spoken in Hong Kong) it is pronounced ‘yat’, they are both written with the same Chinese character: 一.

28. Are Chinese characters used only in the Chinese-speaking world? No, Chinese characters are still taught and used in Japan, and to a lesser degree in North and South Korea. Chinese language, customs and culture have had a long influence on the history of both Japan and Korea which adopted Chinese characters before they developed their own writing systems. Although both Japanese and Korean now have their own scripts, students in these countries will learn around 2,000 characters, which still carry a certain prestige.

29. 15 Basic phrases: • 对(duì)Yes, that’s correct. • 可(kě)以(yǐ)Yes, I can. • 不(bù)No. • 欢迎(huānyíng)Welcome. • 很高兴认识你(hěngāoxìngrènshinǐ)Pleased to meet you. • 你好(nǐhǎo)Hello. • 谢谢(xièxiè)Thank you. • 再见(zàijiàn)Goodbye. • 我叫(wǒjiào)… My name is… • 你叫什么名字(nǐjiàoshén me míngzì)?What’s your name? • 你说英文吗(nǐshuōyīngwén ma)?Do you speak English? • 对不起(duìbuqǐ), 我不会说中文(wǒbúhuìshuōzhōngwén). • I am sorry, I don’t speak Chinese. • 13.我不懂(wǒbùdǒng). Idon’t understand • 14.请帮忙(qǐngbāngmáng). I need help, please. • 15.厕所在哪里(cèsuǒzàinǎli)?Where are the toilets?