Mandarin Chinese

Thousands of non-native Chinese speakers have successfully manage to learn Mandarin Chinese. Do you want to be among those foreigners who can write, read and speak Chinese? Common misconception deem Chinese impossible to learn. Read below a short introduction to the Chinese language. You will start realizing that you too can learn Chinese, the language of the future.

Mandarin Chinese

The official language of China is Mandarin (putonghua). There are many dialects spoken in China, but Mandarin is the common language among all Chinese people. Originally, Mandarin Chinese originated from the language spoken in the imperial court in Beijing by the mandarins, the imperial functionaries. This dialect spread to the city of Beijing and later on, when a standard dialect was chosen for the whole country, it was the Chinese of the mandarins, or Mandarin Chinese, the dialect of Beijing which was chosen. Therefore, living in Beijing is the best way to learn Mandarin because you will be able to practice it not only in class but also among the common folk in the streets.

Chinese characters

In Chinese, every word has one own unique written symbol, referred to as a 'character'. Unlike most languages in the world, Chinese does not have an alphabet. This different approach to written language does not make it more difficult per se, but just different, and sometimes even easy to remember. Characters are made of strokes. There is a classfication of strokes which combined together make up one character. When you learn the internal composition of each character, you will discover a very solid internal logic. They are not confused drawings but extremely well-thought and logic symbols. For instance, there is a general structural rule which teaches that on the left part of the character you can find the key of the character and on the right you have an indication of how to pronounce it. There are around 300 basic characters which are very easy to remember. All the other characters are combinations of those basic ones. Moreover, words are often made up of more than one character. For instance, diàn means 'electricity' and năo means 'brain'. Combined as diànnăo, it means 'computer'. With enough time and dedication, anyone can learn how to read and write Chinese.

Pinyin

How do you read a character? Students of Chinese language use a transliteration of Chinese words into the Latin alphabet: this is the phonetic system known as pinyin. That makes Chinese much more easier to learn. Thanks to the pinyin you can easily learn and remember the meaning and pronounciation of a character. After a short time, you will not need the pinyin anymore.

Is Chinese difficult?

Learning Chinese is a fascinating challenge. Your success depends on the amount of dedication and effort you put in. You will be at surpised how fast you can start making sentences due to its uncomplicated grammar. Give it a try and you will be able to answer this question by yourself.