Mandarin language studies are problematic. Mostly because speak mandarin chinese is distinctive from other languages that people inside of west have attempt to get to grips with before shopping learn Chinese, not because learning Mandarin is much stronger. Mandarin is strange associated with ways. The writing system is obviously completely different. Is undoubtedly no alphabet as the one that Germanic and Latin derivates have. Instead a graphic 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 associated with depicts a woman holding a kid means mother and as a consequence on. But the differences don’t end and then there. The grammar is largely made up of the things is called fibers. For example; adding a syllable pronounced ma after a sentence turns it into a question, adding guo after a sentence means that which it happens in items on the market. Combining these basic examples; you go shanghai guo mummy? Communicates the question: perhaps you gone to Shanghai? The differences are however much more explicit that these. 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. The word 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 different ways. Each of 2 syllables, ma and ma, can be pronounced with 5 different tones, making a total matrix of 5 times 5 possibilities, and 1 means mother. The tones are called tones but these not tones like A minor or G, they are pitch modulation. Most important tone is a rather steady high throw. The second is a rising pitch. The third tone goes down and then out. The fourth is a pointy decline in pitch from high to low. The fifth is called the neutral tone and does not actually possess a modulation form.

All that sounds bloody difficult, and it is, at least at first. Exactly how do you best go about arriving for grips with the program? Because of course it’s very possible. In fact I know one lovely French girl called Julie, her Chinese is better than her English. Additionally know a very talented German videographer that has lived in China only for three years; he often searches for that English word to describe something and ends up saying it Chinese. Basically, I would argue, that Chinese isn’t so much bloody difficult as salvaging bloody different.