Mandarin Language| 8 min read
Despite the fact that China has more than 25% of the world’s population, the majority of those who speak their native language of Mandarin largely reside within China. It can be partly attributed to this reason that people to date have been reluctant to learn Mandarin as they feel they don’t need it unless they have a keen interest in China. Even this however is slowly changing as more and more Westerners realize the social and professional benefits of speaking Mandarin.
There are many groups of Mandarin learners, and each group has their own reasons for learning the language. In the end however, people can derive many benefits from learning Mandarin.
- Business people
China is an intriguing market for many business people. With the relatively low wages, it is a manufacturing mecca that produces an extraordinary amount of the world’s goods. Obviously if you can speak Mandarin it is much easier to deal with Chinese manufacturers. In learning Mandarin it would be highly beneficial to be aware of local customs which can help prevent misunderstandings between Chinese and Western associates.
Chinese is becoming wealthier as a whole and the domestic market are spending more and more each year. With the size of the country, China is seen as a highly attractive market to break into for foreigners. Businesses looking to crack the local market must be able to relate to Chinese buyers and understand the Chinese psyche, tasks that are made easier by the study of Mandarin Chinese. Proven products or services and their related marketing strategies that work in the West may not equate to success in China necessarily.
- Travellers
China is becoming a popular destination for Western tourists as it becomes more open. Although there are still restrictions, the country is becoming more accessible and trying to effectively cater to the Western crowd. Many areas still do not speak English especially in remote areas, so in instances like this having the ability to speak Mandarin is extremely useful.
- Students
Mandarin courses are becoming increasingly popular in Western countries and some schools even have the foresight to make Mandarin a compulsory subject. Much of this trend can be attributed to parents who realize China’s growth in economic importance and accordingly encourage their children to have the best possible future by having them learn Mandarin. Mandarin courses are now commonly offered in universities, high schools, and even elementary schools.
Due to China’s rapid economic growth, it is attracting more people worldwide to come and learn Mandarin. Students find it much easier to get a job in a multi-national company after learning Mandarin, since China is now the fastest economy growing in the world.
The most effective way to learn Mandarin is to study in its native country, China. There are a number of ways you can learn from doing a semester at a university, going to a language school, getting private tutoring or even just learning by oneself! There are a number of useful resources available such as phrasebooks, dictionaries, translators, podcasts and more to assist your learning.
http://www.learnmandarinonline.org/learnmandarin.html
http://au.youtube.com/user/mandarinandculture
Popular destinations to learn include:
- Beijing, the nation’s capital which has a unique blend of historic culture and modern environment.
- Shanghai, the most modern and Westernised city in China.
- Guangzhou, which has one of the most successful industrial areas of China where you will find people who can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin.
Spoken Chinese – Chinese is a principal language group of eastern Asia, belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese exists in a number of varieties that are popularly called dialects but that are usually classified as separate languages by scholars. More people speak a variety of Chinese as a native language than any other language in the world, and Modern Standard Chinese is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. By far the most spoken Chinese language is Mandarin (spoken by about 850 million people), followed by Wu, Cantonese (70 million), Hakka, Min etc.
- The major varieties of Chinese are mutually exclusive, but most people in China and Taiwan who don’t speak Mandarin as their first language, can speak or at least understand it a bit. However in Hong Kong and Macau few people speak Mandarin, so they tend to use English to communicate with people from other parts of China or Taiwan.
- Each of the major varieties of Chinese has numerous dialects. For example, Mandarin can be divided into northern, southern and south-western dialects, which are distinctly different from each other.
Mandarin, like all Chinese dialects, is a tonal language. This means that that each syllable can have a number of different meanings depending on the intonation with which it is pronounced. Official modern Mandarin has only 400 spoken monosyllables but over 10,000 written characters, so there are many homophones only distinguishable by the four tones, and this is the hardest part for foreigners. The basic sounds of Chinese are easy enough to mimic, what isn’t so easy is saying the correct “tone”.
While foreigners use tone for emphasis or emotion, Chinese use different tones to distinguish words that otherwise sound exactly the same. For example, if you order “tang” in a restaurant you might get soup, but only if you say tang with a steady high tone. Otherwise, you might be given sugar, instead, which is also “tang” but said with a rising tone. There are four tones in Mandarin Chinese: high (1st tone), rising (2nd tone), falling-rising (3rd tone) and falling (4th tone). Cantonese has between 6 and 9, depending on whom you ask, and Taiwanese has 7 tones.
A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese are the four main tones applied to the syllable “ma.” The tones correspond to these five characters:
- “Mother” — high level
- “Hemp” or “torpid” — high rising
- “Horse” — low falling-rising
- “Scold” — high falling
- “Question particle” — neutral
In order to help teach school children (and foreigners) correct pronunciation, the “pinyin” system was developed to transcribe Chinese into Latin script.
Chinese characters – The biggest obstacle to learn Chinese is the written language. While English uses a simple, 26-letter alphabet, Chinese is written with characters which are known as hànzi. Chinese characters are among the oldest forms of writing in the world. The earliest examples date to the Shang Dynasty more 3000 years ago. These characters were inscribed in bones and turtle shells to record events and the pronouncement of future events in the Shang Dynasty. The characters were originally pictures of people, animals or other things, but over the centuries they have become increasingly stylised and no longer resemble the things they represent. Many characters have been combined with others to create new ones.
Each character represents a single spoken syllable. One character may represent one single idea or thing, or it may have a whole host of associations, especially when used in combination with other characters.
In spoken Chinese, words are made up of one, two or more syllables. Each of the syllables is written with a separate character. Every character is given exactly the same amount of space, no matter how complex it is. There are no spaces between characters, so when reading Chinese, you not only have to work out what the characters mean and how to pronounce them, but also which characters belong together.
The Chinese writing system is an open-ended one, the largest Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but most of them are archaic, obscure or rare variant forms. Knowledge of about 3,000 characters enables you to read about 99% of the characters used in Chinese newspapers and magazines. To read Chinese literature, technical writings or Classical Chinese though, you need to be familiar with at least 6,000 characters.
To increase literacy, mainland China implemented writing reforms and simplified the most common used Chinese characters. Chinese populations outside of China did not adopt the writing reforms therefore they continue to use the traditional variety of writing called “fantizi”, which means “complex writing”. This traditional writing is used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities. Simplified writing is used in Singapore and most of China.
