The Secret to Learning Mandarin Easily
Mandarin is an ancient and fascinating language, and the advantages of mastering it in today’s world are numerous. Studying this language, however, is not simple, mostly due to the fact that it does not have a phonetic alphabet. Do not be concerned. I have lived, and studied, in China for quite some time, and I am about to share some knowledge that will help you achieve your Chinese language learning goals. In order to be good at learning Mandarin Chinese you must follow these three very important steps.
Step 1: Learning Pinyin
What’s Pinyin? As I mentioned previously, Chinese characters, in most cases, are not phonetic, which means they have no sounds attributed to them. Instead, they are pictographs, symbols that represent different thoughts and ideas. These pictographs are very effective for communicating visually, through reading and writing. To illustrate, if I sketch a stick figure in the shape of the human form, we can each look at it and realize that I’m communicating something about a human being. The trouble occurs when people from different geographical regions assemble and attempt to communicate verbally.
Why is there an issue? Because in my village people may see the above mentioned stick figure and pronounce it “person.” In your village, however, people may see the identical figure and enunciate it “potato,” which makes it very hard for us to communicate verbally. Pinyin was created to resolve this problem, and it is the only way for you to learn how to correctly pronounce words and phrases in Mandarin Chinese. For that reason, before studying how to read, write or pronounce Chinese characters, you must learn pinyin.
Step Two: Learning how to Communicate Verbally
Once you understand pinyin, you need to use it, along with a native Chinese speaker, to learn how to accurately pronounce Chinese, including mastering Chinese tones. I know, you don’t have enough time to head over to China and learn with a native Chinese person. Do not worry. You can find quite a few software packages and web-based courses out there that have recordings made by Chinese speakers.
You must use these courses. It is almost impossible to discover how to pronounce Chinese tones without listening to them spoken by a native Chinese speaker. How critical is it to get the tones correct? A large number of Chinese words have four distinct definitions, each of which is expressed by a change of tone. If you don’t master your tones, you simply won’t have the ability to converse effectively using the Chinese language.
Step Three: Undertsanding Chinese Characters
Once you’ve mastered pinyin, you can progress to learning Chinese characters. Why should you do this last? Because when you memorize the meaning of a Chinese character, you’ll naturally assign a sound to it. Of course, in the beginning, you will simply translate the meaning straight into your native language. As you progress, though, you will want to develop the ability to “hear” the correct sound, in Chinese, in your head. On top of that, if you plan on using your ability to read Chinese characters in a realistic setting, in a cafe, for example, you’ll have to have the ability to pronounce them correctly, and the only way to do that is to first learn pinyin and pronunciation.
Conclusion
Chinese is the most spoken language globally, and, with the commercial and political rise of Mainland China, understanding the language has many practical benefits. Sure, it is a rather challenging language to master, but if you carry out the three steps layed out above, your growth will be swift and painless.
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