Imagine to be able to speak a language that is in existence for a large number of years and will enable you to converse with greater than a billion people instantly. Imagine yourself as a person who can speak a language that takes a great departure from your own. Learning Chinese is a very rewarding experience because Chinese is not just one of the official languages of the United Nations, it is just a language that bridges cultures from the Vietnam to Japan.
Did you know that japan and Korean writing systems derive from the Chinese writing system of characters? Chinese is actually a family of languages that consists of several dialects, a few of which are unintelligible to one another as a result of phonetics and tones of Chinese. Nevertheless, today Chinese has achieved a kind of standardization and most Chinese and foreigners use the Chinese dialect, Mandarin, to communicate effectively in every walks of life.
Aside from Mandarin, other dialects stay in popular use today such as for example Cantonese that may often be heard in the Chinatowns across the world. Mandarin though, will serve you best in learning Chinese due to its prevalence and adoption because the standard form of Chinese. Today, Mandarin is spoken by about 850 million in China as the Wu dialect is spoken by nearly 90 million accompanied by Cantonese (70 million).
Learning Chinese will prove challenging for those who are learning it as another language. The task of speaking Chinese is that it takes a significant departure from the phonetics of Western languages. With Chinese the tone and inflection of syllables, vowels, and all manner of sounds can create totally new meanings for a word. Invest some time learning Chinese. It really is fun and remember that challenges are windows of opportunity.
But first, know that you can find three aspects of the Oriental that you will need to become well on the way to mastering the language. They are:
1.Tones
2.Characters
3.Sentence Order
Tones – Focus your time and effort and energy most on learning the tones of the Chinese language. Contrary to popular belief the tones will be the fundamental aspect of learning Chinese. Learning the tones often means the difference between attempting to kiss someone or asking them a question. The Chinese category of languages is distinguished by its “tonal” element. Understand that best ways to learn mandarin are super important. Why? Did you know that Mandarin speaking Chinese people are nearly unintelligible to Cantonese speaking people due to the variance in tones?
Characters – There are a large number of character for the Chinese language. Find out which ones come in use today and focus on those. The older characters are best learned as stepping stones to a whole understanding of Chinese. Nevertheless, your time will undoubtedly be best spent o learning the characters that are in use today.
Sentence order – Chinese is a pretty flexible language. Yet, the order of sentence construction continues to be important. One of the noticeable mistakes that learners make is placing numeric values such as time in the incorrect order in their sentences. Remember that Chinese is primarily spoken by native speakers so that they are used to hearing a particular order within a sentence. Practice makes perfect.
Have fun learning Chinese. Know very well what you want to escape the language. Why do you want to learn Chinese? Do you want to learn Chinese to converse with a friend, for business or to master one of the world’s great languages?