Question

Fundamentals of Mandarin Chinese

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I am not a native speaker but grew up in a household where Mandarin was spoken and re-starting my formal study of Mandarin Chinese. If you have any questions or corrections I will do my best but may defer to somebody with more formal experience.

Answer 2

\({\bf{Pros~of~Learning~Mandarin:}}\)
1. It is the most widely spoken language in the world, with over 1 billion native speakers.

2. Many countries where Mandarin is predominant (China, Singapore, Malaysia, and more) are prominent trading partners with the United States, so learning Mandarin may be useful to somebody pursuing a degree in business or economics.

3. The grammatical structure is similar to English (subject-verb-object) and the vocabulary required is less extensive (it requires about ~2-3,000 characters to be fluent in Chinese vs, 10,000 words to be fluent in English). also NO VERB CONJUGATIONS WHOO!!!

4. Learning Mandarin will also help you learn about the rich history and beliefs of Asian cultures which will make you a more well-rounded, worldly individual.

5. Travelling to Asian countries will be easier and more enjoyable with knowledge of the local language and culture.

\({\bf{Challenges~of~Learning~Mandarin:}}\)
1. Unlike English, Mandarin is a tonal language. The same syllable can have different meanings depending on the tone (more on this later).

2. The writing system. Often times, a character will give little indication of what it represents or how to say it.

3. Mandarin is very idiomatic, so the literal translation for an expression may make little sense to somebody not familiar with the language.

Answer 3

\({\bf{Representing~Words:}}\) in Mandarin, an object, action, or idea is expressed through one or more characters, which can be represented pictorially through a series of strokes, or alphabetically through a system called pīnyīn.

\({\bf{Characters:}}\) are composed of smaller units called radicals. The Kangxi Dictionary outlines 214 radicals, some of which are provided below:



There are two main types of characters: simplified and traditional. The simplified and traditional versions of a character have the same meaning, but the simplified one has fewer strokes and is easier to read. For practical purposes, simplified characters are used much more often in modern Chinese writing, but traditional characters may still be of interest for artistic and historical studies.

Answer 4

\({\bf{The~Pīnyīn~System:}}\) each character can be represented by a combination of consonant sounds, vowel sounds, and tonal marks.

Vowel sounds in Chinese can be represented with: a,e,i,u, or ü. It would be more beneficial to listen to a pronunciation of these sounds on youtube but I will attempt to describe them below:

a: similar to the a in father (ahh)
o: similar to the o in open (ouu)
e: similar to the o sound but instead of rounding your mouth, narrow the mouth (this is kind of hard to describe but I will post a youtube video that may help clear things up)
i: similar to the e sound in Eden or evening (eee) with several important exceptions (see the video)
u: similar to the oo sound in ooze (ooh)
ü: honestly I really don't know how to describe this so just listen to the pronunciation ;_;

Vowel Pronunciation Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yav6Gs_lFA

Initial Consonant Sounds: the consonant sounds at the beginnings of words can be represented by the following consonants or consonant combinations:

b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, w, y

Will take too long to explain them all but many of them are very similar to English pronunciations, just pay careful attention to the ones that are different like zh, q, or x.

Consonant Pronunciation Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQAzioCGWdo

Compound Finals: the combinations of vowels and consonants used to represent the endings of words. Again, there are a lot to list and I would recommend checking videos and other pronunciation guides for these:



Compound Finals Pronunciation Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLr8ZJu6ko0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djo9v7fciO8

Answer 5

\({\bf{The~Tones:}}\) There are four possible tones (and a neutral tone) that can be given to a character. The following chart shows how different tones can change the meaning of the syllable "ma."



Again, there is no substitute for hearing the tones and practicing them. Reference video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MkRL33bIc8

The fifth neutral tone does not have a symbol associated with it. Typically its tonal pronunciation is dictated by the syllable that came before it.

Answer 6

\({\bf{Stroke~Order:}}\) the guidelines for the order and directions the strokes must be made when writing characters (don't try to cheat on this, trust me, your characters will look wonky and your teachers will notice).

General rules of thumb (keep in mind there are a lot of exceptions to this and each character must be taken on a case by case basis)
1. left to right
2. top of the character to the bottom
3. horizontal strokes before vertical strokes
4. outside of the radical to the inside of the radical
5. center of a radical before moving on to the two sides (yes this does sometimes come into conflict with the left to right rule)
6. for a radical with a smaller symbol inside a larger one, finish the symbol inside before completing the larger symol

Answer 7

This person does it a lot neater than I could here so I will provide a link with examples of the six rules in action: https://eastasiastudent.net/china/mandarin/stroke-order/

Answer 8

Anyway, that's it, it's a lot to take in and I probably over-simplified a ton but I hope this was a useful resource and I hope it taught you a bit about how Mandarin works. Source material is Integrated Chinese, Third Edition. Liu, Yuehua, et. al.