June , 2012

Jan Wos tyn , D i rec to r In te rna t iona l Re la t ions

Demystifying Mandarinby Hutong School

Overview

Part I: Facts and figures about Chinese

Part II: The Wonder of the Chinese Script

Part III: How to write Chinese

Part IV: Spoken Chinese

Part V: Chinese Grammar and Vocabulary

Part VI: Tips for learning Chinese

Part I: facts and figures

What is Chinese? What is Mandarin?

Where is Chinese spoken?

Who learns Mandarin?

What is Mandarin?

Mandarin = official standard language of Chinese

Several Chinese ‘dialects’ or ‘regionalects’ exist, mostly spoken in the South of China: Most well-known: Cantonese (Hong Kong, Guangdong, Guangxi) Other: Minnanhua (Fujian), Xiang (Hunnan), Wu (Shanghai,

Zhejiang) In spoken form often mutually unintelligible

Difference between a language and a dialect? “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” (Max Weinrich)

Names for the Chinese language: 汉语 Hànyŭ 中文 Zhōngwén 普通话 Pŭtōnghuà

Map of Chinese ‘dialects’

Where is Mandarin spoken as a first language?

Mainland China (850 mio to 1.1 billion) Younger generations all learn Mandarin at school, but will still

speak their dialect as well in the South Official policy: “Promote Mandarin, protect dialects” Older generations, especially in countryside, may never have

learned Mandarin and only master their own dialectTaiwan: about 4-5 mio speak Mandarin as their first language,

but all Taiwanese learn Mandarin as official languageSingapore: Mandarin is one of the official languagesOverseas communities: usually migrated from the south, most

speak dialects, not Mandarin (large communities in South-East Asia, notably Indonesia and Malaysia; smaller communities pretty much anywhere in the world, see map)

The Sinophone World

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New-Map-Sinophone_World.PNG

Who learns Mandarin?

Non-Chinese minorities within China: Tibetan, Uygur, Mongolians, etc…

Hong Kong & Macao: Official language yet most speak it as 2nd language after Cantonese Mandarin has clearly gained importance since 1997

In Korea and Japan, Mandarin may become as important or even overtake English as a 2nd language Many Koreans learn Chinese characters at school Japanese use 1945 common Chinese characters (Kanji) lower

threshold to learning ChineseElsewhere:

Big increase in number of secondary schools offering Chinese in France, Germany, USA, …

Chinese government pushes Confucius Institutes and Confucius classrooms all over the globe

Part II: the wonderof the Chinese script

When and why were characters invented?

Traditional versus simplified Chinese characters

How many characters are there?

Different types of Chinese characters

When and why were Chinese characters invented?

Brief history of Chinese script: 2000 BC: proto-writing: decorative carvings with meaning ‘Inventor’ of script = Cang Jie under Yellow emperor Oracle bone script, Shang dynasty (1766-1122 BC) = first

orthographic representation of language, not just pictures Standardization of the writing system into the “Small Seal Script”

( 小篆 Xiao Zhuan) by Qin Shihuang (221-207 BC), after the Warring States Period.

Chinese is characterized by a large number of homonyms Many identical sounds have very diverging meanings The Chinese people could not have invented the alphabet, it

would have been useless to write down their language

A Chinese story…

93 words

32 characters

4 tones

1 pinyin spelling

Traditional versus simplified Chinese

Although Mandarin is standardized in spoken form, there are 2 different ways of writing it

Simplified characters: Used in Mainland China Introduced in 1956 by CCP

Mainly reduction of strokes Also elimination of variants of same characters

Traditional characters: Used in Taiwan, HK and Macao

From traditional to simplified

車 → 车觀 → 观麗 → 丽陽 → 阳 陰 → 阴

How many Chinese charactersare there?

106.230: Yitizi Zidian (2004, Taiwan) Includes also all kinds of variants of same character

54678: Hanyu Da Zidian (1989, PRC)

7000: Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese

3500 ： Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese 2500 common characters 1000 less-than-common characters

Don’t despair ! With 2500 characters you can read 97.97 % With 3500 characters you can read 99.48 % With only 900 characters, you can read 90% of newspapers !

Highest level of HSK requires 2600 characters (Level 6)

Types of Chinese characters

Pictograms = stylized representation of objects

Ideograms = expressing abstract ideas through form

Radical-phonetic compounds (80-90% of characters) Radical: element that indicates meaning

About 200 radicals Refer to ‘water’ , ‘wood’ , ‘hands’ , etc…

Phonetic: element that indicates the pronunciation Most phonetics are characters themselves as well

Examples of pictograms

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification

Examples of ideograms

人　 -> 　大　 -> 天 person -> big -> heaven

本　 -> 末 root versus top

女 + 子 = 好 woman + son = good !

女 + 宀 = 安 woman + roof = safe !

亻 + 木 = 休 man + tree = to rest !

亻 + 本 = 体 man + root = body

木 + 木 = 林　 tree + tree = wood

木 + 木 + 木 = 森 tree + tree + tree = a forest

Example ofradical – phonetic system

巴 bā phonetic爸 bà father吧　　 bā bar 　　　把 bă to hold芭 bā banana疤 bā scar钯 bă palladium (Pd)鲃 bā barb (kind of fish)

Every character = one syllable

BUT most spoken words = duo syllabic avoid confusion !

Creative with characters

酒But, a bit confusing, don’t you think?

Part III: how to write Chinese?

The 8 basic strokes of Chinese writing

Basic stroke order rules

Writing direction

How to write Chinese digitally

The 8 basic strokes of Chinese writing

Basic stroke order rules1. Horizontal stroke (heng) before vertical

stroke (shu)

2. Left-leaning stroke (pie) before right-leaning stroke (na)

3. From top to bottom

4. From left to write

5. From outside to inside and closing a frame with the last stroke

6. Middle first, then both sides

For animated writing examples: see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Order.gif_stroke_order_images

Writing direction

Modern Chinese: Left to right, top to bottom Just like in Western language

Classical Chinese Top to bottom Right to left

1

1

2

2

How to write Chinese digitally

Most Chinese use pinyin to enter characters digitally

Pinyin = official transliteration system to write the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Latin alphabet

For each pronunciation, all possible characters or character combinations appear

Recognizing and choosing the correct character is all you need !

Part IV: spoken Chinese

The 4 tones

Do tones matter?

Some sounds are harder than others

The 4 tones

Mandarin actually has a 5th tone, the so-called neutral tonee.g. Xièxie māma second syllable is pronounced short and soft

Do tones matter?Yes, because a different tone will imply a different meaning

Mā 妈 = mother -> Māma, usually bisyllabic Má 麻 = hemp -> Dàmá : marihuana Mă 马 = horse -> usually monosyllabic Mà 骂 = to scold -> as a verb, will be preceded by subject and

following by direct object

However, in basic communication, the context and the grammatical function will usually make clear what is meant, even if the tone is not pronounced accurately

Make sure you know the tone of each character, but don’t worry about mistakes in the beginning. The feeling for the melody will come step by step

Some sounds are easier than others

Chinese has a relatively limited number of different syllables Standard pinyin only has about 400 possible syllables Western language have a multitude of possible syllables

Most syllables are fairly easy to pronounce: Māma, nĭ-hăo zhōng-guó, Shàng-hăi

Some syllables and syllable combinations require practice ! Jī qī xī zhī chī shī jū qū xū Zì-xíng-chē zì-jĭ qí-shí sì-shí-sì qī-shí-qī

Part V: Chinese grammar and vocabulary

The simplicity of Chinese grammar

What’s different in Chinese grammar?

Chinese vocabulary: makes sense !

Counting in Chinese: no exceptions !

Months and days of the week

The simplicity of Chinese grammar

No conjugations: each verb only has one formNo tensesNo casesNo pluralsNo articlesNo genderNo variation of adjectives by number or genderFixed sentence patterns, no inversion

Thanks to the Chinese characters, which are forms that never change, all the form changes of European languages can be omitted.

A French versus a Chinese verb

German articles versus Chinese

What is different in Chinese?

Particles or sentence patterns to express tenses 了 le -> used after verb to express completion or past 过 guo -> used after verb to express past experience 快要 ... 了 kuài yào … le -> construction to express something that is

going to happen in the near future Many other fixed structures that never change: some drilling does

the trick !

‘Measure words’ (or ‘Classifiers’) In English, some measure words exists such as ‘a cup of tea’ , ‘a pair

of jeans’, ‘a pinch of salt’, …. In Chinese, every word has such measure word

个 gè: generic measure words, can be used whenever you don’t know 张 zhāng: for flat objects (e.g. sheet of paper, a table, … 座 zuò: for big heavy objects (e.g. a building, a mountain, …)

Chinese vocabulary: makes sense

The vast majority of Chinese words have only 2 syllablesThey often combine basic meanings to form new words

Examples: 电脑 diàn-năo = Electricity + brain = ? 电话 diàn-huà = Electricity + words = ? 电视 diàn-shì = Electricity + to view = ?

变色龙 biàn-sè-lóng =Change + color + dragon = ? 长颈鹿 cháng-jĭng-lù = Long + neck + deer = ?

橄榄球 gănlăn-qiú = Olive + ball = ? 网球 wăng-qiú = Net + ball = ?

Chinese vocabulary: hard made easy !

Many words in English have a Greek-Latin origin, especially scientific words, which makes them sound difficult and not readily understandable

Chinese uses characters that are 2000 years old, but which have retained their basic meaning over time

Examples 五角大楼 wŭ-jiăo-dà-lóu = Five + corners + big + building = ? 安乐死 ān-lè-sĭ = quiet + happy + die = ? 交响曲 jiāo-xiăng-qŭ = to cross + to sound + musical piece = ?

Counting in Chinese

一 yī 二 èr三 sān四 sì五 wŭ六 liù七 qī八 bā九 jiŭ十 shí

万 wàn

千qiān

百 băi

十 shí

一 yī 二 èr三 sān四 sì五 wŭ六 liù七 qī八 bā九 jiŭ十 shí

一 yī 二 èr三 sān四 sì五 wŭ六 liù七 qī八 bā九 jiŭ十 shí

一 yī 二 èr三 sān四 sì五 wŭ六 liù七 qī八 bā九 jiŭ十 shí

一 yī 二 èr三 sān四 sì五 wŭ六 liù七 qī八 bā九 jiŭ十 shí

No exceptions, every number is formed the same wayOne additional ‘unit’ = 万 wàn = 10.000Only 13 different syllables needed to count from 1 to ….Example: 85327 = 8*10.000 + 5*1000 + 3*100 + 2*20 + 7

= bā wàn wŭ qiān sān băi èr shí qīNo need to worry about French calculations like 96 = 4*20 + 16

Months and days of the week一月 yīyuè 七月 qīyuè二月 èryuè 八月 bāyuè三月 sānyuè 九月 jiŭyuè四月 sìyuè 十月 shíyuè五月 wŭyuè 十一月 shíyīyuè六月 liùyuè 十二月 shíèryuè

January JulyFebruary AugustMarch SeptemberApril OctoberMay NovemberJune December

MondayFridayTuesdaySaturdayWednesday SundayThursday

星期一 xīngqīyī 星期五xīngqīwŭ星期二 xīngqīèr 星期六xīngqīliù星期三 xīngqīsān 星期天 xīngqītiān星期四 xīngqīsìOnce you can count till 10, you just need to learn the words

for week, month and heaven and you know all the months and days of the week as well ! (13 different syllables)

Tips for learning Chinese

Always carry a small notebook Write down characters you see a lot ask your teacher Write down words or sounds you hear a lot ask your teacher You will easily remember these characters and sounds as they are connected

to real-life situations

Separate learning spoken and written Chinese Learn to speak those words that are used regularly in daily life, but don’t

worry about the characters (yet) Xièxie = thank you ! quite easy to say 谢谢 hard to write if this is one of your first characters, don’t force yourself !

Learn the components first Learn to recognize and write simple characters first, even if they are not

commonly used in speech 口 kŏu = mouth easy to write, also radical in many other characters, but rarely

used as a word in conversations 木 mù = wood idem, common radical

Tips for learning Chinese (bis)

Make up stories about characters to memorize them 叫 jiào: to call or be called; my roommate was a fan of the football team Schalke 04

and looked at the character as ’04’. It was ridiculous, had nothing do to with it, but he did remember

楼 lóu: building is a construction of wood ( 木 ) where a woman ( 女 ) is cooking rice ( 米 )

Use Chinese whenever and wherever you can, even if you feel you are using the same words over and over again

Repeat 3 times 20’ rather than once 1 hour

Don’t worry about tonal mistakes in the beginning, but always make sure you know the tone of each syllable

Read aloud whenever you read something

And for every worry, there is a Chinese proverb anyway !

千里之旅，始于足下！A journey of a 1000 miles starts with one step !

Don’t worry, anybody can learn Chinese !

Lost in translation… better learn Chinese !

About Hutong School

Hutong School was founded in 2005 in order to provide Western students, graduates and young professionals internships and Chinese

language courses in China.

Hutong School is the school of choice for anyone who wants to study Chinese or find an internship in China.

Visit our website for more information: www.hutong-school.com