For a native American-English speaker there is no argument in the idea that learning Chinese is challenging. A language learner that is new to the Chinese language may find learning Chinese to be difficult simply because they lack the basic understanding and learning processes associated with the language.
The Chinese language is founded in ideographic characters, which is simply a picture; a visual, functional representation of an idea. Chinese characters are also represented by meaning (morphemic characters) and sounds (phonetic characteristics). The language is unique and difficult for American language learners due to the tones and more than 56,000 characters (h`anzi) that make up the Chinese language.
What do we need to know to start learning Chinese?
The Chinese language is made up of different dialects, similar to any other language.
A good example is American English, these dialects include New York English (vowel and /r/ variations), Southern English (Southern Drawl), Black English (drop final consonants including /ng/ & /r/ and use of double negatives), Backwoods dialect of Southern English, General American or Middle American.
Dialects
Chinese has three distinct dialects, Mandarin (Mainland China & Singapore, written using Simplified Chinese characters), Mandarin (Taiwan, written using Traditional Chinese) and Cantonese (Hong Kong and overseas Chinese, written in Traditional Chinese using long-form). Mandarin, Standard Chinese is the official spoken language of the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and one of the four official languages of Singapore. When people refer to “Chinese”, they are referring to Mandarin Chinese (Standard Chinese) which is also considered one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Mandarin Chinese consists of different regional dialects.
Mandarin Chinese Language Facts
Mandarin Chinese uses a tone system made up of only four tones and a “toneless” tone to express 400 to 500 basic syllables. There are thousands and thousands of syllables in the English language. Compared to Mandarin Chinese, in respect to syllables, English is far more difficult to learn. It is estimated that there are more than 15,800 syllables used in the English language (Barker, C. New York University). Chinese has many words that have the same sound yet express different meanings. The tonal system allows a limited number of syllables to be expressed in a number of different ways, which makes it necessary to learn Chinese in context. Chinese words change based on the tone and inflection of the syllables.
Conversational Mandarin
Learning Chinese is easiest if the learner beings with conversational Mandarin. For decades language learners have been taught to begin language learning by learning and memorizing the alphabet or in the case of Chinese, the characters. Language learners have been programmed to learn from books, to begin memorizing vocabulary, learning how to spell words and learning words in categories, i.e. clothes, food, public buildings, etc. Language learners have consistently used the same approach and consistently find that their language learning is difficult, slow and in some cases unsuccessful.
Mandarin Chinese is best learned using interactive audio programs for language learning, that focus on conversational skills. The use of interactive audio language learning systems helps the learner better understand and use the tones. Language learners will have more confidence and learn more rapidly when they can engage with others in basic conversational speech. A conversational language learning approach will increase vocabulary retention and improve your use of functional vocabulary words.
Mandarin Chinese Language Instruction, Pinyin vs. H`anzi
Here’s where it gets really confusing! Pinyin vs. h`anzi. The later of which describes the 56,000 plus characters of the Chinese language.
Which would you rather do, learn 56,000 Chinese characters in the next couple of months or take the easy way out, avoid every going to China and make sure your never left alone in a room with people that may require you to speak Chinese? Most of us, if we had to learn all the Chinese characters to learn Chinese would not be very successful.
Pinyin is simplified/traditional Chinese “spelled out”, phonetically. Pinyin is the instructional system used in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and parts of Taiwan and internationally to teach Mandarin Chinese. Pinyin is only used to teach Mandarin Chinese and can not be used to teach other Chinese languages.
The Pinyin system is the sounds of Mandarin Chinese (spoken Chinese) represented by the Roman (Latin) alphabet. Waalaa! Mandarin Chinese simplified. If it was just that easy.
Pinyin is the best way to learn Chinese Characters because it allows English speakers to relate to characters. Pinyin also uses the American (Latin) alphabet to express the sounds of Chinese Characters. It seems so ironic to me, a new writing system was created to learn a writing system that is so difficult that even native Chinese adults and children depend on it to learn their own writing system. Wow! That’s just amazing to me.
The theory is, once you learn Pinyin you will be able to pronounce any word in Mandarin Chinese and will be able to use a Mandarin Chinese dictionary. This seems like a much better approach to learning Chinese than memorizing Chinese characters.
It is estimated that an American language learner studying Chinese will require approximately 2,200 hours of instruction to become proficient in spoken Chinese.
Let’s get started together and see just how long it takes. How many hours of instruction does it take to get to proficiency of Mandarin Chinese to speak Chinese, 1, 2, …. Dive In!
