How to Learn the Langauge

Even though the Chinese language is very different from other languages in the world, many foreigners are getting themselves more familiarized with the language, both spoken and written. In the past, Chinese has been quite a remote language which doesn’t have a perceptible affiliation to other languages, but since the introduction of the pinyin system, a link has established to allow alphabet-based language users to learn the language.

In order to get yourself acquainted with the Chinese language, it is essential that you understand the ways of pinyin. Pinyin is the translation of standard Chinese into alphabetical forms, where pin means 'spell' and yin means 'sound'. Though the alphabets used in pinyin are all Romanized letters, there are some deviations in the way of pronunciation for certain letters and their combinations. Also, every syllable spelled out in pinyin has five different sounds and a symbol is usually used to denote the tone by which it should be pronounced.

One of the major difficulties in learning to speak Chinese is that the foreign tongue is not conditioned to produce the range of sounds required in the pronunciations of Chinese words. However, a parallel can be drawn for all the pronunciations used in Chinese if you know how to associate them with the sounds of your own language. Learning to speak Chinese as a secondary language is different from learning it as a mother tongue. In the case of late learners, it is important to start from the micro aspects of it before you understand the feel of the whole language.

Every pinyin syllable is divided into initials and finals. Say, in the pinyin ma, the 'm' is the initial and the 'a' is the final. Sometimes, the initial will feature two letters instead of one, such as 'zh' in zhong or 'sh' in shu, and the final can consist of up to four letters, such as 'iang' in xiang or just 'ua' as in hua. The finals are quite similar to the functions of vowels in English or other Romance languages though they can also be accompanied by a consonant or two at the end. Generally, the initials are pronounced much the same way as English alphabets, except for a few such as 'g' (pronounced closer to a 'k'), 'j' (between a 'j' and a 'ch') and 'q' (pronounced as 'ch').

An important point to note which answers a lot of questions beginners have is why some well-known Chinese words like "Peking", "Taichi", "Kung Fu", or "kowtow" don't match the rules of pinyin. The answer is that the above examples are NOT pinyin, they are from a much older romanization system called Wade-Gilles, which was established at the beginning of the 1900's, and is no longer used. "Peking" is, as most people know, more accurately spelled (and pronounced) Beijing. "Taichi" is actually written taiji" in pinyin, "Kung Fu" should actually be written gong fu, and "kowtow" is koutou. The fact that the older spellings remain is just a result of these words being introduced into western culture before pinyin was widely popularized.

There are slight differences in the way most alphabets are pronounced, and it usually involves a little more curling or drawing back of the tongue. This is for the most accurate standard Chinese pronunciations and even locals outside Beijing do not really apply such precision in the way they speak. Note that Mandarin is not really the primary language for most local Chinese, though it is rather similar to the dialects they speak. Anyhow, you will be understood throughout China even if you do not adhere to the little details of pronunciation.
The tonal characteristics of the Chinese language are quite difficult for foreigners to grasp. There are five tones to every pinyin and if you fail to produce the right sound, it can mean an entirely different thing altogether. For example, if without a symbol to denote its tonal expression, the pinyin of ma can mean 'mother', 'numb', 'horse' or 'scold'. The different tones are written by placing different accents over the finals of the word, indicating whether the word is spoken with a high level tone, a rising tone, a falling-rising tone or a falling tone (the fifth, neutral tone is indicated by the lack of any accent). It is advisable that you learn these tones from audio language packages or Chinese-speaking people, as they can be quite tricky to try to figure out on your own, and form the basis of a lot of the spoken language.

The written form of Chinese is by far the toughest obstacle in learning the complete Chinese language, although learning the written language is not essential in being able to communicate effectively with people through speaking. Learning the written language does have the advantage that people who speak different dialects of spoken Chinese may still understand you if you can just write the characters down (though you'll find that if you speak official Hanyu/Mandarin most people will have no problem understanding you).

Unlike Romance languages in which the writing of every word can be figured out by the sound, Chinese characters cannot be exactly derived from phonetic patterns, though some characters are composed with the same component as another similar sounding character. Each character is different from another and unless you have seen it in its written form, it is quite impossible to know it for sure. To learn how to write Chinese, you have to learn it one character at a time. However, grammar and sentence structure is less significant in the Chinese language, and they are usually used to express different moods of writing. You will need practical guidance to be literate in Chinese, either from an institution or a Chinese educated person, though there are many books that attempt to allow the dedicated student to teach themselves.

Learning Chinese can be a very daunting task at first, but with a good basic foundation (which can be built by one of many introductory books or audio programs), it can be easier than most people think, and also fun and very fascinating.