I have been struggling with the Chinese language all my life. As a young man, I was studying it at university (in addition to other languages and subjects), and I got a degree in it.
To "study" Chinese may mean several things:
- You can just study Mandarin or one of the major Chinese "dialects" (in fact, a different language than Mandarin) like Cantonese up to various levels of proficiency.
- You may have then option of just studying the spoken language by way of its romanization system, Pinyin and ignore the written language with its complex script.
- You may study the modern spoken and written language (Mandarin) with or without additional training in the ancient (mainly the ancient written language also known as "Classical Chinese" that even a modern native speaker of Chinese could not master without additional training for years).
If you have studied both the classical and modern variants of Chinese written and spoken up to a reasonable level of proficiency, you have already gone a long way. But the way is much longer than just that. It takes you a lifetime to study, train and apply.
Some points that may make Chinese language study difficult for a Western foreigner: - It`s basically pronunciation and the script that would require most of the efforts. - Basic Grammar is not difficult to handle, you may "get away" with it more easily than with studying French or even English Grammar. At a more advanced level, Chinese Grammar can be quite tricky: There are sentences passive in meaning but without an explicit marker for Passive Voice (English passive sentences always have). There are certain rules when not to use a subject in a Chinese sentence, and in certain Chinese verbs you may find certain parts called "objects" by Chinese grammarians that actually do not function as objects in a Chinese sentence. - There are certain cultural things in the Chinese language that make it difficult to comprehend for a foreigner if you do not know the basics of Chinese culture - these are certain proverbs consisting of a sequence of four syllables that have a certain meaning and may be often heard in everyday language. - You need to have "musical" ear to distinguish the various tone levels of a word (syllable) in spoken language. - You will need to activate your right brain hemisphere in particular when you study the Chinese script. This consists typically of a very large set of graphical symbols that because they are meaning-based appeal to imagination in a way as paintings do. Not everybody´s cup of tea but you will need to train that as a habit to use when memorizing Chinese characters.
There are some other things I could list here, and the list above is not comprehensive (this is an article spontaneously written and not one worked out so well for a scientific journal).
I have translated important texts from Classical Chinese on Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine as well as on religion (Daoism), folk tales and commented on them in my publications. I have written introductory textbooks on the Chinese script and instruction manuals on Chinese Grammar and some more scientific research studies on Contrastive Chinese-English Grammar. I am reading Chinese newspapers daily, and I am mailing with my Chinese friends in Chinese. I began my first studies of Chinese as a
student more 30 years ago; and now, at the age of almost 60, I still do not recognise certain characters so easily and I have to consult a special character dictionary like Xinhua Zidian or Ci Hai to look it up. When speaking Chinese, I still notice from time to time that I have used the wrong tonal level when pronouncing a certain Chinese word.
In other words. struggling with Chinese as a foreign language is a life-long process that never ends.
Showing posts with label chinese character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chinese character. Show all posts
How to Learn Mandarin
Mandarin is one of the most useful languages to learn. Notice that there are so many people or should I say, with a large part of the world can able to speak it. It doesn't hurt either that a lot of businesses are now moving operations in China. In a survey of experienced Mandarin speakers, these tips turned out to be the most frequently dispensed when advising non-speakers to become more interested in getting acquainted with the language.
1. Get involved in a local group with plenty of Chinese members. This one should vary depending on your locale, but the idea is the same. The more you can practice your Mandarin around better speakers than you, the faster your improvement is likely to be.
2. Start with the spoken language and save the written for later. Spoken Mandarin is very straightforward and resembles English sentence construction in a lot of ways, making it easier to get into than the written counterpart.
3. Pay strict attention to the tones. Unlike many languages, you can't learn decent Mandarin while sticking to rudimentary tones - the language just doesn't work that way. As such, learn them and practice as much as you can.
4. Use a good language learning software with a wide range of components, such as audio and interactive exercises, for a complete learning experience. That's one of software's innate strengths - why not take advantage of it.
It is really a good thing to learn different language in order for us to understand other people who are not that fluent in english. And Mandarin is one of those language that needs to be learn, we all know that most of the people around the world came from China. It would better if we know their language too.
1. Get involved in a local group with plenty of Chinese members. This one should vary depending on your locale, but the idea is the same. The more you can practice your Mandarin around better speakers than you, the faster your improvement is likely to be.
2. Start with the spoken language and save the written for later. Spoken Mandarin is very straightforward and resembles English sentence construction in a lot of ways, making it easier to get into than the written counterpart.
3. Pay strict attention to the tones. Unlike many languages, you can't learn decent Mandarin while sticking to rudimentary tones - the language just doesn't work that way. As such, learn them and practice as much as you can.
4. Use a good language learning software with a wide range of components, such as audio and interactive exercises, for a complete learning experience. That's one of software's innate strengths - why not take advantage of it.
It is really a good thing to learn different language in order for us to understand other people who are not that fluent in english. And Mandarin is one of those language that needs to be learn, we all know that most of the people around the world came from China. It would better if we know their language too.
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