visit us at https://blog.laowaicareer.comtweet us @laowaicareer

Learning how to speak Mandarin

It really isn’t as hard as people told you it is. With time and practice you can

be speaking Chinese!

When we talk about studying Chinese, what we actually mean is studying Mandarin. Compared to

Cantonese, which is the second most spoken out of around 50 languages in contemporary China,

Mandarin is far larger

Cantonese confined to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Mandarin, on the other hand, is also spoken in both

these areas and the entirety of the rest of the country. This did not come about as an accident. 100 years ago there were more languages, and Standard Mandarin

was not known as standard.

The Mandarin of today is an amalgamation of different dialects but is mostly made up of the old

Beijing one. The reason that it is so common today is that it has been artificially promoted by the central

government for obvious reasons: one modern nation needs one standard mode of communication.

When we talk about Mandarin language studies people often say that they are rather tricky. They are not a walk in the park, but it is my sincere belief that people make it out to be a much more difficult task

than it is in reality. The thing we need to remember is that Mandarin is very different from languages that

have been derived from Latin or the Germanic branch of European languages.

But once those differenced have been dealt with, learning the rest of the language is much less tricky than it would seem when you are just setting out on

that particular journey. These initial bumps in the road can be categorized into two distinct groups; the

difficulties of writing Chinese Mandarin and the challenges of speaking Chinese Mandarin. I write

difficulties but in reality it is less about difficultness and more about differences.

The first of these two categories, written Chinese, is mostly hard because there is no alphabet. Instead,

you need to memorize a lot of pictures, aka characters. The key to success in this matter lies in not thinking of them as pictures when you try to commit

them to memory but rather thinking of them regarding their underlying structure.

The two golden nuggets of information that you need to become familiar with are the building blocks that

make up the vast majority of characters, called radicals, and the way that these radicals are written, the stroke order. Once you have these two concepts firmly logged in your head you will begin to see the

characters as a process of writing and not as a finished product. The picture is complicated, but the

way that it is formed is as easy as pie.

It is a bit like riding a bike really – once you get up and going you will cover a lot of ground very quickly, and you will never loose that initial effort you put in while learning the first couple of hundred or so the correct

way. The second of the categories, spoken Chinese

Mandarin, is mostly different regarding pronunciation.

The grammar is not that hard. Chinese Mandarin pronunciation, however, is. It is hard because as we know, Mandarin lacks an alphabet. Instead of being

made up of letters that make a sound when put together we have pictures which give little or no indication regarding how the words sound when

spoken. To muddle things up, even more, the Mandarin language is not only dependent on

syllables, but it also involves modulation of the pitch.

This is what is more commonly known as tones, and it makes Mandarin a tonal language. However, both the difficulties with getting to grips with Characters and

their radicals and stroke order, and the trick to wrapping your tongue around tonal modulation while speaking, can easily be dealt with in a small class size.

Learning Mandarin without the individual attention of a teacher is very hard. Although, once you have help with pronunciation and writing it becomes easier. By

learning the language, you will hold the key to the greatest paradigm shift of our century – the rise of China as the economic and political superpower.

If you want to learn to speak Mandarin, you must know that it is not an easy process. In fact, learning to

speak the language should not be done in a hasty manner otherwise, you will end up learning the

language erroneously.

Here are some of the steps that you may follow to learn to speak Mandarin properly:

First, you have to break the language learning goals into smaller, more achievable and realistic goals. The learning process is procession; wherein there are no

cutting corners towards achieving your learning goals. The same philosophy should be applied to learning to

speak Mandarin. You must create short term wins.

For instance, you should start learning the characters before learning the words and afterward, learning the

phrases. These short-term wins will lead you to achieve the bigger goals of learning to speak the

language. For one, there are thousands of characters involved in the Mandarin language.

It would be best to break down the number into smaller modules that you have to learn on a daily

basis. The goal is studying one or a few characters at a time. Master each character if you must, with which

comes mastering the entire Mandarin language. Second, you have to consider having a language

buddy who is also learning the Mandarin language.

This person may be English or an other non-English speaker. Nevertheless, figures show that the latter is

more efficient in learning to speak Mandarin than English-speaking individuals. Perhaps, the reason

behind this is the wide difference in the English and Chinese languages. If English is your mother tongue,

and you language buddies is not, you will not be tempted to fall back in communicating in English.

Your partner will not understand what you are saying as well, and you will be left with no choice but to converse in The Mandarin language. So, choose a

non-English speaking language buddy, that is if you are serious to learn to speak Mandarin. With this, you

will become more fluent in speaking the language eventually. Considerably, you will not be ashamed of

the mistake that you are going to make since your language buddy may make the same mistake as yours.

Third, you have to learn to speak Mandarin using the most appropriate method for you. Again, learners have different characteristics and thus, different

learning styles. The same with learning Mandarin, there is no right method for each learner wherein one

method may be effective for a learner, but not for another learner. Put simply, the learning method that works for other language learners may not necessarily work for you. Thereby, learning to speak the language

is not universal.

If you must develop your learning strategy, integrating different language learning methods in your strategy. Some of these methods are reading Mandarin comics

or books, watching Mandarin shows or listening to Mandarin dramas on the radio. You have a lot of

choices that you may try, and then choose which of them will work for later.

These are the three basic steps that you must follow. In no time, you may determine the difference between a broken and a fluent Mandarin

speaker.

BonusClick on the link below to read the full blog post!

https://blog.laowaicareer.com/learning-speak-mandarin-road-ahead

/

LaowaiCareer.comblog.LaowaiCareer.com

• Search Jobs• Register as a Job seeker.• Subscribe to our Newsletter, Job offers and Blo

gs• Read our blog