B. Get to Know China and Chinese Language

1. What is Mandarin? What is Chinese? What’s the difference?Mandarin is considered the “standard Chinese,” and is the official language of China and Singapore. Pretty much everyone in China has to learn to speak Mandarin at school. It’s based on the dialect spoken in Beijing, but the accent and grammar are standard throughout China.

Chinese, on the other hand, is a general term. It includes Mandarin and some other common regional dialects you may have heard of, like Cantonese and Shanghainese. Since the majority of Chinese people speak Mandarin, when people talk about “the Chinese language,” they’re usually referring to Mandarin.

To learn about the different ways of saying "Chinese" in Chinese, read this article:

What’s the difference between zhongwen, hanyu, putonghua, guoyu and huayu?

2. Is Chinese difficult to learn?

When people say that ”Chinese is difficult to learn”, they mainly refer to the written language, known as Chinese characters. But the good news is that you don’t need to learn Chinese characters to learn Chinese. We’ve already discussed how much learning Pinyin helps in the beginning of the process, so much so that you can skip learning characters at the beginning. When it comes to spoken Chinese, it’s actually quite easy to learn compared to other European languages.

First of all, Chinese grammar is easy and straightforward.

There’s no gender, there’s no plural, there are even no articles like, “a”, “an” or “the”. Additionally, there is NO VERB CONJUGATION in Chinese which means the verb “to be” stays the same for “she is, he was, I am or we are”. This makes talking about time, such as what happened “yesterday”, what “will probably happen tomorrow”, what “was happening but isn’t happening anymore” quite simple.

Secondly, the Chinese language is based on building blocks, which means the more you learn, the easier it gets.

Chinese words are very transparent and logical. For example, in Chinese, the word for movie is “diàn yǐng”, which literally means “electronic shadow”. Telephone is “diàn huà”, which literally means “electronic speech”, computer is “diàn nǎo”, which literally means “electronic brain”. So when you see the Chinese words for “movies, telephone and computer”, you know they are all related to electricity and that will help you memorize the words. To get a better understanding of this idea, take a look at this video lesson: Overview of Mandarin Chinese.

In Chinese, once you learn the basic sentence structures and useful words, you can just put together the old pieces and make up new ones.

3. Is there any difference in Mandarin between Mainland China and Taiwan?

The language is the same, just the accents are different. The accent difference is comparable to British English and American English. A few words are different, the same way that “gasoline” and “petrol” are different.

Another difference is that Taiwanese writing is usually traditional characters, and Mainland China usually uses simplified. Other than these differences, the languages are essentially the same.

We have two blog posts related to Chinese dialects:

Chinese Dialects: Do You Need to Know Them?

Chinese Dialects: Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Putonghua

4. What are Chinese dialects?

China is geographically diverse, so the language has fractured into many different-sounding dialects. Many of these you have heard of, such as Cantonese and Shanghainese, but so very many dialects are spoken in such a small area that it would not serve you to need to learn them.

Take me as an example, I was born in Hunan, China and my first language was actually Hunanese. My nanny at the time spoke Hunanese, so I naturally picked it up. After I moved to Beijing at the age 4, I forgot Hunanese almost entirely. Everyone in Beijing speaks Mandarin, both at school and at home.

These days, nearly everyone learns to speak Mandarin in school, and it is the standard language you should learn.

5. What is pinyin?

Pinyin is the most commonly used, standardized system to ”spell” Chinese words in the Roman alphabet. This is the first thing Chinese kids learn at school. Once you master this written system (which is not difficult at all), you can read Chinese words in “English letters” but still understand them in Chinese.

While Pinyin looks like English, a few key factors make it different.

First, pinyin represents the sounds of the Chinese language. For example, “ben” is not really pronounced like the name “Ben”. Pinyin “en” sounds like the “en” in “taken”. Having said that, the good news is that an English speaker can pronounce more than half of the Pinyin sounds correctly without any coaching at all.

Second, Pinyin is a lot more standard than English. In English, you have unlimited amount of sounds because you can create new sounds any time, like “blog” or “google”. Or you may have words with the same spelling but with multiple sounds, like the word “record”. You can “record” a sound, and you can also own a “record”.

There are only 409 Chinese sounds not including tones and each pinyin word only matches only one sound. This means once you master the pinyin, you can start saying EVERY sound and every word in Chinese.

Watch the Pinyin Introduction Course:

Chinese Pinyin Lessons > Lesson 1 Overview of Mandarin Chinese Pinyin

6. What is a Chinese character?

In English, words are the basic units of the language, but in Chinese, it’s the characters.

Each Chinese character looks like a little picture, but this little picture has a specific sound that can be written with pinyin, and meanings.

So each time you see a Chinese character, there’s three elements associated with it.

• • What does it look like (the image)

  • What does it sound like (the pinyin)

  • What does it mean (the meaning)

It’s different from English. In English, what a word looks like is pretty much consistent with what it sounds like. When you see a word, you can immediately know how to pronounce it. So there are two elements associated with each English word:

• • What does it look like/What does it sound like (image and sound)

  • What does it mean (the meaning)

That’s why it’s hard to learn Chinese characters at the beginning, because not only you have to associate the meaning with the sound, but also the image. Too much work, too early on.

That’s why we suggest delaying Chinese characters, learning them only when you have the basics down. Use pinyin to carry you through the beginning stage. This way, with the help of pinyin, you’ll already have the “sounds” and “meanings” down and you’ll only need to add the “image” element. It’ll make your learning much more manageable and enjoyable.

7. What is a Chinese word?

Different from English, a Chinese “word” is either one Chinese character or a combination of different Chinese characters that are used together to express one idea. Most Chinese words consist of two characters.

In a two-character Chinese word, each character is considered a word component.

For example, the Chinese word for “airplane” is “飞机 (fēi jī)”. It contains two components “飞(fēi) – fly” and “机(jī)-machine”. The Chinese word for “cell phone” is “手机(shǒu jī)”. It contains two components “手(shǒu) – hand” and “机(jī)-machine”. The Chinese word for “helicopter” is “直升机 (zhí shēng jī)” and it consists three components “直(zhí)-straight”, “升(shēng)-ascend” and ”机(jī)-machine”. So basically, each Chinese word is reshuffling and recycling different Chinese word component, or a Chinese character.

Here, please note that even though the word component “机(jī)” means machine, it cannot be used alone as a word. Most Chinese words are two characters. To really say the word “machine” in Chinese, it’s “机器(jī qì)”, which consists of the word components ”机(jī)-machine” and “器(qì)-instrument”.

Another difference between an English word and a Chinese word is that there’s space between English words, but there’s no space in between Chinese words. You’ll have to separate the sentence yourself in your head.

我喜欢吃意大利菜. (wǒ xǐ huān chī yì dà lì cài) I like to eat Italian food. If it were written the English way, it would be separated by word ideas, like this

wǒ xǐ huān chī yì dà lì cài

“我 喜欢 吃 意大利 菜

I like to eat Italian cuisine.

It’ll take you some time to get used to, but eventually you will wonder how you were so addicted to spaces in the first place! ^_^

8. Do I need to learn Chinese characters?

In the beginning of your studies, you don’t need to! With the help of pinyin, you’ll be able to learn all the basic words and sentence structures to get started. However, it’s a good idea to learn characters once you reach the intermediate level.

Chinese only has 409 sounds and all the Chinese words have to cycle through those sounds.

After you learn enough of them, they start sounding the same. Even with four tones, the sounds become difficult to distinguish. But when you learn the character that goes with each sound, not only can you start telling words apart, but you’ll also have lots of “ah-hah” moments and retain the words longer.

Since each Chinese character has a separate meaning and most words consist of different Chinese characters, by learning the characters, you’ll begin to associate a deeper meaning with each word you learn. That’s why I suggest you delay learning Chinese characters and only start once you get the basics down.

9. What are simplified characters and traditional characters and should I learn simplified characters or traditional characters?

Traditional characters are the original set of Chinese characters that have been used since long long time ago. They are usually made up of many complicated strokes. Around 1950, the People's Republic of China, or the mainland China began standardizing a simplified version of many of the more complex characters. This simplification began as the PRC's attempt at decreasing nation-wide illiteracy, but has unfortunately become a geographical divider, since different countries use different character systems. All you need to know right now is one major difference: simplified characters have fewer strokes. For example, the common character 邊 (biān, meaning "side") has 18 strokes in traditional form, while its simplified form 边 has only 5.

The good news is, twenty percent of the characters overlap between Traditional and Simplified characters, so you’ll automatically be able to read a little of both! If you are mostly traveling in Mainland China or Singapore, where simplified characters are standard, you’re perfectly fine to learn simplified. However, if you’re planning on living in Hong Kong or Taiwan, you’ll definitely see mainly traditional characters and maybe that's what you want to leran.

10. What’s the best way to learn characters?

I recommend the same building block method for learning vocabulary for learning to write characters.

Start with strokes, then learn radicals, then learn how to position them in relation to each other in order to form increasingly complex characters! Repetition and flashcards may help you, but my advice is to see the process as fun and as a brain enhancing activity, and you will learn much quicker and more thoroughly.

11. Do tones matter?

This is a very common question! The answer is both yes and no. If you utter just one word, you may encounter some problems if you use the wrong tone. For example, “swimming - yóu yǒng” (游泳) and “useful - yǒu yòng” ( 有用) may be completely misunderstood if you use the wrong tones and speak the word independently of any other.

However, if you assign the wrong tones to the word in the context of a complete and grammatically-correct sentence, you will still be understood. For example, no one would misunderstand you even if you accidentally pronounced “tomorrow I want to go useful” - "míngtiān wǒ yào qù yǒu yòng" - (明天我要去有用). That’s why it’s important to learn the basic Chinese grammar, so even when your tones are not perfect, you can still be understood by the Chinese.

On a side note, Chinese songs, do not use tones since the music melody overrides the word tones. However, everyone still understands what the lyrics are expressing because of the established context and correct use of grammar. You can practice listening to songs to hear what Chinese sounds like without the designated tones; how much can you recognize and how much slips by you?

12. What’s the best way to learn tones?

First, you need to know that you can ABSOLUTELY learn tones and learn them well, because they’re not completely foreign to you. If you can memorize four easy metaphors, you can apply them to all the Chinese words and use tones like a pro.

In my video lessons I teach tones by comparing the first tone to the sound a microwave makes when it’s finished cooking- ding…. high and flat. The second tone is already used by English speakers when they ask a question- it’s the rising tone like in the word “What?”. The same goes with the third tone and fourth tone.

There are only four tones, so learning them is not the complicated part- it’s memorizing which tones are in the words you use that can be a bit tricky.

I know different students have developed their own unique ways of memorizing tones. For example, some “musically inclined” students treat tones as melody, so instead of “speaking tones”, they “sing tones” or hum the melody of the sentence. Other students memorize “tone pairs”, which is a memory device described in depth on our blog, that takes Chinese two-part words and turns them into easy-to-memorize tone combinations. This way you learn the words themselves and then the tones as a simple pattern that accompanies them. Everyone learns differently, and finding what works best for YOU is definitely key.

Regardless if you care about speaking perfect tones or not, you should make it your priority to memorize the proper tones for important words such as “I - wǒ” (我)“, “you - nǐ” (你) “ ”good - hǎo (好)“, “to be – shì (是)” etc, basically the ones you need to know to make up a basic sentence. They form the backbone of the more complex sentences. Of course, the more words you can get right with the right tones, the better.

More information on Tones is in these videos:

Beginner Conversational Chinese > Lesson 2 Mandarin Chinese Tones (1st Tone & 2nd Tone)

Beginner Conversational Chinese> Lesson 2 Mandarin Chinese Tones (3rd & 4th & Neutral Tone)

13. How long does it take to become conversational in Chinese?

It really depends on your commitment level!

If you follow our daily study program to the letter, spending 30-45 minutes each day, in 12 months you will achieve conversational fluency in Chinese.

However, if life gets in the way and you have to put your learning on pause, that’s no problem. We have designed our schedule to be very flexible, so you can simply mark where you’ve stopped and resume where you left off.

Download our highly structured, printable 6 month Daily Study Schedule! It will help you begin each day with "what's next?" instead of "where do I begin?" You can also download our 6 month schedule of Intermediate Homework Assignments to get some extra practice in.