欢迎光影！Welcome to Chinese 101.
Traditional vs. Simplified
In trying to unite China and encourage literacy, Mao Zedong made Mandarin the national language and introduced simplified characters. Traditional characters, which existed for thousands of years and are still in use in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, contain many strokes per character. Mao created a set of simplified characters, which comprise the dominant writing system on the Mainland today.
Idiomatic expressions
China is a tough world to break into. On more than one occasion I have complained about how dirty, hectic, sexist, and inhospitable China is. And on several other occasions you may have heard me droning on about how lively, colorful, geographically diverse, and fascinating China is. Linking the joys and the frustrations is my bipolar relationship with the language--Mandarin.
For a comprehensive (and funny) discussion on Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, visit David Moser's oft-read article here. But to introduce some of the basic issues with this ridiculously difficult and ridiculously rewarding language you have to know that Mandarin:
Sure, there are different language learning techniques (including the transliteration Pinyin system I used to study or the bo-po-mo-fo learning system often adopted in Taiwanese teaching methods) that involve letters, but Chinese itself is made of of characters (字). Characters consist of radicals, each of which have a basic meaning. A proficient Mandarin speaker will be able to recognize certain radicals to guess meaning and sound, but, again, with no alphabet, there is no sounding out a word like there is in English.
- has no alphabet and is instead comprised of characters
- has a traditional as well as simplified set of characters
- contains many idiomatic expressions
- derives meaning from five tones
Sure, there are different language learning techniques (including the transliteration Pinyin system I used to study or the bo-po-mo-fo learning system often adopted in Taiwanese teaching methods) that involve letters, but Chinese itself is made of of characters (字). Characters consist of radicals, each of which have a basic meaning. A proficient Mandarin speaker will be able to recognize certain radicals to guess meaning and sound, but, again, with no alphabet, there is no sounding out a word like there is in English.
A character's Pinyin (transliteration) is usually three or four but no more than six letters long. Each character has a meaning, and words are often made up of one to two characters. For example:
电 electricity
脑 brain
电脑 electric brain = computer
Traditional vs. Simplified
In trying to unite China and encourage literacy, Mao Zedong made Mandarin the national language and introduced simplified characters. Traditional characters, which existed for thousands of years and are still in use in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, contain many strokes per character. Mao created a set of simplified characters, which comprise the dominant writing system on the Mainland today.
Idiomatic expressions
An idiomatic expression (成语) is likely to be made up of four characters. As literal translation is almost never the definition, these are an exciting yet tricky aspect to learning to read Chinese. To make things more interesting, almost all 成语 are derived from an ancient tale or fable. Some of my favorites are:
人山人海：rén
Literally: people mountain people sea
Meaning: very crowded
This is a fitting expression for China's population. If you want to see what 人山人海 looks like, take a peek at my National Day photo of the Hangzhou train station.
塞翁失马：sài
Literally: old man lost horse
Meaning: A blessing in disguise
Ever seen Charlie Wilson's War? Philip Seymour Hoffman uses this expression at the end of the movie, telling an extended Chinese tale of hardship turning into blessing which turns back into hardship and so on. The cycle continues, and this expression is a cross between a blessing in disguise and the notion that "it ain't over til the fat lady sings" because you never know what life will bring next.
世外桃源：shì
Literally: The Garden of the Peaches of Immortality
Meaning: Utopia. It can be used to describe a stunningly beautiful or happy place.
Chinese is tonal
There are four tones (plus one neutral) in Chinese. As noted above, characters are short sound bits, so there is a small pool of sounds from which to choose. Without seeing a character written, tone is extremely important because it is the only distinguishing factor between two otherwise identical sound bits. For example:
There are four tones (plus one neutral) in Chinese. As noted above, characters are short sound bits, so there is a small pool of sounds from which to choose. Without seeing a character written, tone is extremely important because it is the only distinguishing factor between two otherwise identical sound bits. For example:
妈 mā
麻 má
马 mǎ
骂 mà
吗 ma
If characters and tones weren't enough to deal with, a problem with applying Chinese in a real-life setting is the accent variation. With Standard Mandarin, derived from the north, there is a distinction between the "sh" sound and the "s" sound, which, in my opinion, is extremely important given that there are relatively few sounds in Chinese to begin with and even fewer ways to differentiate those sounds from individual meanings. Other geographic regions drop certain sounds or otherwise morph the language, which makes a complex language that much more difficult to follow. Nothing can prepare you for this but exposure and practice.
Don't let all this talk of characters and tones discourage you from learning Mandarin. It is a powerfully rewarding language that puts you in touch with amazing people and unreal experiences. None of my travels--within or even outside of Asia--would have been the same if it weren't for my background in Mandarin and experience in China. Just be prepared for the constant, pervasive feeling that you will never master such an impossible language no matter how hard you try. But other than that, seriously, it's great.