The following articles or tables have been prepared by me. My goal is to address some of the most frequently asked questions regarding Chinese grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Please feel free to email me with your questions and I will try my best to answer them in this section.
Common Chinese Mistakes Made by English Speakers
Mistake #1 Assuming “to be”= “是 (shì)”
Mistake #2 Mistake #2 Assuming “and” =“和(hé)”
Mistake #3 Ignoring Chinese measure words
Mistake #4 Using “ma” for “non-yes-or-no” questions
Mistake #5 Using “不 (bù)”to negate the verb “有 (yǒu)-to have”
Mistake #6 Confusion about “verb + default object” verbs
Mistake #7 Forgetting to insert“的 (de)” in between adjectives and nouns
Mistake #8 Using “了(le)”to indicate past tense for all verbs
Mistake #9 Using “不 (bù)”to negate past action
Mistake #10 Putting time and location at the wrong place
Content Words Summary Table
This comprehensive summary table covers all the content question words (what, when, where, who, why, how, how much)
Chinese Pinyin Cheat Sheet
This summary table covers how each mandarin sound is written in pinyin, with its approximate English equivalent.
Country Names, Nationality and Language Summary Table
Find your own country, nationality and language here! If I miss your country, please let me know and sorry!
Chinese Time-Related Words Summary Table
This summary table covers the most common Chinese time-related words including year, month, week, day, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, breakfast, lunch and dinner. You will see the pattern of how these words are formed. A very useful table.
Chinese Measure Words (Classifiers) Summary Table
This summary table covers the most common Chinese measure words (classifiers).Enjoy!
How to use "Which"
1.What’s the difference between Chinese and Mandarin?
Chinese is the language Chinese people speak which includes Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. Mandarin is the language MOST Chinese people speak. People from mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore all speak Mandarin. People from Hong Kong speak Cantonese.
2. What’s the difference between simplified Chinese characters and traditional characters?
Simplified Chinese characters are used mainly by people from mainland China and Singapore. Traditional Characters are used by people from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The majority of the Chinese-speaking community use simplified characters.
3. What is pinyin?
Pinyin is the Chinese phonetic system. If I throw a Chinese character at you, do you know how to pronounce it? Probably not! But with pinyin, you can. It represents every single Chinese sound out there. So if you master pinyin, you will have no problem sounding immediately like a real Chinese person. However, you need to know that even though pinyin uses the roman letters, you cannot pronounce it as if it were English. You have to learn how to associate pinyin with the unique Chinese sounds.
How important is Pinyin? Extremely important. It is the very first thing Chinese kids learn in school, and it is the number one tool for foreigners to learn the correct way of pronouncing the Chinese words. I strongly suggest you putting in enough effort and time to learn it if you are serious about learning Chinese and want to be understood by Chinese people when you speak.
4. Do I have to learn Chinese characters to learn Chinese?
The answer is "no." You don’t have to learn Chinese characters to learn how to speak Chinese. In my opinion, trying to know all the characters, including reading and writing will seriously slow down your progress of speaking and listening. However, if you plan to eventually communicate in Chinese on an advanced level, learning Chinese characters will help.
My suggestion is that you should focus on speaking and listening with the help of pinyin first, and you can always go back to learn Chinese characters later on if you decide to do so. But at that time, you already have a foundation to build on. The worst thing that can happen is that you get so drained at the beginning by spending hours and hours on practicing Chinese characters and you become discouraged and lose interest in this language at an early stage.
I have quite a few non-Chinese students who don’t know any characters but can speak Chinese quite fluently. You can be one of them.
5. Why is Chinese hard to learn?
Chinese is difficult to learn for several reasons:
First, Chinese characters are hard to learn. If I throw an English word at you, you may not know what it means, but you know how it’s pronounced. However, If I give you a Chinese character, you know what it looks like, but you don’t know what it means and how it’s pronounced. Two out of three elements are missing. How it’s written and how it’s pronounced are not necessarily related, which is quite different from English. Associate all three elements is not an easy task. So in my opinion, it’s the reading and writing of the Chinese characters that make the language difficult. However, as I said before, you don’t have to learn Chinese characters to learn this language.
The second reason why Chinese is hard is also because there are four tones. That’s something you do not find in English. So you’ll have to get used to that.
6. Why is Chinese easy to learn?
I don't think this question has been asked a lot because to most English speakers, learning Chinese seems like a daunting task. This is what I think, though: From my past experiences with my students, I believe It’s really the reading and writing that makes Chinese hard to learn. When it comes to spoken Chinese, contrary to common belief, it ‘s actually not that difficult to learn.
Here’s why:
(1) Chinese grammar is relatively easy and straightforward. The word order of a simple Chinese sentence is exactly the same as it is in English.
For example, "I or me" in Chinese is wo3(我), "you" in Chinese is ni3(你). "To love" in Chinese is ai4(爱). To say "I love you", you say wo3(我) ai4(爱) ni3(你). To say “You love me”, you say ni3(你) ai4(爱) wo3(我). You can simply translate all the simple English sentences word by word to Chinese and you’ll get the right Chinese sentences. When it comes to long sentences, you just need to remember a few rules as to where to put time and location, and then you are set. I will tell you those rules in my future lessons.
(2) Unlike many other European languages, Chinese people don’t conjugate verbs, which means that Chinese verbs don't change form based on subject or when the action is taking place. For example, when you say “she likes, he likes, you like, I like or we like”. The Chinese word for “Like” doesn’t change and stays the same for all of them. Also, ONE Chinese verb can mean “is, am, are, was, were” and so on. In addition, unlike many other languages, such as French and German, there is no gender in Chinese. Isn’t that great?!
(3) The more you learn, the easier it gets. What do I mean by that?
Well, Chinese words are very transparent and logical. The way a Chinese word is formed tells you a lot about its meanings. For example, in Chinese, movie is dian4(电) ying3(影), which literally means “electronic shadow”. The old black and white silent films appeared like cast shadows on a screen and that’s where the word is from. Telephone in Chinese is 电(dian4) 话(hua4), which literally means electronic speech, computer is 电(dian4) 脑(nao3) 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.
One more example here, a cell phone is shou3(手) ji1(机), which means hand machine. An airplane is fei1(飞) ji1(机), which means flying machine. And a helicopter is zhi2(直) sheng1(升) ji1(机), which literally means straight ascending machine.
So that’s what I mean by “the more Chinese you learn, the easier it gets,” because the more Chinese you learn, the more building blocks or language components in a word you will acquire, and then you can just put together the old pieces and make up new ones.
(4) Just to further convince you that Chinese is NOT that difficult to learn, let me give you one more reason. Now, say refrigerator… re-fri-ge-ra-tor…wow, five syllables. To memorize this word, I need to memorize five sounds, but In Chinese, refrigerator is bing1(冰) xiang1(箱), two syllables, which literally mean ice box… if you know how to say ice and how to say box, you know how to say refrigerator.
Well, you are probably thinking “Com’on, refrigerator is just an exception. There are many English words that have one or two syllables.” Well, that’s true, but the thing is that the MAJORITY of Chinese words only have one or two syllables, so it really makes your memorization a lot easier. And let’s not forget that your memorization can well be based on the things you’ve already learned, the building blocks you have already acquired. However, like learning any other languages, you need to put in at least some effort, some time and some dedication, but I am going to try my best to make your learning process as easy and fun for you as possible.
Hi,
ResponderEliminarLearning any language is difficult. Learning Chinese is especially so, because the four tones for pronouncing words and the different characters for each word make it quite complex. Thanks a lot...
Learning Chinese Mandarin