Mandarin Chinese For Beginners: A Fast and Easy Start to Speaking Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin – the most common dialect of Chinese and the official language of China, Taiwan, and Singapore – is spoken by over a sixth of the world's population. Since that is more than 1.3 billion, it would seem to be a great language to learn, but many are deterred by its difficulty. The written form is extremely difficult to begin learning because, besides various root strokes, there is no alphabet to speak of. Most of the language will seem more like chicken scratch than recognizable words. Modern Mandarin Chinese characters have evolved over thousands of years from symbols that represented its meaning into largely unrecognizable forms. Although it also contains rote memorization of meanings, the verbal Chinese is simpler to understand and learn. As such, I am going to teach only the verbal aspect of the language. I am going to simplify it as best as I can to make it easier to understand and get you started on learning to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Because of its difficulty, Mandarin is nearly impossible to read without prior memorization. However, in the 1950's, the People's Republic of China was growing more international and developed Pinyin to simplify their language. They translated the language from their almost unrecognizable characters, to words with English letters and their tones (which I will explain later). For example, the word “马” got translated into “mă”. Pinyin has become extremely widespread and most major cities have started to include it along with the traditional writing, like street signs would show both.

The pronunciation is mostly similar to the English pronunciation except for some exceptions and unique vowel sounds. “Zh” sounds like a 'j', “x” sounds like an 'sh', “c” sounds like 'ts', “z” sounds like a 'ds', and “q” sounds like a 'ch'. Vowels are pronounced largely similar to their English counterparts. They are all pronounced with their soft sounds, such as “a” is in apple. The common exception is “i” which is pronounced like a long “e” sound in he. The vowels are often used in combination, like “-tion” in English is pronounced “shun”. For example, the way to say thank you is “xie xie”, pronounced as if the two vowels were separate, but jumbled together quickly. It would be said “she-eh she-eh” as two, one-syllable words. Common combos are as follows, first Pinyin and then its pronunciation. The vowels “ao” sounds like “ow”, “ua” sounds like “whah”, “uo” sounds like “woah”, “ai” sounds like a long “i”, and “ui” sounds like “way”. There are others, just like English has many obscure exceptions, but it is rather easy to adjust as you learn.

As an American who grew up in China, the most difficult part of Mandarin for me was understanding and mastering the concept of the pronunciation tones. The way that a particular word is pronounced drastically affects the meaning, making the tone extremely important. For example, a common sentence often employed to exemplify this is: “mā mà mă ma?”, or in English,“Did mom scold the horse?”. This may seem harmless, but mispronunciation may lead to a serious insult. Saying xiao jie with wrong pronunciation changes the word for “miss/Ms.” into “prostitute”. I learned that the hard (and painful to my face) way.

Now that you know the importance of the tones, it seems right for you to learn them. There are four tones with vocal pitch pronunciation changes and one neutral tone that garners no change to the word. With the first tone, your voice starts off high and stays flat, designated by the symbol – over the main vowel. An example would be the word “mā” meaning mother. The second tone starts off in the middle and raises to the top and is designated by the symbol / over the main vowel. An example would be “hái [zi]” meaning child.The third tone starts off in the middle and then drops down low before returning back up higher and is designated by the symbol v. The word “wŏ” (meaning me) is a common use of the third tone. The final fourth tone starts off high and drops shaprly, desginated by the symbol \ . A common word used with this tone is “yào” meaning to want.

Mandarin Grammar is rather different from English grammar, but not so much so that it is difficult to understand. The good news for anybody who has tried to learn a foreign language is that Mandarin has virtually no conjugations. That's right! No conjugations! May the heavens rejoice! But I digest... On a serious note this truly makes speaking the language at the basic level much easier. Most often phrases just have words added afterwards to indicate the more precise meaning, such as the word 了(lè) designating the past tense through completion. The opposite of this is the combination word 正 在 (zhèng zai) to mean that the action is in the process of being done.

It should also be pointed out that the sentence structure of Mandarin differs from English in that it is a topical language. This means that the topic, or the information known before the sentence is said, is spoken first rather than the subject. This may seem confusing, but don't worry, the subject is quite often also the topic, so it isn't often that the sentence structure will vary. Mandarin also uses classifiers in front things they are counting, such as 个(gè) in yī gè bĭ, meaning one pen. This may seem odd, but English does this as well for some things, like when someone says “two bottles of wine” instead of just “two wines”. Mandarin also has specific classifiers like “bottles”, but gè is the most common and generic as it only represents the fact that the object was counted.

After this basic introduction to the Mandarin Language, you are just about ready to start speaking the language. Check out my next article on common Chinese words and phrases to learn more and develop your knowledge of the Chinese language. If you have any questions don't be afraid to ask and I will answer them to the best of my knowledge.