{"id":4506,"date":"2015-03-03T16:03:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-03T16:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digmandarin.com\/?p=4506"},"modified":"2017-08-13T14:38:50","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T14:38:50","slug":"peeling-the-chinese-onion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digmandarin.com\/peeling-the-chinese-onion.html","title":{"rendered":"Peeling the Chinese Onion – Practical advice on how to approach the study of\u00a0Mandarin"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a student of the Chinese language, I constantly find myself searching for metaphors to describe the learning process. Metaphors\u200a\u2014\u200aok, similes in this case, technically speaking<\/em>\u200a<\/em>\u2014\u200anot only serve as a study aid, but also as a way to describe my experience to others. One of the best explanations that I\u2019ve come up with is that Chinese is a many-layered language. Studying it is like peeling a large onion.<\/p>\n

And no, not because the endeavor will make you cry.<\/p>\n

1. Exotic Phonetics\u200a\u2014\u200aForget what you\u00a0knew<\/h2>\n

The outer layer is where you learn to speak all over again. For those of us whose mother tongue is non-tonal, this means having to de-learn most of what we learned as babies. We have to get our minds around the idea of the four tones. Also, we must teach our tongues the subtle differences between the \u2018j\u2019 and \u2018zh\u2019, \u2018q\u2019 and \u2018ch\u2019, \u2018x\u2019 and \u2018sh\u2019 consonant sounds, and so on. Listening to native speakers proves difficult at this early stage, because their speech glides along with such speed that we cannot make out the individual sounds and tones. Trying to learn phonetics from a native speaker is like trying to steal steps from a professional ballroom dancer. But that\u2019s another simile\u2026<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s important to point out that tones are not the insurmountable barrier that they are sometimes made out to be.<\/p>\n

Every language uses tones<\/em>\u200a<\/em>\u2014<\/em>\u200a<\/em>to differentiate statements from questions, for example, or to infuse speech with emotional qualities like excitement or surprise. Chinese just happens to use them in shorter bursts, in a way that determines the role of each syllable in the sentence.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is no substitute for complete immersion, but regardless of where you are, find yourself a trusted instructor or native speaker friend, to guide you through this initial stage. The best teachers will slow things down, exaggerate, over-pronounce\u200a\u2014\u200ato help you absorb and assimilate these exotic phonetic.<\/p>\n

Early on you will have to master a Romanization system, one that matches Chinese sounds to familiar written symbols. The choice depends on several factors, like which text book you are using, and also your native tongue. Fortunately,\u00a0Hanyu Pinyin<\/a>, developed in Mainland China in the 1950s, has been widely adopted around the world. If you are studying in Taiwan, learning\u00a0Bopomofo\u00a0<\/a>(\u3105\u3106\u3107\u3108) in addition will prove invaluable.<\/p>\n

2. A Lineup of Strange Characters<\/h2>\n

The next layer is to string together the sounds and tones to make word-fragments, or syllables. Chinese calls these \u5b57 (z\u00ec), and each one corresponds to a Chinese character<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The following step, surprisingly, is not the forming of words. Words are a somewhat vague concept in Chinese. A word, called \u8bcd (c\u00ed), is a string of two or more \u5b57, however, meaning often becomes clarified in the context of a larger phrase or sentence. Therefore, it is more useful to learn common phrases and expressions.<\/p>\n

To illustrate this point, it is not enough to simply learn the character for \u201ccar\u201d, \u8f66 (\u00a0ch\u0113)<\/a>, or even the more specific term \u201cautomobile\u201d \u6c7d\u8f66 (q\u00ecch\u0113). You must add to your vocabulary expressions like<\/p>\n