Why is it important to learn Chinese? ?
1. There are more native speakers of Mandarin than any other language in the world. About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. 2. China is the fastest growing economy in the world. The Financial Times noted that "China has been the world’s largest economy for 18 of the past 20 centuries" 3. It is a "gateway" to learning other Asian languages, as there are many Mandarin "borrow words" in other Asian languages. 4. Knowing a language gives one an greater understanding of that culture and gives a different perspective on one's own culture and language.
Do you know the reason why Pinyin is so important for learning Chinese?
As we all know, Chinese is not a phonetic language and the pronunciation is not related to the writing of Chinese words (characters). A special tool called Pinyin (pronouncing the sound) is created to help people learn Mandarin pronunciation. Pinyin is a way to represent Chinese characters and express the sounds in the Chinese language using the alphabet. There are other systems to express Mandarin, but Pinyin is the most accepted and widely used. Once you learn Pinyin you will know how to pronounce any word in Mandarin using a Chinese dictionary. Pinyin is also the most common way to input Chinese characters into a computer. If you want to master the Chinese language, you have to learn Pinyin well. Pinyin is the most important and basic part of Chinese learning. It allows students of Mandarin to focus on their pronunciation, while also enabling them to read and write. You can lay a solid foundation on Mandarin pronunciation once you learn Pinyin well. So it is very important for you to learn Pinyin well if you want to master Chinese language.
Is it important for us to learn Chinese characters when we learn Chinese?
Many people were overwhelmed by the Chinese characters at the beginning. So they decided just to learn Pinyin instead. Pinyin is easier, and you’ll free up time to practice conversation. However, the more they learn, the harder they find to differentiate words of the similar pronunciation. There are only about 1,700 syllables in Chinese and every character is single-syllable. But there are more than 80,000 Chinese characters. Which means the same pinyin leads to many different characters. Actually, Chinese characters are not that hard as you thought. Like what we have said in previous posts, we can use interesting stories and associations to learn Chinese characters. I strongly recommend that as a serious Chinese learner, you’d better spend some time learning Chinese characters, at least some common and frequently used ones in your Chinese study program.
Is learning Chinese (Mandarin) really worthwhile for business?
Unfortunately and rather unhelpfully, the only truthful answer is "it depends." Make no mistake: It's a huge investment of time. One never truly masters it as a second language, as even the most famous of non-native but highly fluent Mandarin speakers like Mark Rowswell have attested. Anyone setting out to learn it really ought to read this wonderful essay by David Moser, with the no-minced-words title, "Why is Chinese So Damn Hard."http://www.pinyin.info/readings/...For an adult non-native learner, investing enough time to learn to speak enough of the language to demonstrate respect and interest is one thing. Learning to speak well enough to actually conduct business in China is quite another.* Unless you're reasonably sure that China-related business is something you'll be pursuing for the balance of your working life, you're probably better off sinking that time into burnishing other facets of your skill-set and leaving the language work to the already-bilingual. Just memorize some everyday niceties out of the ol' phrasebook.But for those who are either still young enough to have plastic brains capable of learning new languages quickly, or who have that rare gift for languages that allows them to pick them up with (what to me is simply maddening) facility, there's no question that it's worthwhile. It's all a matter of opportunity costs. If they're low enough, as they are for children and language geniuses, then hells yes, you'll be opening up a world of business possibilities.* To be clear, I don't flatter myself to think that mine, even after all this time of (admittedly mostly osmotic) learning, is at a level where I could really do business primarily in Chinese, certainly not without feeling at a distinct disadvantage.
Mandarin or Cantonese: which chinese dialect is more important for businessmen to learn?
For businessmen is Mandarin, for street vendors in Hongkong, Guangzhou and Shanghai is Cantonese. Cantonese is hust a dialect spoken in Hongkong, Shanghai, and that area, it's not taught in schools. Mandarin is taught in Chinese schools all over China, Taiwan, Hongkong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia... And Madarin is official while Cantonese isn't.
Learning Chinese radicals?
Hi, I am Helen Zhang, a professional Chinese teacher from China. If you want to learn Chinese radicals, you need to know the rules of the strokes and the construction of the characters. Chinese characters are divided into two categories: the independent characters and the compound characters. There many stokes in Chinese characters, such as horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling, and so on. It should follow some order rules when writing Chinese characters. Such as the word “你” in the image you gave, it should be written from left to the right; “学” from up to bottom; “水” from middle to side. If you are interested in learn the Chinese character strokes systematically, I recommend you to join the beginner courses at www.echineseonline.com. It displays the rules of writing Chinese characters with pictures and English explanation clearly. Besides, you can also learn some useful expressions in daily life in Chinese. Please have a free-trial lesson first at http://www.echineseonline.com/chinese-video-courses/beginner-chinese-series1/lesson-1?eco=ptEEyh031002 Any more questions about Chinese, just feel free to contact me at helen.zhang@echineseonline.com, I am very happy to hear from you.