Learning a few words of Mandarin .......

The Chinese Language

About 1.3 billion people (one-fifth of the world) speak some form of Chinese, making it the language with the most native speakers. Mandarin, is the official language in the largest part of mainland China and Taiwan and some parts of Singapore. Cantonese is spoken in GuangDong province and is one of the two official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and Macau (together with Portuguese).

The Chinese make a sharp distinction between written language ("wen") and spoken language ("yu"). The written Chinese language consists of about 40,000 characters, which can have as many as 30 strokes, while all varieties of spoken Chinese are tonal. This means that each syllable can have a number of different meanings depending on the intonation with which it is pronounced. For example Mandarin has 4 tones and Cantonese has between 6 and 9.

Chinese characters are quite complex. It is useful, therefore, to use Pinyin when you start to learn Mandarin. This is a way of writing Chinese words using Roman letters and tone marks that helps you to pronounce words properly.

Mandarin uses four tones to clarify the meanings of words. Since many characters have the same sound, tones are used to differentiate words from each other.
Here is the word ‘ma’ with tone marks:
· First tone: mā high level
· Second tone: má rising
· Third tone: mǎ falling rising
· Fourth tone: mà falling

The tones are used to determine the meaning of a Mandarin word. So mǎ (horse) is very different from mā (mother).

The Four Tones of Mandarin -
Pinyin Chinese Character Meaning
mā 媽 mother
má 麻 hemp
mǎ 馬 horse
mà 罵 scold

There are some very good websites that will help you learn a few phrases. Try -

www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/

http://mandarin.about.com/

http://learnchinese.elanguageschool.net/

Some useful phrases -

Nǐ hǎo! - hello!
Zàijiàn! - goodbye!
Wǒ jiào Fiona - my name's Fiona
Wǒ shì Sheffield - I'm from Sheffield
Wǒ shì Yīngguórén - I'm British.
Wǒ xué ……… - I study …….
Nǐmen hǎo! Nǐmen hē diǎnr shénme? - Hello! What would you like to drink?
Wǒ yào huā chá - I'd like jasmine tea.
Hǎo de. Xièxie - Fine. Thank you.
Bù kèqi - you're welcome.
Wǒ yào yī gè bīng qí lín - I'd like an ice-cream.
Xièxie - thank you.

Some useful words
bù kèqì - kèqì means 'polite'. Bù kèqì literally 'do not be polite', (you’re welcome) is the response to xièxie - thank you.
Duō shǎo qián? - Literally means 'how much money?'

nǐ/wǒ
- nǐ means 'you' in its singular form and wǒ can mean 'I' or 'me'.

shénme
- Question words such as 'what' and 'where' don't have to begin the sentence. E.g. Nǐjiào shénme? What is your name? (lit. you are called what?)

ma
- This word indicates a question. By adding ma to the end of a sentence, you turn it into a question, e.g. Nǐ jiéhūn le ma? are you married? Ma is a neutral tone. It means that it does not carry a tone.

bù
- This is a very important negative word which you can place in front of the word (usually a verb). For example, wǒ bù chī yú means 'I don't eat fish'. Wǒ bù shuō Zhōngwén means 'I don't speak Chinese'.

huì
- Huì means 'can' and goes in front of a verb. If you want to ask 'Can you speak English?', say Nǐ huì shuō Yīngwén ma? If someone asks you Nǐ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma?, Do you speak Chinese?, and you want to say 'Yes', simply say huì, 'can'. Please note that the Chinese phrases for 'yes', shì de, and 'no', bù shì, are not frequently used when answering questions.

rén
-rén means 'person' or 'people'. If you add rén to the name of a country or city, you form the word for the citizen of that country or the resident of that city. For example, add rén to Yīngguó, Britain, Zhōngguó, China and Běijīng, Beijing, and you get Yīngguórén, British, and Zhōngguórén, Chinese and Běijīngrén, Beijinger

zhè/zhèi, nà/nèi
- When you're shopping in China and you're a little unsure of the language you can always use the common trick of pointing and saying 'this' or 'that'. The word for 'this' can be pronounced zhè or zhèi. The word for 'that' can be pronounced nà or nèi. Both are commonly used.