Chinese: Lesson 1 - Learning New Languages

Learning languages is something that a lot of people consider to be a difficult task. Yet, nearly everyone at one point in their life takes classes and attempts to learn a second language. The success rate of these people depends not only on their dedication, but also their personal motivation and accessibility to others who they can use the language with.

If, for example, you learn a language but never use it to communicate with others, the way you speak may end up sounding a bit odd, not to mention the fact that your progress will be a lot slower than if you spend time learning the language with other people. That is part of why immersion works so well, and the reason why I can understand more Chinese than people might expect. In fact, even in China, people occasionally seemed surprised when I could understand what they were saying, though that was typically because people would say something in Chinese, hoping that I wouldn't be able to understand it. Reasons aside, it was fun.

My goal in this blog is to go over a handful of things to help you understand at least a little bit about the Chinese language. Feel free to give me feedback in the comments if you have anything to say. I'll try to keep everything fairly basic. The main reason for doing this is so that I can try to keep up on my Chinese, and explaining it also helps me work through the process of learning it.

So, first of all, I want to mention something: I learned Chinese in a much more natural way than most people did. I did take a Chinese language class, but that was mostly an attempt to help me with my Kanji while I was taking Japanese. The end result was not what I had hoped for, but I did manage to pick up a handful of words, though none that are ever really used on tests. That being said, the only thing I remember from that class related to the Chinese language is that there are 4 major tones in Chinese, and 1 somewhat overlooked tone (the neutral tone) - though that wasn't exactly how the teacher put it.

The five tones are typically explained using words that are phonetically the same, but the tones are different. I'll show you some examples of what I mean.

• Mā - Mother (a flat, monotone-sounding tone)

• Má - Hemp (A rising tone, similar to a singe-word question, like "Yes?")

• Mǎ - Horse (a falling and rising tone. It's similar to when we're in disbelief and say "Really?" It's better to over-emphasize than under-emphasize this tone.)

• Mà - Curse / Condemn (A falling tone, similar to when you're frustrated or upset.)

• Ma - Interrogative Particle (a spoken question-mark [?]. This has a very short tone. Some Chinese don't even acknowledge that this tone exists.) 

This video will help you hear the differences in the tones. I have color-coded them in a fashion similar to how most people seem to. I used 2 different voice samples, since people will speak slightly differently depending on where they're from, much like how people in New York and Texas speak with different dialects.

 
The last one, Ma (sometime written Ma5), is used at the end of sentences as a question mark. This is because tones are used to differentiate words rather than to infer meanings. For example, the sentences 'I like blue.' and 'I like blue?' have two very different meanings, one being a statement and the other being a question.

One thing that I do want to mention at this point is, in my personal opinion, when you're learning a language, you should focus on speaking first, and then learn to read and write it. It is a much more natural way to learn a language, and far less stressful. That isn't to say that reading and writing in other languages isn't important, but we learn to speak our native language before we learn to read it or write it, right? Doing the same with a foreign language, from my experience, makes it dramatically easier to learn the language. I believe this is called the Pimsleur approach to learning a language.

Understanding the way that tones are used in Chinese is very important. It is the very first thing you need to understand about the language. That being said, it is something you tend to pick up over time; the more you use the language, the easier it becomes. And using the language to communicate with native speakers is very important, as people will usually attempt to mimic their pronunciation.

Next, think about the first few words you learn as a child. Family members and very simple sentences, right? These tend to be the most commonly used words among children, and as such, tend to be the easiest words to learn in a language. So we should learn these first. Be aware that there are different ways to say each of these words, much like mother, mom, and ma are different ways to say the same word in English. The words that I choose to start with tend to be the ones that are most commonly used.

• Mom - Māmā
• Dad - Bà
• Older brother - Gēgē
• Older sister - Jiejie
• Aunt - Āyí
• Uncle - Shūshu

There are a handful of other words that people might use to refer to you, and those are important to learn as well.

• Younger brother - Dìdì
• Younger sister - Mèimei
• Son - Érzi
• Daughter -  Nǚ'ér

A few things to be aware of if you do continue moving forward with Chinese:

1. While it has a steep learning curve, once you master the basics, it is possibly the easiest language to learn.

2. Grammatically, it is very similar to English.

3. People who know both Chinese and English are typically able to speak to around 98% of the worlds population, making the combination invaluable for people in the business world.

Lastly, I'll go over a handful of words and phrases, as well as numbers, and teach you to make some very basic sentences.

• I - Wǒ
• You - Nǐ
• He/She/It - Tā (the tone/pronunciation is the same, but the Chinese character used when reading/writing is different)

• Is/Are - Shì
• Good / Well - Hǎo
• Not - Bù
• No - Méiyǒu

• Ni hao - Hello
• Ni hao ma - How are you?

Now, numbers are very important in Chinese - possibly more important than any other word in the entire Chinese language. With numbers, not only can you learn to count, but they are used in conjunction with other characters to say the days of the week, months, years, time, etc, as well as having a meaning all on their own.

• 1- Yī （Almost exactly like the letter E)
• 2 - Èr (Similar to are, or the beginning of the name Earl)
• 3 - Sān (Sand without the D, or the San from Santa)
• 4 - Sì (Sit without the t)
• 5 - Wǔ (Like the Wu Tang Clan)
• 6- Liù (Sounds like the name Leo)
• 7- Qī (Chi, as in the energy associated with martial arts)
• 8- Bā (Ba ba black sheep, have you any wool...)
• 9- Jiǔ (Geo)
• 10- Shí (Sounds similar to the word Sure)

There are also hand signs associated with each number, which are featured in the video blow. From my experience, many Chinese use this on a daily basis, especially with foreigners. I experienced this a lot when I took a taxi or ate street food, and the driver/vender wasn't familiar with me or aware that I could speak Chinese.

We'll stop here, and start making sentences next time. Again, if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please leave a comment below. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.