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Choosing Mandarin for Chinese Learning

Mandarin Chinese is the national language of China and Taiwan, while Cantonese is mainly spoken in South China. Other regional dialects exist but are mutually unintelligible when spoken. Chinese has four tones that are represented in pinyin with diacritics. While Chinese grammar is simple, it takes time for English speakers to master due to its tonal pronunciation and thousands of characters. Chinese can be written in simplified or traditional characters, and sounds are usually represented with pinyin. Standardized tests of Chinese proficiency include the Chinese SAT, AP Exam, STAMP, and NOELLA tests.

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195 views10 pages

Choosing Mandarin for Chinese Learning

Mandarin Chinese is the national language of China and Taiwan, while Cantonese is mainly spoken in South China. Other regional dialects exist but are mutually unintelligible when spoken. Chinese has four tones that are represented in pinyin with diacritics. While Chinese grammar is simple, it takes time for English speakers to master due to its tonal pronunciation and thousands of characters. Chinese can be written in simplified or traditional characters, and sounds are usually represented with pinyin. Standardized tests of Chinese proficiency include the Chinese SAT, AP Exam, STAMP, and NOELLA tests.

Uploaded by

StenlyIvanMamanua
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

学习中文基本咨询

Adam Ross
Which Chinese to Learn?
Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua 普通话 or Guoyu 国
语 ) is the national language of both the People’s
Republic of China and Taiwan.
Cantonese, though widely spoken in North America, is
rarely taught outside of South China
There are other regional dialects of Chinese, such as
Taiwanese and Shanghainese, which are often spoken
in local regional communities.
All of these dialects are mutually unintelligible when
spoken, but their written forms are generally the same.
The Bad News about Learning
Chinese
Chinese is a TFL (“Truly Foreign Language”) and
takes up to four times as long for English speakers
to master than other European languages like
French or Spanish.
Chinese is a tonal language, and students need to
have much drill and practice to master this aspect
of Chinese pronunciation.
Chinese is a character-based language, and
students must eventually master 1000s of
characters
The four tones of Standard Chinese
Image from Chinesepod: [Link]
In written “pinyin,” these tones are
represented with these diacritics:

mā (1st tone) má (2nd tone)


妈 “ mother” 麻 “ numb”

mă (3 tone)
rd
mà (4 tone)
th

马 “ horse” 骂 “ to scold”
Now, the Good News!
Chinese grammar is almost ridiculously easy – there
are no tenses, irregular verbs, conjugations,
declensions or other tricky parts of speech that
plague students in Western languages.
Students can put together very comprehensible
speech pretty easily once they’ve mastered basic
pronunciation issues.
Learning characters has a certain “cachet,” and
students are often drawn by the artistic element of
writing in characters.
Chinese Writing
Chinese can be written in simplified characters (used in
mainland China) or traditional characters (used in
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and in overseas Chinese
communities)
Most Chinese programs choose to teach one form or
another, but some opt to teach both
Various forms of Chinese characters
Image from [Link]
Learning Chinese Sounds
Chinese sounds can be represented by a variety of
systems. Most programs teach Hanyu Pinyin (or simply
Pinyin for short), which was developed in the PRC in the
1950s.
Pinyin is the Romanization system used in virtually all
Western media to represent Chinese names and sounds.
Other common system (often used by teachers from
Taiwan) include Tongyong Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao (Bo-
Po-Mo-Fo)
Standards for Chinese Testing
The Chinese SAT II as well as the AP Chinese Exam are
available in both simplified and traditional characters.
The Chinese AP is administered on computers, and testees
input characters on their keyboard, selecting characters they
input via Hanyu Pinyin.
STAMP and NOELLA are new proficiency tests administered
online. These tests were developed in a partnership between
Avant Assessment and the University of Oregon.
For more advanced students, the HSK ( 汉语水平考
试“ Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi” or “Test of Chinese Language
Proficiency”) is offered annually at Seattle University.

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