Is Mandarin one of the most difficult languages to learn? Characters and tones can be seem intimidating at first, but it is a much simpler language than it meets the eye.

1. Mandarin Chinese
An Intro to Mandarin Chinese, how to learn it and demystifying some concepts

2. What is Mandarin?
• Mandarin is the official standard language of China (based on
northern dialects)
• However, there are several Chinese dialects, mostly spoken in
the southern part of China:
– Cantonese (Hong Kong, Guangdong, Guangxi)
– Hakka, Minnanhua (Fujian), Xiang (Hunnan), Wu (Shanghai,
Zhejiang)
– In spoken form, they are often mutually unintelligible, but they use
the same form of writing
• Names for the Chinese language:
– 汉语 Hànyŭ 中文 Zhōngwén 普通话 Pŭtōnghuà

3. Why Learn Mandarin?
• Gain competitive advantage professionally
• Doing business in China could get easier
with some Mandarin
• You could be eligible to apply for some
scholarships in China
• You could take classes in universities in
China
• Your travels to China will be much easier
after mastering Mandarin

4. Is Mandarin one of the hardest
languages to learn?
• First, certainly, the Chinese are not smarter
than other people in the world, nor other
people in the world are less smart than the
Chinese, so Mandarin is neither harder nor
easier than other languages.
• Second, Mandarin is very different from the
English language, but not “harder” than the
English language. Choosing the right method
is the most important aspect to learn
Mandarin well and easily.

5. The easy part
• Mandarin has very little grammar to learn,
and has no verb conjugation
• You only need to know how to pronounce 400
syllables and 1200 and you can pronounce
every word in Mandarin
• You need to learn less vocabulary in the
language to read, than you would need in
English, for example. In English, you need to
know 4000 syllables to pronounce every word
in English.

6. A French verb versus a Chinese
verb
去
qù

7. What is different in Chinese?
• Particles or sentence patterns to express tenses
– 了 le  used after the verb to express completion or past
– 过 guo  used after the verb to express past experience
– 快要。。。了 kuài yào … le  construction to express something
which is going to happen in the near future
– There are many other fixed structures which never change, and
practicing these grammar drills with a teacher will do the trick!
• ‘Measure words’ (or ‘Classifiers’)
– In English, some measure words exists such as ‘a cup of tea’ , ‘a
pair of jeans’, ‘a pinch of salt’, ….
– In Chinese, every word has such measure word
• 个 gè: generic measure words, can be used whenever you don’t
know
• 张 zhāng: for flat objects (e.g. sheet of paper, a table, …)
• 座 zuò: for big heavy objects (e.g. a building, a mountain, …)

8. The hard part
• It’s different. Mandarin tones take time to master.
• Character recognition, if you have never studied a
language with characters, will take some time to
get used to it.
• Different from English where people can learn by
watching movies, it is hard to learn Mandarin
alone without a native speaker because of the
tones and subtlety of tone changes.
• Sometimes one can figure out the meaning of the
character, but not know the pronunciation.

9. The 4 tones of Mandarin
Mandarin actually has a 5th tone, the so-called neutral tone
e.g. Xièxie māma  second syllable is pronounced short and soft

10. Do tones matter?
YES & NO
• Yes!
– Because a different tone will imply a different meaning
• Mā 妈 = mother  Māma, usually bisyllabic
• Má 麻 = hemp  Dàmá : marijuana
• Mă 马 = horse  usually monosyllabic
• Mà 骂 = to scold  as a verb, will be preceded by subject and
following by direct object
• No!
– In basic communication, the context and the
grammatical function will usually make clear what is
meant, even if the tone is not pronounced accurately
• Make sure you know the tone of each character, but
don’t worry about mistakes in the beginning. The
feeling for the melody will come step by step.

11. Fun Fact
• Some Chinese do not even know for sure
which tone is right because they might be
from a region that does not speak
Standard Chinese
• Only 7% Chinese speak relatively
standard mandarin. (98 million out of the
1.4 billion Chinese) and only a very small
amount of this 7% are professional
teachers.

12. How to best learn the tones?
• With a trained native and certified teacher
that has very good pronunciation

13. Chinese Characters
• With all technologies that exist today,
students need to learn character recognition,
not handwriting. Nowadays, in China, only
clerks and calligraphers need to study and be
proficient in character handwriting, so do not
worry about this issue.
• Due to the rise of word processors the writing
task can be separated into the three tasks:
typing using Pinyin recognition, typing using
stroke order, and handwriting Chinese
characters using pen and paper.

14. Chinese Writing
• Although Mandarin is standardized in
spoken form, there are 2 different ways of
writing it
• Simplified characters:
– Used in Mainland China
– Introduced in 1956 to facilitate literacy since it
reduced number of strokes of characters
• Traditional characters:
– Are still used in Taiwan, HK and Macao

15. Examples from traditional to
simplified writing
車 → 车
觀 → 观
麗 → 丽
陽 → 阳
陰 → 阴
Much simpler, no?

16. How many Chinese characters should
you learn?
Let’s take newspaper reading, for example:
– With only 900 characters, you can read 90% of newspapers!
– With 2500 characters you can read 97.97 % (2500 for HSK6)

17. Chinese Characters Can be
Easy
• Some characters are pictographic
• You can learn radicals and the radicals
can give you a clue to the meaning of the
character

18. Months and Days of the week
一月 yīyuè 七月 qīyuè
二月 èryuè 八月 bāyuè
三月 sānyuè 九月 jiŭyuè
四月 sìyuè 十月 shíyuè
五月 wŭyuè 十一月 shíyīyuè
六月 liùyuè 十二月 shíèryuè
January July
February August
March September
April October
May November
June December
Monday Friday
Tuesday Saturday
Wednesday Sunday
Thursday
星期一 xīngqīyī 星期五xīngqīwŭ
星期二 xīngqīèr 星期六xīngqīliù
星期三 xīngqīsān 星期天 xīngqītiān
星期四 xīngqīsì
• Once you learn how to can count until 10, you just need
to learn the words for week, month and heaven and you
will know how to speak all months and days of the week
as well!

19. Can be confusing
Some characters have multiple pronunciation. Some characters mean
different things. However, with time, you will understand the difference based
on context.

20. How many hours of study do I need to
take to study in order to be able to work
in China?
• A total of 500 hours to learn 3000 words is
enough to become almost fluent. These
500 hours could be finished in 2 years of
dedicated study. If you are trained properly
and disciplined about studying, you can
even reach a higher level in a shorter
period.
• In any method used, making a study plan
is the best idea.

21. A Note for Beginners
• Separate learning Spoken to Written
Chinese
– Learn to speak those words that are used regularly in daily life,
but don’t worry about the characters (yet)
• Xièxie = thank you !  quite easy to say
• 谢谢  hard to write if this is one of your first characters, don’t
force yourself ! Learn the components first
– Learn to recognize and write simple characters first, even if they
are not commonly used in speech
• 口 kŏu = mouth  easy to write, also radical in many other
characters, but rarely used as a word in conversation
• 木 mù = wood  same as above, it is a common radical

22. More Notes for Beginners
 Make up stories about characters to memorize them
 楼 lóu: building  is a construction of wood (木） where a woman （女） is cooking rice
（米）
 Use Chinese whenever and wherever you can, even if you feel you are
using the same words over and over again
 Don’t worry about tonal mistakes in the beginning, but always make sure you
know the tone of each syllable
 Read aloud whenever you read something
 At the beginning level, studying Chinese is like
walking on marsh. If you are too slow or stopping
often, you will sink into the mud. So, go fast early!

23. mmMandarin
For more tips on how to learn
Mandarin, visit:
www.mmMandarin.com