Jan Wostyn, Director International Relations of Hutong School, will give you a bird's eye view of the fascinating Chinese language, zooming in on different aspects of a language which many Westerners believe to be the hardest language in the world, until they actually get started, and discover the surprisingly simplicity of Chinese compared to most European languages. www.hutong-school.com

1. Demystifying Mandarin
by Hutong School
June, 2012
Jan Wostyn, Director International Relations

2. Overview
 Part I: Facts and figures about Chinese
 Part II: The Wonder of the Chinese Script
 Part III: How to write Chinese
 Part IV: Spoken Chinese
 Part V: Chinese Grammar and Vocabulary
 Part VI: Tips for learning Chinese

4. Part I: facts and figures
 What is Chinese? What is Mandarin?
 Where is Chinese spoken?
 Who learns Mandarin?

5. What is Mandarin?
 Mandarin = official standard language of Chinese
 Several Chinese „dialects‟ or „regionalects‟ exist, mostly spoken
in the South of China:
 Most well-known: Cantonese (Hong Kong, Guangdong, Guangxi)
 Other: Minnanhua (Fujian), Xiang (Hunnan), Wu (Shanghai,
Zhejiang)
 In spoken form often mutually unintelligible
 Difference between a language and a dialect?
 “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” (Max Weinrich)
 Names for the Chinese language:
 汉语 Hànyŭ 中文 Zhōngwén 普通话 Pŭtōnghuà

6. Map of Chinese „dialects‟

7. Where is Mandarin spoken
as a first language?
 Mainland China (850 mio to 1.1 billion)
 Younger generations all learn Mandarin at school, but will still speak
their dialect as well in the South
 Official policy: “Promote Mandarin, protect dialects”
 Older generations, especially in countryside, may never have learned
Mandarin and only master their own dialect
 Taiwan: about 4-5 mio speak Mandarin as their first language, but
all Taiwanese learn Mandarin as official language
 Singapore: Mandarin is one of the official languages
 Overseas communities: usually migrated from the south, most
speak dialects, not Mandarin (large communities in South-East
Asia, notably Indonesia and Malaysia; smaller communities pretty
much anywhere in the world, see map)

8. The Sinophone World
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New-Map-Sinophone_World.PNG

9. Who learns Mandarin?
 Non-Chinese minorities within China:
 Tibetan, Uygur, Mongolians, etc…
 Hong Kong & Macao:
 Official language yet most speak it as 2nd language after Cantonese
 Mandarin has clearly gained importance since 1997
 In Korea and Japan, Mandarin may become as important or
even overtake English as a 2nd language
 Many Koreans learn Chinese characters at school
 Japanese use 1945 common Chinese characters (Kanji)  lower
threshold to learning Chinese
 Elsewhere:
 Big increase in number of secondary schools offering Chinese in
France, Germany, USA, …
 Chinese government pushes Confucius Institutes and Confucius
classrooms all over the globe

10. Part II: the wonder
of the Chinese script
 When and why were characters invented?
 Traditional versus simplified Chinese characters
 How many characters are there?
 Different types of Chinese characters

11. When and why were
Chinese characters invented?
 Brief history of Chinese script:
 2000 BC: proto-writing: decorative carvings with meaning
 „Inventor‟ of script = Cang Jie under Yellow emperor
 Oracle bone script, Shang dynasty (1766-1122 BC) = first
orthographic representation of language, not just pictures
 Standardization of the writing system into the “Small Seal
Script” (小篆 Xiao Zhuan) by Qin Shihuang (221-207 BC), after
the Warring States Period.
 Chinese is characterized by a large number of homonyms
 Many identical sounds have very diverging meanings
 The Chinese people could not have invented the alphabet, it
would have been useless to write down their language

12. A Chinese story…

13. Traditional versus simplified
Chinese
 Although Mandarin is standardized in spoken form, there
are 2 different ways of writing it
 Simplified characters:
 Used in Mainland China
 Introduced in 1956 by CCP
 Mainly reduction of strokes
 Also elimination of variants of same characters
 Traditional characters:
 Used in Taiwan, HK and Macao

14. From traditional to simplified
車 → 车
觀 → 观
麗 → 丽
陽 → 阳
陰 → 阴

15. How many Chinese characters
are there?
 106.230: Yitizi Zidian (2004, Taiwan)
 Includes also all kinds of variants of same character
 54678: Hanyu Da Zidian (1989, PRC)
 7000: Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese
 3500：Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese
 2500 common characters
 1000 less-than-common characters
 Don‟t despair !
 With 2500 characters you can read 97.97 %
 With 3500 characters you can read 99.48 %
 With only 900 characters, you can read 90% of newspapers !
 Highest level of HSK requires 2600 characters (Level 6)

16. Types of Chinese characters
 Pictograms = stylized representation of objects
 Ideograms = expressing abstract ideas through form
 Radical-phonetic compounds (80-90% of characters)
 Radical: element that indicates meaning
 About 200 radicals
 Refer to „water‟ , „wood‟ , „hands‟ , etc…
 Phonetic: element that indicates the pronunciation
 Most phonetics are characters themselves as well

17. Examples of pictograms
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification

18. Examples of ideograms
人 -> 大 -> 天 person -> big -> heaven
本 -> 末 root versus top
女 + 子 = 好 woman + son = good !
女 + 宀 = 安 woman + roof = safe !
亻+ 木 = 休 man + tree = to rest !
亻+ 本 = 体 man + root = body
木 + 木 = 林 tree + tree = wood
木 + 木 +木 = 森 tree + tree + tree = a forest

19. Example of
radical – phonetic system
巴
爸
吧
把
芭
疤
钯
鲃


20. Creative with characters
酒

21. Part III: how to write Chinese?
 The 8 basic strokes of Chinese writing
 Basic stroke order rules
 Writing direction
 How to write Chinese digitally

22. The 8 basic strokes of
Chinese writing

23. Basic stroke order rules
1. Horizontal stroke (heng) before vertical
stroke (shu)
2. Left-leaning stroke (pie) before right-
leaning stroke (na)
3. From top to bottom
4. From left to write
5. From outside to inside and closing a
frame with the last stroke
6. Middle first, then both sides
For animated writing examples: see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Order.gif_stroke_order_images

24. Writing direction
 Modern Chinese:
 Left to right, top to bottom
 Just like in Western language
 Classical Chinese
 Top to bottom
 Right to left

25. How to write Chinese digitally
 Most Chinese use pinyin to enter characters digitally
 Pinyin = official transliteration system to write the pronunciation of
Chinese characters in Latin alphabet
 For each pronunciation, all possible characters or character
combinations appear
 Recognizing and choosing the correct character is all you need !

26. Part IV: spoken Chinese
 The 4 tones
 Do tones matter?
 Some sounds are harder than others

27. The 4 tones


28. Do tones matter?
 Yes, because a different tone will imply a different meaning
 Mā 妈 = mother -> Māma, usually bisyllabic
 Má 麻 = hemp -> Dàmá : marihuana
 Mă 马 = horse -> usually monosyllabic
 Mà 骂 = to scold -> as a verb, will be preceded by subject and
following by direct object
 However, 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

29. Some sounds are
easier than others
 Chinese has a relatively limited number of different
syllables
 Standard pinyin only has about 400 possible syllables
 Western language have a multitude of possible syllables
 Most syllables are fairly easy to pronounce:
 Māma, nĭ-hăo zhōng-guó, Shàng-hăi
 Some syllables and syllable combinations require practice !
 Jī qī xī zhī chī shī jū qū xū
 Zì-xíng-chē zì-jĭ qí-shí sì-shí-sì qī-shí-qī

30. Part V: Chinese grammar
and vocabulary
 The simplicity of Chinese grammar
 What‟s different in Chinese grammar?
 Chinese vocabulary: makes sense !
 Counting in Chinese: no exceptions !
 Months and days of the week

31. The simplicity of
Chinese grammar
 No conjugations: each verb only has one form
 No tenses
 No cases
 No plurals
 No articles
 No gender
 No variation of adjectives by number or gender
 Fixed sentence patterns, no inversion
Thanks to the Chinese characters, which are forms that never
change, all the form changes of European languages can be
omitted.

32. A French versus a Chinese verb

33. German articles versus Chinese

34. What is different in Chinese?
 Particles or sentence patterns to express tenses
 了 le -> used after verb to express completion or past
 过 guo -> used after verb to express past experience
 快要...了 kuài yào … le -> construction to express something that
is going to happen in the near future
 Many other fixed structures that never change: some drilling does 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, …)

35. Chinese vocabulary: makes sense
 The vast majority of Chinese words have only 2 syllables
 They often combine basic meanings to form new words
 Examples:
 电脑 diàn-năo = Electricity + brain = ?
 电话 diàn-huà = Electricity + words = ?
 电视 diàn-shì = Electricity + to view = ?
 变色龙 biàn-sè-lóng =Change + color + dragon = ?
 长颈鹿 cháng-jĭng-lù = Long + neck + deer = ?
 橄榄球 gănlăn-qiú = Olive + ball = ?
 网球 wăng-qiú = Net + ball = ?

36. Chinese vocabulary:
hard made easy !
 Many words in English have a Greek-Latin origin,
especially scientific words, which makes them sound
difficult and not readily understandable
 Chinese uses characters that are 2000 years old, but which
have retained their basic meaning over time
 Examples
 五角大楼 wŭ-jiăo-dà-lóu = Five + corners + big + building = ?
 安乐死 ān-lè-sĭ = quiet + happy + die = ?
 交响曲 jiāo-xiăng-qŭ = to cross + to sound + musical piece = ?

37. Counting in Chinese
一 yī 一 yī 一 yī 一 yī 一 yī
二 èr 二 èr 二 èr 二 èr 二 èr
三 sān 三 sān 三 sān 三 sān 三 sān
四 sì 四 sì 四 sì 四 sì 四 sì
五 wŭ 万 五 wŭ 千 五 wŭ 百 五 wŭ 十 五 wŭ
六 liù 六 liù 六 liù 六 liù 六 liù
七 qī 七 qī 七 qī 七 qī 七 qī
八 bā 八 bā 八 bā 八 bā 八 bā
九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ
十 shí 十 shí 十 shí 十 shí 十 shí
 No exceptions, every number is formed the same way
 One additional „unit‟ = 万 wàn = 10.000
 Only 13 different syllables needed to count from 1 to ….
 Example: 85327 = 8*10.000 + 5*1000 + 3*100 + 2*20 + 7
= bā wàn wŭ qiān sān băi èr shí qī
 No need to worry about French calculations like 96 = 4*20 + 16

38. Months and days of the week
January July 一月 yīyuè 七月 qīyuè
February August 二月 èryuè 八月 bāyuè
March September 三月 sānyuè 九月 jiŭyuè
April October 四月 sìyuè 十月 shíyuè
May November 五月 wŭyuè 十一月 shíyīyuè
June December 六月 liùyuè 十二月 shíèryuè
Monday Friday 星期一 xīngqīyī 星期五xīngqīwŭ
Tuesday Saturday 星期二 xīngqīèr 星期六xīngqīliù
Wednesday Sunday 星期三 xīngqīsān 星期天 xīngqītiān
Thursday 星期四 xīngqīsì
 Once you can count till 10, you just need to learn the words
for week, month and heaven and you know all the months
and days of the week as well ! (13 different syllables)

39. Tips for learning Chinese
 Always carry a small notebook
 Write down characters you see a lot  ask your teacher
 Write down words or sounds you hear a lot  ask your teacher
 You will easily remember these characters and sounds as they are
connected to real-life situations
 Separate learning spoken and 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 conversations
 木 mù = wood  idem, common radical

40. Tips for learning Chinese (bis)
 Make up stories about characters to memorize them
 叫 jiào: to call or be called; my roommate was a fan of the football team Schalke
04 and looked at the character as ‟04‟. It was ridiculous, had nothing do to with it,
but he did remember
 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
 Repeat 3 times 20‟ rather than once 1 hour
 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

41. Don‟t worry,
anybody can learn Chinese !
And for every worry, there is a Chinese proverb anyway !
千里之旅，始于足下！
A journey of a 1000 miles starts with one step !

42. Lost in translation…
better learn Chinese !

43. About Hutong School
Hutong School was founded in 2005 in order to provide Western students,
graduates and young professionals internships and Chinese language
courses in China.
Hutong School is the school of choice for anyone who wants to study
Chinese or find an internship in China.
Visit our website for more information:
www.hutong-school.com