WE SPEAK CHINESE : 我们说中文 (1)
Not everybody speaks English in mainland China and many other countries in Asia. Chinese is another worldwide language used by people all around the world.
Recently I have updated the blog about traveling to Taiwan, where people do speak Mandarin. I think that it would be very helpful for my readers if they can understand basic Chinese before visiting the country. Personally, I think people will misunderstand when they miscommunicate and miscommunication comes from when we do not know the language and when we do not understand the culture. This is the chance for you to get to know Chinese language . Not only mainland China or Taiwan, people from other countries in Asia and some other places in the different continents do speak Chinese too since Chinese people are all around the world.
This week I am going to teach the basic Chinese sentence that might be useful when you want to build the relationship with people who speak Chinese! But before I start, I want to say sorry that I could not do it in the video like I have planed before since my camera got some problems and I am so busy that I have no time to fix it.
Before you learn how to pronounce the word and sentence, you must learn the tone first. In Chinese, there are four tones, which are ā、á、ǎ、à, and the special tone is the light or neutral tone that you just keep it short and light. Don't emphasize it.
The first tone (ā)
The first tone is high and flat. It can also be a bit longer in duration compared to the other three tones.
The second tone (á)
The second tone is rising. Some feel that it sounds like you're asking a question
The third tone (ǎ)
It is often called the "falling-rising" tone or the "dipping" tone, but it's more important that the tone be super low than that it rises.
The fourth tone (à)
The fourth tone is falling. Sound like an angry staccato to you.
*** go to listen to the video ****
There are 23 consonants and 24 main 'vowels and diphthongs, but we are going to focus only 5 of them.
The consonants in Chinese are
b – as the “b” in “book”
p – as the “p” in “pool”
m – as the “m” in “moon”
f – as the “f” in “food”
d – as the “d” in “door”
t – as the “t” in “tom”
n – as the “n” in “no”
l – as the “l” in “love”
g – as the “g” in good”
k – as the “k” in “kill”
h - as the “h” in “high”
j - as the “j” in “jeep”
q - as the “ch” in “cheese”
x - as the “sh” in “sharp”
z - as the “z” in “zero”
c - as the “ts” in “tsunami”
s - as the “s” in “sun”
r - as the “r” in “red”
zh - start with ‘j’ in “jeep”, but then end smoothly with “r” sound. The first 2 sounds in the sample voice show such move.
ch - start with ‘q’ in “cheese”, but then end smoothly with “r” sound. The first 2 sounds in the sample voice show such move.
sh – start with ‘x’ in “sharp”, but then end smoothly with “r” sound. The first 2 sounds in the sample voice show such move.
( ‘zh, ch, sh’ are similar but strictly different from ‘j, q, x’ respectively. However, mixing them is not a too big problem for you to be understood in China.)
y - as the “y” in “yes”
w - as the “w” in “wood”
credit：http://www.echineselearning.com/blog/learn-Chinese-pin-yin-consonant
Now! the vowel, there are five basic vowels in Chinese, which are a、e、i、o、u
The first one (a)
Pronounced like the ‘a’ in English ‘father’
The second one (e)
Pronounced like the ‘ir' in English ‘bird’
The third one (i)
Pronounced like the ‘ee' in English ‘bee’
The fourth one (o)
Pronounced like the ‘o’ in English ‘more’
The fifth one (u)
Pronounced like the ‘ue' in English ‘blue’
However, there are some more diphthongs in Chinese for example ao、iao、ia. But these are the most basic vowel that is easy to pronounce!
After you have learned the tone, consonant, and vowel in Chinese now let’s start with ‘PINYIN'. So pinyin is the standard system of romanized spelling for transliterating Chinese. Pinyin contains the consonant, vowel, and tone together. For example, the character 我 is pronounced as wŏ: w is consonant, o is the vowel, and the v above the o is the third tone.
So now you have basic knowledge about how to pronounce Chinese word and I think you are ready to start with the simplest lesson in Chinese! Next time I'll come back with the lesson about how to order food and buy stuff when you travel to China!!