I have been in China now for about two and a half weeks and I am beginning to learn some of the native spoken language: Mandarin Chinese (官話 Guānhuà). Mandarin was proclaimed the official language of the People’s Republic of China by their government; hence, this dialect is most widely spoken throughout the mainland. However, several distinct dialects, such as Wu, Cantonese, and Min, still exist in certain provinces throughout China. The Chinese language is also spoken in several neighboring countries including Singapore, Hong Kong & Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Philippines. With about a fifth of the world’s population now speaking some form of Chinese (and 850 million of those speaking Mandarin), learning this mother tongue will prove to be highly useful. China now ranks second in the world for nominal GDP, so expect many important business negotiations of the future to be done in Chinese.
Chinese, like many sub-Saharan and East Asian languages, is tonal. In Mandarin, there are four different tones which are depicted in the graph below.
The tones are critical to making meaning of words. The same word can mean four entirely different things depending on how it is said (or sung). As shown in the graph above, the first tone is a steady, high pitch. The second tone starts at a middle pitch, then rises over time. The third starts at a middle pitch, drops, then rises quickly. The fourth tone starts high, then drops rapidly. In addition to these difficult-to-use tones, the Chinese language uses a different pronunciation system than we do in English . The words xièxiè (thank you), qǐng (please), and Hángzhōu (a city in China) are prime examples of how different Chinese pronunciation can be from English. See the chart below to get an idea of how some difficult sounds are pronounced.
C—ts– like cats
Q—ch– like chick
X—sh– like Shoe
Z—ds– like beds
Zh—j– like Joe
Now that you have a cursory understanding of the spoken Chinese language, let’s learn a few phrases in Mandarin Chinese.
(A quick aside: written Chinese is communicated through characters. For the purpose of this lesson, we will use Pinyin, the Romanization of Chinese characters. With the advent of computer communications, Pinyin was created by the Chinese government in 1958 to allow people to use characters in electronic messaging. Typing Pinyin into a computer equipped with a language package populates Chinese characters which are then selected to create sentences. Pinyin also allows non-native speakers to speak the Chinese language. Hence, the following phrases will all be written in Pinyin.)
Some sample phrases to get you speaking Chinese:
Nǐ hǎo– —————————–Hello
Nǐ hǎo ma?—————————-How are you?
Wǒ bù huì shuō hàn yǔ——————-I do not speak Chinese
Shén me?—————————–What did you say?
Zhè gè yòng zhōng wén zěn me shuō?——-How do you say that in Chinese?
Qǐng nín màn diǎn shuō——————Please speak more slowly
Yǒu rén huì shuō yīng yǔ ma?————–Does anyone speak English?
Duō shǎo qián?————————-How much does that cost?
Tai guì le——————————That’s too expensive
Wǒ shì měi guó rén———————-I am American
Wǒ yào chī—————————–I want to eat…
Táng cù li ji—————————-Sweet and sour pork
Nà gè zhēn hǎo chī———————-That was delicious!
Wǒ jiào——————————-My name is….
Bú kèqi——————————-Your welcome/ It’s nothing
Duìbùqǐ——————————-I’m sorry/ Excuse me
Zàijiàn——————————–Goodbye
Interested in learning more Mandarin Chinese? Let’s learn together! As an expat teaching in Xi’an, Shaanxi, China, Thomas will provide you with the functional Mandarin Chinese you’ll need for everyday living and traveling in China. Next post: How to keep track of time in Mandarin. We’ll learn how the number system, the days, and months are all intuitively linked.
