Would You Like to Learn Mandarin Chinese?

Mandarin Chinese is not an unique and distinct language but it is, in reality, an aggregation of related regional dialects which is spoken all over China. "Standard Mandarin" is a special dialect of Mandarin spoken in Beijing, the Chinese capital. Standard Mandarin is the official language all over China. From the 17th century the Beijing dialect of Mandarin has been used as the national language and it is applied in all state communications, media and education all over China. As well as the national language of China, Mandarin is also one of four official languages in Singapore. Used as Taiwan's official language and is the sixth official language of the United Nations. Thus we can gather that Mandarin is the principal spoken language in the world with more than a billion native speakers.

A person who has his mother tongue as English will surely find it difficult to learn Mandarin. Since this dialect contains more than 2,500 usual characters (from a total of some 47,000) and a four-tone phonologic structure it is regarded as one of the most difficult foreign languages to learn. While agreed that it is hard to read, write and speak Mandarin. with sincerity and devotion the language can be learnt by any ambitious student. More or less 20% of foreigners become eloquent in Mandarin after dwelling in China for less than a year while the remaining 80% take a few years to attain the same level.

The different languages spoken in China are based on tones; a single syllable has different meanings depending on the modulation used by the speaker. Tones in Mandarin are similar to the vowels and consonants in their English counterparts, and they form a part of the language. Getting the hang of tonal pronunciation is crucial for students as a vast bulk of the characters are distinguished only by tone. There is a fifth tone in Mandarin known as the mute or neutral tone. Information with regard to pronunciation and use, as well as specific tonal instances can be heard and then practiced.

Characters of Mandarin Chinese:

Mandarin uses Chinese characters for its writing purposes. Chinese is said to be one of the oldest written languages in the world and has been used throughout its prolonged history up to the present day. Written Chinese is not based on an alphabet system as is English and many other languages but they are glyptography representations of objects or ideas. Chinese characters have their origin in direct pictorial characterizations of objects and have developed over their 1000 year history. The more basic characters used in the present day are of recent origin. In the 20th century the government of China passed an ordinance to cut down the number of strokes within each character. It was ruled that each character use less strokes causing it to be easier to write. This was called Simplified Chinese and the original characters are known as Traditional Chinese. Students of Mandarin will learn both forms in concert with a third form of written Chinese called pinyin; pinyin is a form of presenting Mandarin words written with the Roman letters.

The Confucius Institute is a government sponsored international school and its purpose is to encourage Chinese language and culture around the world. It is similar to the United Kingdom's British Council or France's Aliiance Francaise. The Conficius Institute differs from the above mentioned French or British institutes, because it normally functions within universities or schools. Locations of Confucius Institutes all over the world can be found at their website. There is a standardized test for Mandarin fluency for non-native speakers and this test is recognized all over China and in many corporations and organizations all over the world.

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