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<h1>Introduction to learning Chinese</h1>
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Things to know to learning a languages:
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<li>Prononuciation</li>
<li>Phonetic Alphabet</li>
<li>Reading Characters</li>
<li>Writing Characters</li>
<li>Vocabulary of words</li>
<li>Grammar / sentance structure</li>
<li>Phrases and expressions</li>
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The prononuciation of Chinese varies dramatically across China depending on the region. The standard pronounciation of Chinese is called <b>Putonghua</b> and is very similar to the pronounciation used in Beijing. Putonghua, the standard pronounication, is what we will study.
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To understand and express the pronounciation of Chinese words there is a standard writing system that has been developed to write Chinese words using a romanized (English) alphabet. This phonetic alphabet is called <b>Pinyin</b> and is what we will also study.
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One aspect of Chinese that will be difficult for western speakers to initally grasp is the use of <b>tones</b>. Chinese is what is called a tonal language. What this means is that when speaking, the inflection of the speaker's voice carries additional meaning that would otherwise not have added any meaning in most other languages. In english there are examples of tone used such as an upward inflection at the end of a sentance used to make the sentance a question. In Chinese, such tonal variations are used with every word and used to select between quite different meanings. There are 4 tones and a 5th neutral tone. We will learn more about tones later and in more detail, but for now what is important to know is that with our phonetic alphabet we also need a way to represent these tones.
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The vocabulary and grammar of Chinese will be fairly easy for English speakers to learn, it just takes time to memorize all the words and grammar rules. Chinese has few exceptions to the rules unlike English and has relatively simple structures.
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The written language of Chinese is very different to that of western languages. There are two writing styles that are common. There is Traditional Chinese and <b>Simplified Chinese</b>. Traditional Chinese is the original form and contains more characters than those in the simplified set. Traditional Chinese is primarily used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Simplified Chinese is used as the primarily method in mainland China, however Traditional Chinese is used in certain circumstances and for many common characters most people are familiar with both the traditional and the simplified forms of the character. What we will study is the Simplified forms of the characters.
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Chinese characters are made up of multiple line segments, these are called <b>strokes</b> (as in strokes of a brush or a pen), and most characters are made of many more strokes than characters of the English alphabet. However one or two characters can be enough to represent the meaning of what would be a single word in English.
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When reading Chinese characters, it is possible to identify in many characters what are called <b>radicals</b>. These radicals are sub-parts of a character that are common between characters and sometimes are characters themselves. These radicals can sometimes be used by a reader who has never encountered this character before to guess the pronounciation and also the meaning.
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Some people say that this is more true of Traditional Chinese than Simplified Chinese because the original Traditional characters. I'm not sure, but one thing is certain, both are hard to learn. When we come to learning about writing Chinese I believe Simplified characters will be easier to memorize and faster to write. The number of strokes used to form a simplified character are reduced compared to those used to form the equivalent Traditional character, so instead of writing 15 lines to form a character, the character may only have 10 lines. Often there is still a resemblence between the traditional character and the simplified character.
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When learning to write Chinese characters, the first thing that will confront western students is that the <b>order and direction</b> of drawing the strokes is important. In English it doesn't matter if you draw an 'x' by drawing first a '/' and then a '\' or the other way around. And neither would it matter if you draw the lines starting from the top or the bottom. In Chinese both of these matter and most people will not be able to easily recognize the character if it is drawn incorrectly.
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There are subtalties that are hard to describe that a pen or brush makes that indicate these differences that confuse readers. Fortunately the order follows some basic rules that should not be too hard to follow when you are aware of and able to recognize the radicals of characters. The best way to think about the direction may be to think of it has a different type of stroke. There is a vocabulary of strokes that is used, there are about 7 commonly used types of strokes, suchs as a downward '|' stroke, a horizontal '-' stroke and '/' and '\' angled strokes and a few more. The size and position of the stroke varies according to the character.
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Vocabulary
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Grammar
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Expressions and Phrases
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Lessons
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Pinyin
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There are 20 consonants and 6 vowels
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Tones
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Syllables
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