Why should I learn with you?
If you're looking for an easy and practical way to learn Chinese, then this is it. You can learn in your own time from the comfort of your own home or office, without the hassle of having to attend night time classes or learn a bunch of rules that you will surely forget.
Why not just go to Chinese language classes?
This depends on what your goal is. Certainly if you want to learn everything there is to know about the Chinese language, then university classes are a good way to go.
However, if you're looking to learn practical Chinese and have the ability to converse as quickly as possible, then my video lessons is the far more effective method. Further, I believe that language learning should be fun and my video lessons teach you what you need to know rather than just handing you a Chinese textbook.
What is the best way to learn Chinese?
If you're looking for an easy and practical way to learn Chinese, then this is it. You can learn in your own time from the comfort of your own home or office, without the hassle of having to attend night time classes or learn a bunch of rules that you will surely forget.
Facts About The Chinese Language
How many people speak Mandarin Chinese in the world?
About 1 billion people speak Mandarin Chinese around the world. Therefore, you can consider mandarin to be an international language as it's the most spoken language in the world!
Where is Mandarin Chinese spoken?
Mandarin Chinese is mostly spoken in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. It is also widely used in the many Chinese communities (Chinatowns) around the globe. Mandarin Chinese is also one of the six official languages used by the United Nations.
What's the deal with Mandarin and Cantonese?
Maindarin, which is spoken by about 1 billion people, represents the major spoekn dialect of Chinese. Cantonese is spoken by a minority group (of under 60 million) predominantly in the southern part of China.
Is studying Mandarin Chinese difficult?
Studying Mandarin Chinese is not as difficult as what most people think. Chinese grammar will seem much easier than English grammar because in Mandarin Chinese:
- You don't need to conjugate verbs.
- You don't need to master verb tenses.
- You don't need to distinguish between singular and plural nouns.
- You don't need to worry about gender-specific nouns.
The most difficult part when learning to speak Mandarin is actually getting your tones right.
Learn more about How to Speak Chinese Fluently.
Written Chinese
Written Chinese was developed about 4000 years ago. It consists of more than 40.000 logographic symbols, meaning that a symbol represents one syllable or concept rather than a sound as does the phonetic system. Chinese writing has influenced many languages of East Asia, including Japanese. It has remained immensely stable over the millennia. Only recently has the PRC attempted to simplify it and to institute a romanized version called Pinyin, representing the sounds.
There are over 50,000 Chinese words (that's quite a lot of symbols to memorize!). However, to read a newspaper or magazine well you should know around 2,000 to 3,000 Chinese words.
Having said that, you can read over 90% of the materials that's out there by learning around 800 characters or so.
Learn more about The Most Commonly Used Chinese Words
Some characteristics of Chinese language
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Chinese is a tonal language
The meaning of a word changes according to its tone. There are 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese: flat, rising, falling then rising and falling. Other dialects feature up to 9 different tones.
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All words have only one grammatical form only
There is no grammatical distinction between singular or plural, no declination of verbs according to tense, mood and aspect.
The distinction between singular or plural is accomplished by sentence structure. Tenses are indicated by adverbs of time ('yesterday', 'later') or particles.
Sounds great? Well, 2 different types of aspects which are unlike anything in any European language give information as to the relevancy of an occurrence and a complex system of suffixes to distinguish the direction, possibility, and success of an action help complicate this apparently easy grammar
A very good resource to help you master Chinese tones is
here.
