Tag: Pronunciation

Chinese Pronunciation The Four Tones of Chinese

When talking about the differences between English and Chinese, the four tones of Chinese may be the most distinguish characteristic. The four tones of Mandarin are basic facets of the language for everybody learning the best way to speak Chinese. Mandarin Chinese, like most other Chinese dialects, is a tonal language, Which means that tones, like consonants and vowels, are used to distinguish words from one another. Mastering the tone of each character is challenging for many foreigners learning Chinese, but correct tonal pronunciation is vital for intelligibility because of the huge quantity of words in the language that only differ by tone (i.e. are minimal pairs with respect to tone). The following would be the four tones of Normal Mandarin.

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Dialect of Yue 粤语

Today what I want to show you is  the dialect of Yue  (粤语 yuèyǔ). Yue is a variety of Chinese spoken mostly in  Guangdong  (广东 Guǎngdōng),  Guangxi  (广西 Guǎngxī),Hong Kong  (香港 Xiānggǎng) and  Macau  (澳门 Aomén). You can also find significant Yue-speaking communities overseas in Southeast Asia, Canada, Australia, the United kingdom and USA. There are also considerable Yue-speaking communities overseas in Southeast Asia, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and USA.

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Why the “blessing” symbol is upside down?

If you’re living in China or near a Chinese neighborhood , or if you have a Chinese friend that does celebrate Chinese New Year, or you aren’t close to anything Chinese but are able to surf Chinese web sites (who don’t anyways ? 🙂 ), you might have noticed the following festival decoration that is hanging on people’s doors, cars, or walls etc.

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