ป้ายกำกับ: learn mandarin

5 Mistakes I made when I started learning Chinese

I’ve been studying Mandarin at University for about two years and 3 months. The mistakes I made, might not be mine particularly, but perhaps the way our course is structured. However, these mistakes can be applied to anyone starting to learn Mandarin. These “mistakes” are not necessarily bad, but it’s part of  my current shortcomings in Mandarin that I still struggle with. Perhaps you can learn from me and try to fill those gaps earlier on.

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A guide to Pinyin traps and pitfalls: Learn Mandarin pronunciation

Learning to pronounce Chinese properly comes with a number of challenges, some of which all learners of foreign languages encounter. In general, we need to learn two things. First, we have to learn how to pronounce and distinguish sounds that don’t exist in our own language. It is only natural that we find this difficult sometimes. We also need to understand tones and intonation, both being quite different in Chinese and English. With practise and a good teacher, these challenges can be overcome.

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Why should learn Mandarin Spoken?

Mandarin is also spoken in many of the Overseas Chinese communities throughout the world. There are an estimated 40 million Overseas Chinese, mostly in Asian countries (about 30 million), but also in the Americas (6 million), Europe (2 million), Oceania (1 million) and Africa (100,000). It's necessary to learn Mandarin spoken.

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The Basics About Chinese Characters

There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, but most of them are seldom used today. So how many Chinese characters do you need to know? For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousand. Here are the coverage rates of the most frequently used Chinese characters:

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Pinyin Romanization to Learn Mandarin

Pinyin is a Romanization system used to learn Mandarin. It transcribes the sounds of Mandarin using the western (Roman) alphabet. Pinyin is most commonly used in Mainland China for teaching school children to read and it is also widely used in teaching materials designed for Westerners who wish to learn Mandarin.

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