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The Travel Linguist – Mandarin 101
Learn 10 Mandarin survival words compliments of The Travel Linguist. For a full list of instructional language DVDs, phrasebooks, audio CDs and downloads, visit www.travellinguist.com
Duration : 0:4:44
Learn Mandarin Chinese Lesson 1 – Introduce yourself
Finish the series of video lessons and you can start speaking Chinese in a week. The lessons will teach you the most basic and useful words and sentences for Chinese. We constantly add and update our video lessons. Also go to our website http://www.live-tutoring.com to check out how you can get 1 to 1 tutoring from our highly trained and professional tutors.
Duration : 0:4:7
Basic Mandarin (Chinese) words and phrases
The Chinese Language and dialects Each province, each city and even each village speaks their own dialect. There are hundreds of Chinese dialects in China so much so that each dialect speaker is not likely to understand another dialect speaker from another village or city. Fortunately, Mandarin, the official dialect, is understood by all dialect speakers.
Let’s learn a few useful basic and common Mandarin words and phrases that will help you break barriers with your Chinese friends.
How are You? -Ni Hao Ma
Also commonly shorten to Ni Hao.
This is likely to be the first Mandarin phrase that you will ever learn. Useful as a greeting or a ice-breaker. Suitable for use with all ages and professions.
Thank You -Xie Xie.
Another polite term that is easy to remember and use.
Very Good -Hen Hao.
This is useful when giving praise for a job or task well done. Also useful as a reply to anyone who says “Ni Hao Ma?’ to you.
Ni Hao Ma? -How are you?
Hen Hao (Very Good)
No Good -Bu Hao
This is useful when there is a need to comment on a shoddy or incomplete job or task. Can also be used as a reply to Ni Hao Ma? but may not be such a good reply.
Ni Hao Ma? -How are you?-
Bu Hao (No Good)
Very Expensive -Hen Gui.
When bargaining at the shops, this is the best term to use when driving a hard bargain.
Don’t want or -No Bu Yao.
This is the best term to use for touts – street hawkers who approach you at every tourist stop to ask you to buy things. Bu Yao….will stop them in their track.
This is beautiful -Hen Piao Liang.
Use this phrase to praise something that is nice or beautiful. May also be used when meeting a pretty girl too!
Taxi -De Shi.
De Shi is the correct term but you should be understood even if you use the English word for Taxi. They sound alike anyway.
Good Bye or See You Again -Zai Jian.
Well, I guess this is another term that will be easily understood even if the English word is used.
Excuse Me -Jie Guo.
There is always a crowd in touristy areas. There are so many Chinese who wants to see the same monuments too. Rather than push your way through the crowd, using the term Jie Guo may just open the path ahead for you!
Receipt -Fa Piao.
Always ask for the receipt or Fa Piao at the shops or from a taxi. This may be useful if you need to complain about a fraud or shoddy product. Also useful if you leave behind your bag or camera in the taxi.
I don’t want -Wo Bu Yao.
Useful when refusing a tout or when offered a drink too many at the Dinner table.
Please visit us at: http://www.chinese-culture.net for more such useful aticles
Ken Cheong
http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/basic-mandarin-chinese-words-and-phrases-719.html
Learn Chinese (mandarin) with Yangyang 001
http://www.yoyochinese.com/Chinese_audio_lessons.html
Mandarin instructor Yangyang always has a way of making her class educational and entertaining. Great way to start your Mandarin learning journey!!!!
Duration : 0:9:52
Learn Mandarin Using Phonetic English
By using English phonics, you can eliminate many of the complications of learning to speak Mandarin. Native English speakers no longer need to trudge through the old fashioned and ineffective Wade-Giles method, or struggle with the current, but just as difficult Pinyin Chinese to speak Mandarin. There’s an easier way! Words and phrases can be sounded out exactly the same way we learned to read and speak English in grade school.
The Romanization of Chinese Characters
Mandarin Pinyin is called Putonghua, or The Common Language, and is widely used throughout China. Its four tones, level, rising, falling, and high rising, distinguish many words and syllables with the same consonants and vowels but with different meanings. It deciphers the Chinese characters and symbols into a Romanized alphabet, eliminating the abstract strokes completely unrecognizable to foreigners.
Prior to the use of Pinyin, westerners depended upon the Wade-Giles Romanization system that was initially invented to simplify Chinese characters into their English counterparts. British scholar Sir Thomas Francis Wade created the method, and it was later modified by Herbert Allen Giles in 1912, and it became the preferred transliteration method among scholars. But what it truly gave the western world was a systematic and consistent method of butchering the Chinese language through mispronunciations for more than a half century. Why did it fail so miserably? Learners of Mandarin relied upon the pronunciation guide, but were seldom educated properly on how the system worked. Inevitably, most words were grossly mispronounced.
Other attempts were made to integrate a Latin alphabet for the Mandarin language during the 1920′s and 30′s, but most were unsuccessful. Finally, in 1985, the Pinyin Romanization system officially replaced the Wade-Giles method. The Chinese government’s commitment to promote a standardized Latin alphabet for westerner and the country’s minorities promoted the adoption of Pinyin Putonghua, and it is used extensively throughout the country.
Unfortunately, native English speakers who study Mandarin quickly discover that many of the vowels and consonants used in Pinyin are pronounced differently than their English counterparts. This means that English speakers, who have been trained since primary school to sound out words phonetically, first need to learn Pinyin in order to speak correctly and clearly in Chinese.
A Better Way
The good news is that there is an easier and faster way of learning Mandarin. Native English speakers can by-pass Pinyin and immediately concentrate on reading and speaking Chinese by using the familiar English phonics system. For example, the Chinese word for ‘next’, when written in Pinyin is: xi ay i ge. Using English phonetics, you would say: shee-ah ee guh. Congratulations! You have just pronounced the word correctly! So as you can see, if you are searching for a simple way to speak Chinese effectively, the English phonetic system makes the learning process an easily attainable goal.
Timothy Green
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/learn-mandarin-using-phonetic-english-98280.html
Learn Mandarin – “You have very beautiful eyes!”
Learn Mandarin & Speak Chinese at a click with the household name in Mandarin Learning – AskBenny! Learn with Hollywood Superstar Vanessa Branch from the Pirates of the Carribean! Register now on www.AskBennyChinese.Com
Duration : 0:3:11
Learn to Speak Mandarin Chinese
Chinese is a very interesting language to learn to speak and write. It is also relatively simple to learn to speak Chinese as well as learn to read and write Chinese at a fundamental level of understanding. Chinese is based on a simple structure language and learning the Chinese character structure helps a lot in learning to speak Chinese. The Chinese language uses varying tones to give different meanings to a word. As soon as you start to learn the Chinese language, you will realize that it is not just a language. When you learn to speak Chinese you are shown a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and way of life.
Mandarin Chinese is the main language in Mainland China. While there are a number of dialects spoken throughout the Chinese provinces, it is best to learn mandarin Chinese because it is the most recognized dialect. Mandarin Chinese is used on a day to day basis by over 50% of the population. The number of users of Mandarin Chinese is constantly growing which is why you should learn to speak mandarin Chinese rather than learn to speak another dialect of Chinese.
More and more people around the world learn the Chinese language for many reasons. Some of these include: helping to improve their chances of employment, helping them negotiate internal business agreements or enhancing their travel experiences. Mandarin Chinese is also the second language of over 40 million people of Chinese descent throughout the world and so it is the natural choice when it comes to deciding to learn Chinese and what form of Chinese to learn.
In addition, it is now easier than ever to learn to speak mandarin Chinese. You can hire Chinese language tutors online or learn Chinese for free online. It’s one of the best ways to learn mandarin!
If you want to find out more about learn mandarin or about learn mandarin chinese or even about learn chinese please follow these links.
Groshan Fabiola
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/learn-to-speak-mandarin-chinese-100741.html
learning mandarin chinese pinyin
a series of learning mandarin Chinese pinyin video clips for beginners, especially for children.
Duration : 0:5:0
Starting A Business In China – Part 1: Language
These days everyone is talking about China using superlatives: the world’s fastest growing economy, most populated country, largest foreign reserve, biggest Internet population, most cell phone users, home of four of the world’s ten largest banks by market capitalization, etc, etc. Yours may be one of the many companies rushing into China to try to share in the growing prosperity. To paraphrase former German Chancellor Willy Brandt, “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, 那您定要说中文.[1]” Before you can start selling in China, you need to get a lot of translation done: company name, marketing materials, website, packaging, manuals, etc. Translators will tell you that translating into Chinese is more complex than translating into many other languages (say German). Terms like Cantonese, Mandarin, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese can be confusing; and since one Chinese character looks pretty much like another, it is hard to tell whether you are really getting good quality for your money. This article is not going to solve all your translation problems, but it will help you gain a better understanding of the issues involved so that you can at least ask your translators the right questions, and impress your colleagues at the same time.
Background on the Chinese Language
Chinese characters are ideographic, meaning that each character represents an idea (and not its pronunciation as in an English word). No one can say for sure how many characters there are, though one of the modern dictionaries collected over 85,000 characters. Most Chinese can only recognize a few thousand and a thousand characters vocabulary is usually considered sufficient to read a newspaper. A Chinese character is not equivalent to an English word, since most ideas are expressed with a number of characters. For example, 人 is a person, 人类 is mankind, 人民 means people, 男人 is a male person (man), 女人 is a female person (woman), and so on. As a general rule of thumb, a 1,000-word article in English will be translated into approximately 1,800 Chinese characters.
After the Communist Party took over China in 1949, the government undertook a program to simplify the characters by reducing the number of strokes. This resulted in a dramatic increase in the overall literacy rate. These character forms are now known as Simplified Chinese. The Kuomintang (or Nationalist Party) that fled to Taiwan maintained the traditional forms of the characters, now known as Traditional Chinese. For example, China is 中國 in Traditional Chinese and 中国 in Simplified Chinese (only one of the two characters was simplified). Besides China, Simplified Chinese is also used in Singapore. Traditional Chinese is also used in Hong Kong and Macau. The Chinese community in Malaysia uses both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Since a character usually does not give any indication of its pronunciation, different parts of China may pronounce the same character differently, giving rise to dialects. The most common dialects are: Mandarin, the official dialect for China and Taiwan; Cantonese, spoken in southern China, Hong Kong, and most Chinatowns around the world; and Fujianese, or Hokkien, spoken in the Fujian province, and parts of Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Each dialect can also have its own unique characters, terms, or sentence structures. Fortunately, these unique characters, terms, and structures are not used in formal written Chinese (similar to most written English not using Ebonics words). So while someone from Beijing may not understand the speakers at a press conference in Hong Kong, he will have no problem reading the press release. Unless you need to have an accurate transliteration of your company’s name, find an interpreter for a business meeting, or produce audio soundtracks for video clips, you really do not need to be too concerned about the dialects.
[1] No, Willy Brandt did not speak Chinese; Kevin Rudd of Australia remains the first and only western political leader to speak the language. What Willy Brandt actually said was “If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.”
Charles Pau
http://www.articlesbase.com/international-business-articles/starting-a-business-in-china-part-1-language-749233.html
