CHINESE!☆中文
Chinese is quickly becoming a key language in international business and politics. There are a fair number of dialects (and even separate languages) within "Chinese" but this entry is all about Mandarin, the most commonly spoken dialect within China.
First there are a few aspects about Chinese that I want to put here before you dive into the links.
1) Something that gets learners of Chinese is always, always the tones. Chinese has four tones (five if you count the "no tone" as a tone.) These are basically different changes in the pitch of the vowels.
Some people will tell you that these aren't important and that you don't have to worry about them. But this is NOT TRUE. Yeah you could get by without using the tones properly, but communication will be a lot more difficult.
The tones of Chinese are numbered 1 through 4 (with "no tone" being numberless)
1st tone is a steady, high pitch and is shown with a line over the letter → ā
2nd tone is a rising tone and is shown with a left to right upward mark → á
3rd tone is a falling-rising tone and is shown with a little v shaped mark → ǎ
4th tone is a falling tone and is accented with a left to right downward mark → à
Here is a link going more in-depth → Chinese Tones!
2) Unlike Japanese, Chinese has no alphabet, only the Chinese characters (漢字／汉字 hanzi.) You need about 3000 of these hanzi in order to read most daily Chinese (newspapers, magazines, etc.) I know that seems like a lot, but there are some really useful tricks that make learning them much easier than you'd think.
In China there were a series of hanzi reforms done and many characters were simplified (for example 學 became 学.) These are called simplified characters and the old-style of the hanzi are called traditional characters. Simplified Chinese is the one used in most parts of mainland China. Traditional characters are used in Hong-Kong and Taiwan, but most of China uses simplified. Most Chinese resources are in simplified Chinese.
3) There is an official form of romanization called Pinyin. There is an older method of romanization called Wade-Gales romanization and you will see with sometimes in names, but most resources now use Pinyin (because it's easier, I think.)
You need to learn Pinyin before you start to learn Chinese. Here are some links to Pinyin guides：
4) Lastly, there are a things about Chinese that are difficult, but grammar-wise Chinese is astoundingly easy! There are no verb conjugations (although there are suffixes and prefixes that alter the tense of the verb) and sentence structure is just like English -- Subject-Verb-Object (SVO.)
So for example "I want to eat Chinese food" would be 我想吃中国菜 (Wǒ xiǎng chī Zhōngguócài) = I want eat China food.
Okay! Now for a list of online resources!
---------- General Chinese Guides and Dictionaries ----------
- Awesome word and character dictionaries!
- Get your Chinese name
- Pinyin IME
- Calligraphy generator tool
- Your one-stop resource!!
- A nice list of resources and mini lessons
- A good starting point!
- A free online set of lessons for beginner Chinese
- Similar to Chinese-Tools.com
- Mini lessons with sound files and videos!
Have fun!
加油 [Jiā yóu] (literally "add oil," this phrase is used to mean "good luck" or "keep trying!)
