Welcome to Chinese as it is being taught at 21st Century Academy. This website is meant to supplement and reinforce the students in class experience. Please feel free to share.
The Chinese language as it is spoken, is linguistically, a more evolved language than the English language. Sentences for the most part take their meaning via syntax (word order) rather than by modifying words, working agreement or gender. There is very little "grammar" in Chinese.
It is a tonal language. Meaning that each word as it is pronounced has a particular sing-songy tone that accompanies it and gives the word its meaning. As the example was given in class: ma has four or more meanings depending on how one says the word. "Ma" with a level tone (said kind of like one is singing a note in choir) means mother. "Ma" said with a rising tone that to Westerners sounds like a question, means cotton. "Ma" said in the third tone which is said with the tone first descending and then rising, means horse, and the last tone "ma" said with a sharp descending sound means to curse.
There are only 405 different consonant and vowel combinations in Mandarin Chinese versus the many thousands in the English language. These sounds are all put together into the ordinary sounds that we call Pinyin. Pinyin are marked with the tones above the vowel. Practice the sounds below as you remember them in class:
ba pa da fa la ma
diao piao miao liao
ri ti li mi si
Below is an introduction to some simple characters. Notice how, even though these characters have evolved significantly over hundreds of years they still resemble their original pictures, i.e. big looks like someone holding their arms out.
人 口 大 太 好 男 女
ren2 kou3 da4 tai4 hao3 nan2 nu3
person mouth big huge good man woman
Below are the numbers from 1 to 10. Practicing numbers is great for fixing pronunciation as they cover a wide range of sounds and tones.
一二三四五六七八九十
yi1 ,er4 ,san1 ,si4 ,wu3 , liu4 , qi1 , ba1 , jiu3 , shi2
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