Learn Chinese Fast
| Learn Chinese Fast is a free program we have put together
involving five quick lessons of spoken Mandarin
Chinese. Each lesson will teach you to say a little bit more
about a common situation you will meet when you are in China. You have an audio to listen to for a lesson and a Learn Chinese Fast video will be added to each lesson at a later date. You can also print a .pdf file of the lesson to help you to learn offline. To help you get a feel for what Chinese sounds like from a Chinese person, the audios will be recorded by a native Chinese speaker. |
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Your Free Five Mandarin Lessons
The language you will be learning in Learn Chinese Fast lessons on this page is Mandarin. In Chinese, the word for Mandarin language is "Pu Tong Hua." This literally translates as "Common Language." It is the common language of a vast majority of Chinese people. "Pu Tong Hua." is the language of the Han Chinese people.
A lot of people in Guangdong province in the South of China (including Hong Kong) speak another language which is like a cousin of Mandarin. This language is Cantonese or "Guangdong hua" - literally: Guangdong speak (i.e. language of Guangdong). We will not be teaching Cantonese on these particular pages.
Mandarin can also be called "Zhong guo hua" literally "Middle Country Speak." Since the Chinese call China "Zhong guo" meaning "middle country" or "the middle country" we can say that "Zhong guo hua" basically means "Chinese (language)."
The Four Main Tones
We will need to talk about pronounciation before starting the first lesson. It is neccessary that you realise that Chinese has four "tones" to the language. This is not as difficult or strange as it sounds and you will soon get used to it. In fact it is rather fun to have to "sing" the word correctly in order to have it understood.
The four tones are all slightly different. They are accented in four different ways in the English way of writing Chinese words. The accent placed above the word gives the pronounciation in terms of the word's particular tone. The shape of the line/accept is the shape of the tone itself. For example, the tone which is denoted by a straight line above the word you are saying means a "straight and consistent tone" to the pronounciation of the word. Examples are below.
Romanisation Of Chinese Words
The pin yin method of spelling Chinese today is the most prominent. Other ways of writing Chinese in English include the "Wade-Giles system" which is one you may find in books. For example, have you heard of "tai chi" - the ancient Chinese martial art form which is performed slowly and gracefully and has health giving benefits according to Chinese medicine? The words "tai chi" are written as "T'ai Chi" in the Wade Giles system. The actual pronounciation of this word in Chinese is "tai jee." It is written in pin yin as "taiji." Let's not complicate matters further, just understand that in these lessons we'll be learning Mandarin Chinese (the language spoken in the majority of mainland China) and we'll be writing Chinese words in pin yin.
Begin Your Mandarin Lessons...
Start learning Chinese Fast with your first Mandarin lesson by clicking here: Lesson 1 of Learn Chinese Fast
