I’m a genuine languages fan and the most recent language project I’m working on is to learn Chinese. Up to now I’m really enjoying the experience and this past year I even went to China to try out my skills – as it is additionally vital to learn the culture with the language! For those thinking about learning Chinese, here are a couple of important things I wish I knew when I started.

Learn Chinese – But Which Dialect?

Whilst I specifically learn Mandarin, the typical dialect of Chinese that most people speak, different regions have different dialects. The differences between some are really not too large (e.g. Beijing Chinese and Singapore Chinese) but others are almost a totally different language altogether (e.g. Mandarin and Cantonese). Some dialects are just spoken, and use mainstream Chinese characters for writing with. It’s best to target your dialect to where you imagine you’ll visit. For Hong Kong and Macau you will most probably want to learn Cantonese rather than Mandarin. Whilst most people in these regions learn basic Chinese Mandarin, you’ll find that you can communicate much more effectively in the real local language. If you would like to learn Chinese for the fun of it, learn Mandarin for certain.

Do I must learn characters?

No! The wonder of learning Chinese nowadays may be the presence of Hanyu Pinyin, or Pinyin for short. In learn Chinese pdf that you would like to learn spoken Chinese, there’s still some writing involved, nevertheless, you will not be writing characters. Hanyu Pinyin may be the international standard for romanisation of Chinese characters. Pinyin was invented to help foreigners learn Chinese and occasionally school children learn it aswell – however most Chinese won’t understand you if you try to write Pinyin – they associate characters with the sounds that we would associate to the romanised Pinyin. For example:

The simplified Chinese character for I (as in me) is (if you cannot see this character you may want to set up a language pack).

The Pinyin for the character is ‘Wo3’. Written (instead of typed) Pinyin is different – the written Wo3 includes a small ‘u’ along with the O, indicating how to say the word to tell apart it from other ‘Wo’s.

If you simply wrote ‘Wo’ most Chinese would not understand you. In the event that you said ‘Wo’ they would.

There are two different character systems, aren’t there?

Yes, there is Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese is a lot easier to learn than Traditional Chinese (less complicated characters, etc.). Traditional Chinese is currently only found in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The Chinese government redeveloped the character system in the 20th century to produce simplified Chinese, that is now the standard generally in most parts of China and in a few international Chinese communities. Based on where you intend on travelling, you need to target the type system you learn if you decide to learn written Chinese.