Mandarin and Other Chinese dialects

There are a lot of Chinese dialects, probably 250. Among them, Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien are the most popular judged by the number of people who speak it. Mandarin was made official and dubbed as putonghua (the common language). All Chinese students study through putonghua at school.

There are reasons why Mandarin was chosen to be the official language, but not other dialects. One is that Mandarin is in the closest relation to the written form. Almost all spoken Mandarin can be written down. But it's not the same goes to other dialects.

The second reason is that most Northern dialects are quite similar and sounds very close to Mandarin. People from Beijing, Heilongjing, Tianjin, JiangXi, Jiejiang, Henan understand each other, with only minor difficulties. But Southern Chinese dialects are so different that sometimes even neighboring towns will have their own distinguistive dialects. That made pushing Mandarin through the country a lot easier than pushing any other dialects.

Since I have been learning Cantonese for a while now, I noticed that some old words and sentence patterns are still in use in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin. Cantonese is full of slang while Mandarin has no equivalence.

Some people say that Southern Chinese were refugees from the Central part of China, escaping persecution and war. And Cantonese and Hokkien are related. Hokkien is a more ancient dialect than Cantonese.

Had it not been the commonality of the written Han Chinese language, Chinese dialects would have diverged even more, like in Europe. Thousands of years ago, when Europe was still divided among state cities and tribes, if war had broken out among them and someone had united all tribes, we would not have had the need to face so many different languages now!


april
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New Year Only Comes Twice

Chinese New Year, the year of cow or ox, is just around the corner.

The New Year Eve falls on 25 of Jan, and the celebration will last for 15 days until 9 of Feb.

Get ready for this festivity.



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Happy New Year

Wishing you all the best in 2009!

Here's a joke talked about the New Year resolutions you can keep:

Are you sick of making the same resolutions year after year that you never keep? Why not promise to do something you can actually accomplish? Here are some resolutions that you can use as a starting point:
1. I want to gain weight. Put on at least 30 pounds.
2. Stop exercising. Waste of time.
3. Read less.
4. Watch more TV. I've been missing some good stuff.

Read more here: new-years-resolutions-you-can-keep--
And I want to add one more: Quit taking Mandarin lessons. I'll forget anyway.

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A Parable of Zen – Seeking a Cure for Baldness

There was a bald man whose head felt very cold in winter. But in summer, he always got bitten by mosquitoes on the head and found it hard to get a good night’s sleep. He was very trouble by this problem, but there was nothing he could do about it.

One day he heard about a famous physician who cured many difficult diseases and solved many problems. He decided to consult him.

He traveled for days and finally met this famous physician. This Physician was dressed in very plain clothes and wearing a hat.

The bald man came up and said to the physician: “Doctor, please cure me of baldness.”

The physician looked at him and replied sadly: “If I had a cure for baldness, I would have cured myself first.” And he removed his hat and showed his own bald head.

The conclusion from the Zen master: Fellow sufferers of the same illness empathize with each other.

The conclusion from April after she read the parable: Famous people don’t always have answers.

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Is It Too Late to Learn Chinese?

When the humorist Dave Barry went to Japan in the early 1990s, he attempted to learn the language by reading a paperback phrase book, Japanese at a Glance, on the flight over. "That is not the method recommended by experts," he wrote. "The method recommended by experts is to be born a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan."

The language of the moment is Chinese, and the expert advice is depressingly similar.

Difficult--but not impossible. In some areas, such as vocabulary memorization, older students can actually outperform younger peers. "Adults shouldn't say 'I'm too old to learn,'" says Long. "All over the world, millions of people have become extremely good in a second language, even when they started in their 30s and 40s." You can't expect to soak up Chinese like a sponge, but you do have the ability to concentrate and to study for hours on end. Unfortunately, if you want to learn Chinese, that's what you'll need to do.


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Learning Tips During Holiday

Have you ever packed your Mandarin Express books into your suitcase but didn’t read them? Have you taken your iPod loaded with audio lessons to the beach but didn’t listen to them? As the holiday season draws closer, many people will have a two week school break. They are determined to stay on the learning track during the break, only to find out that they haven’t done any studying at all.

The problem here is that they set their expectations too high. They think they can block an hour each day devoted to learning Chinese, but often find themselves involved in something else all the time. That’s where they fail. But often enough, after the holiday, they regret it. The worst is that they feel that they have forgotten everything. They felt they should have done at least a little bit of studying, if not a lot.

What can you do? Don’t even try to block one hour for learning. You’re not at school any more. Just dedicate a few minutes instead. It’s easier to spend a few minutes during your morning coffee than to try blocking one hour from everything else. Here is how you can do it.

There is no need to pack your students book and workbook. They are heavy and you won’t read them anyway. Instead, prepare a short vocabulary list which you think is important. For example, select a few key words from each lesson, and build a nice one- page vocabulary list containing about 30 – 50 words. During your holiday, use a few minutes during your breakfast to review these key words and try to recall what the lesson is about. You can have a quick mental review of one lesson during a cup of coffee.

Second, write a journal in Chinese or partially Chinese. Even the briefest journal will keep your Chinese active. Spend a few minutes and write some words, phrases about your daily activities or people you meet. This journal will not only help you learn Chinese, but also serve as a wonderful souvenir after your holiday.

Third, listen to your audio lessons while you’re sleeping. Some experts say that your brain continues to function and be more receptive when you’re sound asleep. And this is the best time to learn subconsciously. You may not realize it after you wake up, but your learning is already there.

Now armed with these wonderful learning tips, you’ll never “forget everything” during your holiday any more.

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Things You Can Do Amid the Economic Downturn

The stock market is down. The housing market is down. People are losing their jobs. Newspapers, full of these staggering headlines are sinking people’s already desperate feelings even lower. However, there is a silver lining to this dark cloud. For hard working, prudently saving people, this economic downturn provides opportunities for things they can do now, but wouldn’t even consider a year ago.

Holiday season is approaching. We all want to stretch our dollars. What is a better way than buying good quality stuff? Shops and stores are discounting their inventory to lure customers in. The higher end brands are hit hard by this credit crunch. And they are giving 50% or even more discounts in the effort to recoup some severe losses. That is a good opportunity for people to get their hands on some good stuff. Good quality clothes, shoes and furniture will certainly last longer than the recession. And you’ll feel good when using them.

Real estate prices are expected by many to fall in the coming year, it could be a good time to buy property. When zero interest is on the horizon, buying when the market is down looks really attractive. We can expect the housing market to finally turn around in three to five years. By then, you have already made millions of dollars.

Many Business schools and vocational schools in the U.S. have reported that this year their application rates have gone up. That is because many people have chosen to improve themselves during this economic downturn, and when things are good again, they come out better and stronger. There is always a new subject to study. You can study for a degree, or you can learn a new language.

Don’t get so beaten up by all the sensational news. Explore the opportunities presented by the crisis. Right now, the economy is a lemon, make some lemonade!

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China and Chinese – Quotes from Ideas by Watson

The Greek name for the Chinese was Seres, from which the Latin word serica derives, meaning silk. The writer Pliny was just one who railed against the luxurious indulgences of his stylish contemporaries, complaining that enormous quantities of Chinese silk had entered Rome. Chinese textiles traveled west along the Silk Roads from at least 1200 BC because, until AD200, or thereabouts, only the Chinese knew how to process silkworms.

As this implies, by medieval times, the most intellectually sophisticated country in the world, and the most technologically advanced, was China.

The Chinese had writings as early as the Shang Dynasty (1765 - 1045BC). These consisted of animal bones or tortoise-shells which had been cracked with red-hot pokers, for the purposes of divination, and on which written characters had been inscribed, interpreting the cracks in the bones. This practice gradually gave way to books made of bamboo slips. These were bound together with strings or thongs.

Confucius himself used books of this kind when he was studying the I Ching and he was apparently so earnest a pupil, so hard on his books, that he broke the thong three times.

Silk sometimes replaced bamboo – it was lighter, stronger, more resilient, and it could be wrapped around a rod, saving space. In this way, the Chinese word for ‘roll’ became the word for ‘book’.

With the coming of paper, so the invention of printing was not far behind. Printing raises the issue of writing and language.

Chinese language doesn’t possess an alphabet; instead it consisted of thousands of different characters.

Although there are many dialects of Chinese, Mandarin – the native tongue of north China – comprises about 70 per cent of what is spoken today. All its characters are monosyllabic. Moreover, there are only about 420 syllables in Mandarin, as compared with 1200 in English. Therefore, there are many characters, words pronounced using the same sound or syllable. To obtain the diversity of meaning that is needed, all syllables may be pronounced in different tones: high, high-rising, high-falling, low-dipping. For example, there are forty-one characters with the same pronunciation of yi in the fourth tone, including ‘easy’, ‘righteousness’, ‘difference’ and ‘art’. Meaning must be inferred from context.

And in Chinese, words do not change according to number, gender, cases, tenses, voice or mood. Relationships are indicated either by word order or the use of auxiliary words. Take for example this sentence as it would be delivered in Chinese: ‘Yesterday he give I two literature revolution book.’ ‘Yesterday’ indicates that ‘give’ means ‘gave’. Word order indicates that ‘I’ means me, and ‘two’ indicates that ‘book’ means ‘books’. The word order also indicates that ‘literature revolution’ means ‘literary revolution’ and not ‘revolutionary literature’. And so the full sentence means ‘Yesterday he gave me two books on [the] literary revolution.’

In the same way that the Chinese language is based on a different set of ideas from the Indo-European languages, so its script is very different from the Western alphabets. It recalls much more the early pictographs used in Mesopotamia at the birth of writing. All Chinese dialects use the same script, on which others such as Korean and Japanese are based.

These various aspects of Chinese language and script have had a major influence on Chinese thought. There is not only the pictorial quality of the characters themselves, but the various tones in which words are pronounced, which in particular, for example, give Chinese poetry added elements or dimensions that are quite lacking in Western languages.

Top 10 credit crunch jokes

It's time for a laugh! From Hannah Wood at Mirror.co.uk: Top 10 credit crunch jokes to have you laughing all the way to the bank

1) I went to the ATM this morning and it said "insufficient funds"..

I'm wondering is it them or me?

2) Petrol is way too expensive these days. I actually can't afford to drive.

Last time I went dogging, I had to ask my mum to give me a lift.

3) With the current market turmoil, what's the easiest way to make a small fortune?

Start off with a large one.

4) How do you define optimism?

A banker who irons five shirts on a Sunday

Three Men and the God of Language Learning

There were three men working for the same company who decided to take a class and learn Mandarin. And they were blessed by the God of Language Learning. The God of Language Learning granted them each a wish.

The first man said: “I’d like to be very smart and be able to understand all the rules of grammar and pronunciation so they will come to me very easily.” The God of Language Learning said: “Done!”

The second man said: “I’d like to be surrounded by lots of native Mandarin speakers as friends. And they will be very willing to help me master Mandarin.” The God of Language Learning said: “Done!”

The third man said: “Please grant me determination to help me carry on when I’m very tired and tempted to do other things or when I get distracted.” The God of Language Learning said: “Done!”

So these three men went to class twice a week. And they worked hard and even took on additional assignments.

The performance of the first man in the class was spectacular. Nothing was difficult to him. He had native-like pronunciation, mastering the tough ones like zh, ch, sh, r, j, q, x in a split second. And all the grammar was easy. The teacher taught him even more advanced grammar like when to move the object in front of the verb. He understood it instantly and could even make a few sentences.

The second man and the third man did just like were average students in the class. They tried and they practiced. There were things they understood well, and there were things not so well.

But the Second man had lots of Chinese friends who were more than willing to help him. When he learned how to say “ni hao. Ni jiao shenme mingzi?” His friends hurriedly explained several other possible ways to greet people and ask their names, and went along to explain how to address different people based on their relationship and different customs and habits in different regions in China. When he learned how to ask “cesuo zai nar?”, his friends hurriedly explained any possible names Chinese could name their toilets and jokes associated with them.

The third man would just go home, review his textbooks, do his homework, listen to the recordings and spend 30 minutes a day learning vocabulary. There were times he wasn’t very much in the mood to study, and there were times he was tempted to do other things, but he carried on. He was blessed with determination.

Two months later, the first man dropped out of the class. He did so well in the class and hardly spent anytime outside of the classroom studying. Although he could understand and comprehend quickly, he had a great deal of trouble retaining and using what he learned so he was soon overwhelmed by it all. He dropped out.

Three months later, the second man had to constantly hide from all his Chinese friends to get any studying done. He was overwhelmed by all the suggestions they made and all the tips they wanted to give him, when he just wanted to practice with them what he learned in class. He quit class eventually because wherever he went, his friends would find him and wouldn’t leave him in peace.

The third man carried on. After he finished the first module, he signed up for the second. A year later, he could talk easily with most Chinese people. He was happy with his result. And he truly thanked the God of Language Learning for blessing him with determination. In language learning, nothing else really mattered.

The moral of this story is: In learning a language, brilliance on grammar and pronunciation will fade out. Helpful friends will make matters worse. What can bring success and satisfaction is determination.

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Is It Still Good to Learn Mandarin in the Middle of an Economic Downturn?

It all started in the summer of 2007. Suddenly, things become gloomier and gloomier. The house markets in many countries went into a long decline. The stock markets in general have evaporated huge amount of wealth. And China couldn’t keep herself out of the trouble either.

Is it still good to learn Mandarin? After all, one of the major reasons why people want to learn Mandarin is to do business in China. But the reality shows us many companies and factories in China have closed down largely due to this economic slow down or recession in the world.

Is this Mandarin learning boom (or fad) over? I don't think so. If learning Mandarin was ever a bubble because of the booming Chinese economy during past years, slowing down economy might provide the best opportunities of learning for those who want to be prepared.

Still, tough time is coming for all of us and it requires tough decisions. We don’t know how long this recession is going to last and how deep it will affect us. Does one want to huddle in the shelter and worry about when the things will turn up, or does one find the courage and continue to learn to prepare for a better time in the future?

A simple conclusion would be: No matter what happens, learn our way out.

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Website Re-branded

Once in a while, something needs changing. This time it is the main website. The site has grown out of its old name, and now re-branded into www.mslmaster.com

It's a better site and easier to navigate and explore the huge amount of information that it hosts.

So, update your bookmarks. The old one will soon become a broken link.

Listening Comprehension

Over the years, I found out that a mark of big improvement over learning a language, is not how fluent you speak, is how well you understand while you are listening.

Can you tell the underlining message under different tones? Can you spot a pun when you hear it? Can you tell the different subtle choices of small words?

Those abilities can show how good a person has come to. Well, in the end, we are meant to listen more. We have two ears, but one mouth.

Get Real!

A couple of days ago, I came across somebody saying:"Learning Mandarin is really easy, as long as you can tell the differences between the four tones." Then he went on and did a demonstration of how the four tones sound like. Apparently, for him, even though he is still yet to manage a simple conversation, he already believes that Mandarin is under his belt.

I really want to tell him:"Get Real! It's not an easy stroll down the park!" But out of politeness, I only said something like: "It's actually very difficult. Be able to tell the four tones is nice, but the difficult stuff is yet to come."

Whoever is broadcasting this "simple" language view is being irresponsible. It's so much like the sub prime mortgage borrowers. They don't know what lies ahead of them. If anyone heads into learning Mandarin because of this, he is behaving like an irresponsible learner. The weight, the stress and the complexity will soon crash him out of the learning path.

What is learning Mandarin really like? It's like running a marathon in a very beautiful place. The road under your feet is winding and bumpy and full of obstacles. But as long as you are making the effort on the way, you will be immensely rewarded. The most breath taking scenery will unfold itself. Flying angels will bestow their best wishes on you. It's a path of realizing your potential and doing what you can do with a great amount of effort. 

Get real and don't be tricked into learning Mandarin under a false perspective. Be very well prepared.

Bird Watchers

Bird watchers have trained their ears by listening over and over again to recordings of bird songs, comparing and contrasting until very subtle differences become apparent.

A great deal of research shows that the ear must be trained to hear just as carefully as the eye to see.

Accent

It's interesting to see how English manipulate letters to create a kind of accent. For example:

'ee 'ees goodlooking, innit?

Well, you certainly can't do the same thing to Chinese. Instead, you have to manipulate words to reflect that. For example:

"他很好看。" can be said in following ways:

他真俊。
他中看。
人家咋这么有样呢。

They all express the same thing, but also represent a certain accent departed from standard Chinese.

Take a natural approach, learning speaking first

Chinese characters have very special characteristic and charisma and often draw people from everywhere in the world to learn them.

Unfortunately, learning Chinese characters is like everything else: practiced by many, mastered by few. A sheer number of characters and the time needed to maintain them active are often obstacles. This is especially true for people who learn characters as their tools to learn speaking. Speaking ability often get drawn back by the limitation of characters.

A natural approach will work much better. Use pinyin to get started with speaking first, and after a certain fluency achieved, start learning reading and writing characters.

Every serious Chinese learners should learn reading and writing. It's just the path one chooses makes quite impact on how enjoyable the learning journey is. If you want to stick to something longer, sometimes choose an easier path will help. Make small incremental improvement over the time beats try to leap a obstacle made of 1000 characters.

The level of podcast

Occasionally I found discussions on which level my podcasts (http://learningmandarinpod.blogspot.com/) are. Most people categorized them as pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate.

I would rather categorize them as real life issue expressed in simple language. Why make things so complicated when you can make them nice and easy, and moreover, easy to understand? I have seen no reason to do so, especially when I'm trying to break a stubborn pattern held among many that vocabulary is everything.

Master Chinese in Three Months!

I would have never believed this. But it happened. Read on:

http://www.ftchinese.com/sc/story_english.jsp?id=001020381&loc=story

Chinese spirit

The devastating earthquake happened last month is starting to fade out from people's attention. This year is full of disasters happening everywhere.

What I am really touched and proud of is Chinese spirit. People don't just sit there and feel sorry for themselves. It's the self-reliance action that people took shows how different Chinese people are.