Chinese phrases 100 (Japanese Edition)

A Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker will not be able to understand each other, but either can generally read what the other writes. Even a speaker of Japanese or Korean will recognise many characters. While formal written Chinese is the same everywhere, there can be significant differences when the "dialects" are written in colloquial form. For example Cantonese as used in Hong Kong, more informal phrasings are used in everyday speech than what would be written.

Thus, there are some extra characters that are sometimes used in addition to the common characters to represent the spoken dialect and other colloquial words. One additional complication is that mainland China and Singapore use simplified characters , a long-debated change completed by the mainland Chinese government in to facilitate the standardization of language across China's broad minority groups and sub-dialects of Mandarin and other Chinese languages. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and some overseas Chinese still use the traditional characters.

In addition, the Dungan language, which is spoken in some parts of neighbouring countries, is considered to be a variant of Mandarin but uses the Cyrillic alphabet instead of Chinese characters. About one fifth of the people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language. It is a tonal language that is related to Burmese and Tibetan.

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Although Japanese and Korean use Chinese written characters the spoken languages are not related to Chinese. Also, the unrelated Vietnamese language which uses a distinctive version of the Latin alphabet language has borrowed many words from Chinese and at one time used Chinese characters as well. Those heading for Taiwan or Southern Fujian may find the Minnan useful as well. Chinese, like most other Asian languages such as Arabic , is famous for being difficult to learn.

While English speakers would initially have problems with the tones and recognizing the many different characters Chinese has no alphabet , the grammar is very simple and can be picked up very easily. Most notably, Chinese grammar does not have conjugation, tenses, gender, plurals or other grammatical rules found in other major languages such as English or French.

The pronunciation guide below uses Hanyu pinyin, the official romanization of the People's Republic of China. Until recently, Taiwan used the Wade-Giles system, which is quite different, then switched to Tongyong pinyin, only slightly different from Hanyu pinyin, and now officially uses Hanyu pinyin just like the People's Republic. Pinyin allows very accurate pronunciation of Chinese if you understand how it works , but the way that it uses letters like q , x , c , z and even i is not at all intuitive to the English speaker.

Studying the pronunciation guide below carefully is thus essential. After you master the pronunciation you still may not be understood, its time to move on to the next challenge, speaking the accurate tones. Also, beware of the spelling rules listed in the exceptions below.

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Chinese stops distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated , not voiceless and voiced as in English. Aspirated sounds are pronounced with a distinctive puff of air as they are pronounced in English when at the beginning of a word, while unaspirated sounds are pronounced without the puff, as in English when found in clusters. Place a hand in front of your mouth and compare p it aspirated with s p it unaspirated to see the difference. If you think that is a fairly intimidating repertoire, rest assured that many Chinese people, particularly those who are not native Mandarin speakers, will merge many of the sounds above especially q with ch and j with zh.

There is a fairly large number of niggling exceptions to the basic rules above, based on the position of the sound:. Where do I put my tone marks? If you are confused by how to put tone marks above the Hanyu Pinyin, follow the steps below:. Always insert tone marks above the vowels. If there is more than one vowel letter, follow the steps below:.

There are four tones in Mandarin that must be followed for proper pronunciation. If you are not used to tonal languages, never underestimate the importance of these tones. In other words, pronounced like does not imply meaning. While Mandarin speakers also vary their tone just like English speakers do to differentiate a statement from a question and convey emotion, this is much more subtle than in English. Do not try it until you have mastered the basic tones.

All phrases shown in here use the simplified characters used in mainland China and Singapore. See Chinese phrasebook - Traditional for a version using the traditional characters still used on Taiwan and Hong Kong.

To be or not to be? Chinese does not have words for "yes" and "no" as such; instead, questions are typically answered by repeating the verb.

See a Problem?

Here are common examples:. Asking a question in Chinese There are many ways to ask a question in Chinese. Here are two easy ones for travelers Chinese numbers are very regular. While Arabic numerals have become more common, the Chinese numerals shown below are still used, particularly in informal contexts like markets.

Instant Phrasebook Series Paperback: Tuttle Publishing; 2 edition February 2, Language: Start reading Instant Chinese on your Kindle in under a minute.

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