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Learning Chinese¡¡ Chinese language is one of the oldest languages of the world. The written language of China can be dated back to the Shang dynasty (1766-1123 BC), which was more than 3000 years ago. The Chinese pinyin, which represents the pronunciation of the language, was developed later to help westerners to better master the pronunciation. Pinyin system uses the same western alphabet to spell out and pronounce Chinese words. By 1892, the Chinese characters were all transliterated into pinyin except names of people and locations. In 1977, Chinese government formally requested the United Nations to use pinyin system to name all geographical locations in China. To learn the Chinese language, most foreigners begin will pinyin, which give them an idea of the pronunciation by using their familiar western alphabet. Most people found it is easier to start with pinyin. However, mainland China and Taiwan developed different systems of pinyin. The same characters may have two different sets of pinyin according to mainland China spelling and Taiwan spelling. To write the Chinese characters usually is more challenging but fun for lots of people. The Chinese language use single distinct characters to represent each word of the vocabulary. The same character can have up to ten different meanings in ten different word combinations. A large dictionary of Chinese can contain more than 40,000 characters. For everyday usage to read newspaper, one needs only know about 2000 to 3000 words. The written language has experienced a lot of changes along history, but the main form of characters has remained. To write the Chinese character, one must understand that they are formed by straight lines rather than the alphabet. All the characters can be thought of as a kind of ¡°square¡± form. Indeed, in the elementary schools in China, the pupils¡¯ first need to learn to write the Chinese words in a square formatted notebooks. To foreigners, it is important to distinguish different shapes of the characters since sometime they only differ in one single line. To learn the different pen-stokes will help to write a whole character. Once you grasp it, it will be very interesting to write in this language. Furthermore, it is most fun to do beautiful calligraphy work by using a brush and do the hand stokes. The origins of the characters were pictures. In ancient China people created the characters that are very pictorial. As times passed, more and more characters were created and even the originally ones can evolve to have different meanings. Nowadays, there are two systems of Chinese characters existed in the world: the simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. In mainland China, the Beijing government requires people to read and write in simplified form, while at Hongkong, Taiwan, Marlysia, Japan, Korean and some other areas, people still use the traditional Chinese as written language. The official newspapers, books, and magazines published at mainland China were in the simplified form. While in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other areas or countries, traditional form is used. The Chinese grammar is also very different from the western languages. Unlike English, the Chinese language does not have the verb change its form when used in different time tense-passed, current or future. Additional words are added into the sentence to clarify the tense. Chinese nouns also do not have a single or plural form. One more thing need to be mentioned is that there are different dialects in China. With Han people the majority, most of them speak Mandarin, or Putonghua. With 55 different national minority groups, they each have their own spoken language, but fewe with written one. Tibetan language is among the ones that have both spoken and written forms. According to different areas, the dialects are different. The mostly spoken dialect is probably Cantonese, spoken in Guandong, Hong Kong, and most Chinatowns in the United States. It might be even harder to learn Cantonese, but it¡¯s sure possible if one tried hard enough. In learning Chinese, it is very helpful to watch Chinese TV program. Either sitcoms, MTVs, or movies would help with the study of Chinese. One can watch the program in Chinese language with English subtitles, or watch TV in English but has Chinese subtitles. They help people learn spoken Chinese and written language as well. As we know, that to learn any language, it is important to practice in all the four areas: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Leaning Chinese is of no exception. One tip on leaning Chinese is to make some Chinese friends, this way one has much more chances to use the language. Finding private tutor is an option too.
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