Learning Chinese #1
Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. However, many people are interested in learning this language. If you are one of them, there are several things you have to know before learning Chinese.
Hànzì VS Pīnyīn
What is hànzì? What is pīnyīn? What is the difference
between them? If you are someone who learns Mandarin for the first time, you
will find these two terms. As you might already know that Chinese does not use
the alphabet in its writing but strokes, those strokes refer to as Hànzì; while
Pīnyīn is letters of the alphabet that refer to how to read hànzì. Most pīnyīn
are written above hànzì.
Currently, hànzì is divided into two types, namely
traditional hànzì and simplified hànzì. The Chinese government officially
simplified traditional Hànzì so that reading skills in Chinese increase.
However, there are still some countries that use traditional Hànzì, such as
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao.
Tone
In Chinese, tone is called as shēngdiào (声调). Chinese
uses tone to know the meaning of the word in speaking or listening. Briefly,
different tones = different meanings, for example, jī (鸡, chicken) and jǐ (几, how many).
They certainly have the same letters, but different meanings, right? Hence,
they should be distinguished by the tone of the words when they are pronounced.
There are five tones used, namely flat, raising,
falling-raising, falling, and neutral (you can see the symbol of the tones in
the picture attached). In writing, the tones are written above pīnyīn. The tone
cannot be written or pronounced carelessly because there are some rules in
writing or pronouncing the tone. The rules of tone position and tone change
will be discussed in the next chapter.
Stroke order
Writing Chinese is like drawing. There are straight lines
and curves in it. In writing Chinese, you cannot write in the way you like
because you must follow the stroke order of the words. It means that, besides
remembering the hànzì, pīnyīn, tone, and meaning of a word, you also have to
remember the stroke order of a word. It seems like too many things that you
have to remember in learning Chinese. However, in my opinion, stroke order will
help you to remember the hànzì easier. You can see the rules of the stroke
order in the picture attached. Also, there are some hànzì which do not follow
the rule, like 这
(zhè) which means “this”. To write that word, it starts from right to the left.
P.S. If you have any feedback, please comment here, and let’s learn together.
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