How to learn Mandarin

Things you need to know on how to learn Mandarin

When you begin to learn Chinese, you will most likely already know that Mandarin characters are common for when you are writing however this does not aid you in pronouncing them when you are a beginner and this can quite often be the hardest part.

So then, as a freshman starting out at how to learn Mandarin you need to be very familiar with the pinyin which is the system for writing out the sounds of the mandarin language by using Roman calligraphy. When you learn Mandarin, you will discover that this serves the purpose of representing the sounds in a phonetic way.

This first step on your how to learn Mandarin journey will serve as the foundation for all of the other things you will learn so getting familiarized with the pinyin is your first goal.

how to learn mandarin tones

Within the Chinese language, every syllable has a certain tone and if the tone changes this means the syllable can also become variable. So this is the main secret of how to learn Mandarin successfully as sometimes it’s not what you say but how you say it and getting the right tone for what you are saying can keep you away from offending Chinese native speakers and get you closer to respectfully communicating with them.

There are four tones within the mandarin language which are plainly called ‘First tone’, ‘Second tone’, ‘Third tone’, and finally ‘Fourth tone’.
The best way to get your head around these is through constantly listening to them, conditioning your mind and speaking pattern to take on these unfamiliar tones so that you get used to them and in time they will become second nature.

how to learn mandarin characters

How quickly you want to learn the characters is really determined by how serious you are about studying Chinese. You can either lay off them for a while or dive right in to learning the beautifully constructed mandarin characters. When you are on your course you will find that all written materials employ the use of Chinese characters, alongside the pinyin where you will find there are two types – simplified and traditiona.

Simplified are used in the modernized, mainland parts of China and on the other hand you have areas such as Hong Kong that will use traditional characters. You may want to begin your how to learn mandarin learning experience with the simplified characters as these are much easier to grasp and get used to.

You will begin to become familiar with strokes over time, which is what all Mandarin characters are made up of. This will then lead you to grasping the stroke order, which is the arrangement of the strokes.

So as you can see, when you enroll on a how to learn mandarin course, you will be educated according to your level and what you want to achieve.