Learn Chinese: 11/23/08

Friday, November 28, 2008

chinese forum

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Is Chinese Really So Hard To Learn As A Second Language?

Many foreign friends of mine are complaining to me that Chinese is so hard to learn: the ridiculously difficult writing system, the confusing four tones, the extensive system of measure words, so a lot of things to memorize… It seems that I should thank God just for being born Chinese. Is Chinese really that hard to learn as a foreign language?

Actually, I don’t think so. Chinese grammar is much simpler if compared to that of the European languages. English speakers sometimes complain that languages like Spanish have a complicated grammar (masculine and feminine genders, verb conjugations, etc), whereas the Chinese language has little or no bound morphology and there are no grammatical paradigms to memorize. Each word has a fixed and single form: verbs do not take prefixes or suffixes showing the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject. Nouns do not take prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their case. I’m not trying to tell you that Chinese has no grammar; what I means is that due to the lack of inflectional morphology, Chinese grammar is mainly concerned with how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Plus each Chinese character pronounced in one syllable, that’s why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle.

Probably, you would say that the above is far from enough to convince you; okay, I’ve got one more encouraging and authoritative evidence for you. A couple of days ago I fortunately came across one piece of inspiring news when reading Beijing Times: Less than 1,000 Chinese characters allow you to read 90% of the current Chinese publication, according to a survey conducted by the Education Ministry and Language Commission of China. The findings of this survey is claimed to be based on 900 million characters used in more than 8.9 million files chosen from newspapers, magazines, the Internet and television. Nowadays, the Chinese media is using fewer characters, and to understand 90 percent of the content in publications, you need only to know about 900 of around 50,000 individual characters that are made up of Written Chinese. On the other hand, how many words are there in English? Almost 100,000 and it’s still on the rise. One important reason for this is that Chinese characters, unlike English words, are mainly to represent meaning, not pronunciation, and what’s more, many characters are archaic and some found only once in the whole history of the written language, such as the names of people or places. An average Chinese university graduate may know only about 6,000.

Now, would those all above relieve you a little bit in your Chinese language study? Hope so, but do not misinterpret this: I am not in any intention to convince you that Chinese is very easy to learn or other languages like English are much harder; what I mean is that Chinese is really not that difficult as you imagined or heard about, it’s just different from your mother tongue, but difference does not necessarily mean difficulty, right? And that hard Chinese idea won’t be of any help in your study. Trust yourself, once that fear factor is overcome, the language is actually not that hard to learn. Good luck with your Chinese language study.

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The distribution of Chinese language

The majority of China�s population speaks the Chinese macro-language, formed by a diversity of Han native dialects. Nearly 1.2 billion speakers are part of the Chinese family language distributed in all regions with its own tonal and analytic variants.

Most Chinese speak Mandarin (c. 885 million speakers), outnumbering any other language in the world. It is followed by Wu (c. 90 million), Cantonese (c. 71 million) and Min (c. 70 million). The different tones and syntax of the dialects convert them into languages mutually unintelligible.

Standard Mandarin (Putonghua), which is based on a Mandarin dialect of Beijing, is China�s official language spoken by 70 percent of the people, principally in northern and central China. Standard Mandarin is also an official language in Taiwan, Singapure and the United Nations.

Aside from Mandarin dialects, there are six other Chinese dialect groups, spoken principally in southern and southeastern China such as the Wu dialects, spoken in the Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang area; the Yue dialects (also known as Cantonese), spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong (together with English) and Macau (together with Portuguese); and the Min Nan dialects, spoken in southern Fujian, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by many Chinese descent around the world.

Although the Han dialects are inarticulate in their spoken forms, they have shared a common written method for more than three millennia. Ancient literature and history has helped to keep together the inhabitants of northern, central, and southern China. The problem of the Chinese written language is that it is based on individual symbols called characters (80,000 words), each of which represents an idea or thing without any alphabet.

The Communist government has developed a Romanization system using the Latin alphabet, called Pinyin (a representation of the spoken sounds of Putonghua) since the 1950s, and it is now in general use by people, which are urged to learn in the schools throughout the country.

There are many Chinese minorities which still speak his own language-dialect, like Mongolian, Tibetan, Miao (Hmong), Yi, Uygur, and Kazakh. These languages traditionally didn't have a written form but today the government has encouraged the improvement of written scripts for these native dialects, using pinyin.

Main Chinese dialects	Where spoken
Guan (Mandarin)	In the northern, central and western regions. Includes Bejing, Tianjin, Hebei Province, Henan Province, Shandong Province, Shaanxi Province, Jilin Province and Inner Mongolia among others. North Mandarin, as found in Beijing, is the basis of the modern standard language (c. 885 million).
Wu	In the east-central region at Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province and parts of Anhui Province. It includes Shanghainese (c. 90 million).
Yue (Cantonese)	In the south at Guangdong Province including Hong Kong and Macau, and parts of Guangxi Province (c. 71 million).
Min	In the south-east at Fujian Province, Hainan Province and parts of Zhejiang Province and Guangdong Province. It includes Taiwanese (c. 70 million).
Xiang	In the south-central region at Hunan Province and parts of Guangxi Province (c. 36 million).
Hakka	Widespread, especially between Fujian Province and Guangxi Province (c. 34 million).
Gan	In the north at Shanxi Province and parts of Hebei Province (c. 31 million).

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Is Chinese Really So Hard To Learn As A Second Language?

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Many foreign friends of mine are complaining to me that Chinese is so hard to learn: the ridiculously difficult writing system, the confusing four tones, the extensive system of measure words, so a lot of things to memorize… It seems that I should thank God just for being born Chinese. Is Chinese really that hard to learn as a foreign language?

Actually, I don’t think so. Chinese grammar is much simpler if compared to that of the European languages. English speakers sometimes complain that languages like Spanish have a complicated grammar (masculine and feminine genders, verb conjugations, etc), whereas the Chinese language has little or no bound morphology and there are no grammatical paradigms to memorize. Each word has a fixed and single form: verbs do not take prefixes or suffixes showing the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject. Nouns do not take prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their case. I’m not trying to tell you that Chinese has no grammar; what I means is that due to the lack of inflectional morphology, Chinese grammar is mainly concerned with how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Plus each Chinese character pronounced in one syllable, that’s why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle.

Probably, you would say that the above is far from enough to convince you; okay, I’ve got one more encouraging and authoritative evidence for you. A couple of days ago I fortunately came across one piece of inspiring news when reading Beijing Times: Less than 1,000 Chinese characters allow you to read 90% of the current Chinese publication, according to a survey conducted by the Education Ministry and Language Commission of China. The findings of this survey is claimed to be based on 900 million characters used in more than 8.9 million files chosen from newspapers, magazines, the Internet and television. Nowadays, the Chinese media is using fewer characters, and to understand 90 percent of the content in publications, you need only to know about 900 of around 50,000 individual characters that are made up of Written Chinese. On the other hand, how many words are there in English? Almost 100,000 and it’s still on the rise. One important reason for this is that Chinese characters, unlike English words, are mainly to represent meaning, not pronunciation, and what’s more, many characters are archaic and some found only once in the whole history of the written language, such as the names of people or places. An average Chinese university graduate may know only about 6,000.

Now, would those all above relieve you a little bit in your Chinese language study? Hope so, but do not misinterpret this: I am not in any intention to convince you that Chinese is very easy to learn or other languages like English are much harder; what I mean is that Chinese is really not that difficult as you imagined or heard about, it’s just different from your mother tongue, but difference does not necessarily mean difficulty, right? And that hard Chinese idea won’t be of any help in your study. Trust yourself, once that fear factor is overcome, the language is actually not that hard to learn. Good luck with your Chinese language study.

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It Cannot Hurt To Learn Chinese

It today's day and age, many people are learning a second, third or even forth language. There are probably many reasons to learn languages other than your own. Some people just love learning about foreign cultures, and therefore they choose to study a foreign language to help them understand a culture even further. Others learn a language such as Spanish or Chinese to help prepare them for a career that they hope to have or for preparation to travel to a foreign land.

If you are thinking of starting to learn another language, regardless of your age or of other languages you have learned, you should consider learning Chinese. There are many great reasons to learn Chinese. One of the biggest reasons that I, as an artist, loved learning Chinese was because of how artistic and beautiful to the eye the written Chinese language is. When I entered my first Chinese class I could not get over how intriguing and wonderful it looked on the chalk board. In fact, as the weeks of the class went on and I was getting frustrated by my lack of ability, it was the physical beauty of written Chinese that kept me going.

Another great reason to start learning Chinese is that the nation and people of China are undoubtedly rising up to be some of the world's most powerful people. Business, travel and trade are all increasing with China, so it will not hurt you to start learning Chinese. In fact, Chinese could very well become the next world language and be used with the frequency of English. If you are ever considering international business or trade, or if you just like to travel, then consider seriously how learning Chinese could be of benefit to you.

There are many ways to actually start learning Chinese. You can purchase books at a local bookstore that will give you the basics to start learning, or you can even buy video or dvd sets that will help you learn. An even better way to learn Chinese, however, is to enroll in a Chinese class at a local college or university. Getting in the classroom and being surrounded by other students might be the best way to really learn the Chinese language. So take some time to research the opportunities for Chinese that exist in your area. Or perhaps you have a Chinese friend that will agree to give you personal lessons. Even better.

Realize that learning another language such as Chinese can be fun and is definitely valuable for anyone. Start the process today and you won't be sorry.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Essentials infos about shanghai

Shanghai lies in central-eastern China, exposed to the East China
Sea. Shanghai, the largest city in China, attracts visitors like a magnet. They come for its culture, its history and its booming business sector. It is one of the best locations forliving and working in China. Not only
an exciting city with world class facilities and good living conditions, but
it is also a culturally rich place with diverse and dynamic international communities.

Local Time

China has one time zone. Shanghai is 8 hours ahead of GMT (London), 7 hours of Paris and 13 hours of EST (New York), substract 1 hour during summer time.

Language

Shanghainese generally speak Mandarin (Putonghua) Chinese (the official language of the country) and Shanghai dialect. While there are many different spoken dialects in China, there is only one written language.

Weather

January	February	March	April	May	June
3.3°C 37.5°F	4.3°C 39.7°F	8.2°C 46.9°F	13.8°C 56.8°F	18.9°C 66.0°F	23.2°C 73.8°F

July	August	September	October	November	December
27.4°C 81.3°F	27.5°C 81.4°F	23.2°C 73.8°F	17.7°C 63.9°F	11.7°C 53.1°F	5.9°C 42.6°F

Chinese currency

The Chinese currency is called Renminbi (meaning People's Currency) and it is abbreviated as RMB.
It is denominated in yuan, referred as "kuai" in every speech.

A Shopping Paradise

Nanjing Road, known as "China's No.1 Street", the reconstructed Huaihai Road, Jinling Road, Xiang Yang market, North Sichuan Road, the Yuyuan Garden shopping and tourist area, the Ever Bright City Commercial Centre, Xujiahui Commercial Centre, and Zhangyang Road Commercial Centre in Pudong are packed with rows of shops arrayed with large collections of merchandise that are a feast to the eyes and meet the demands of different classes of domestic and foreign customers.

A Heaven for Gourmets

There are over a thousand restaurants serving the famous 16 styles of Chinese food, such as Beijing, Sichuan, Guangdong, Yangzhou, Fujian, etc. There are also French, Italian, Russian, English, German, Japanese, Indian and other kinds of foreign flavored cuisines, genuine Muslim food and vegetarian food.
In Shanghai, you can have a taste of all kind of food in the world.

How to move around in shanghai.TAXI,SUBWAY,BUS WALKING IN SHANGHAI

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TAXI

The most common way to travel around Shanghai is the taxi; it is clearly the most comfortable way of travelling. Taxis are plentiful (50,000 taxis running in Shanghai City) and are available 24 hours a day. Compared to other large international cities, taxi fares in Shanghai are amazingly cheap.
Travelling to a close area would cost less than 15 RMB. Note that there is no tipping in taxi.

Usually taxi drivers do not speak English so be sure to have your destination written in Chinese.

All taxi drivers will provide a receipt showing your place of origin and your destination if requested. Always ask for a taxi receipt ("fapiao" in chinese), as it will help you trace any lost items if you leave them in a taxi.

Like any big city, be prepared for an influx of traffic at the morning and evening rush hour:
it can be difficult to get a taxi during this time.
The starting price for the meter is 11 RMB (14 RMB after 11pm) and it increases every 500 m travelled after 3km.

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SUBWAY

The underground is very clean, modern and inexpensive (from 3 to 6 RMB according to destination) but gets very crowded especially at weekends. Maps, announcements, and directions are all provided in both Chinese and English, making the subway very user-friendly for foreign visitors. The subway starts operation from around 5am to 11pm, depending on line and direction.

Shanghai has 8 metro lines (others are underconstruction), while the underground metro system is the fastest and most efficient way to move around the city, be warned that it is quite an experience for a foreigner. There is a complete absence of public etiquette in entry/exit customs here, so be prepared for some rude pushing and shoving as the train doors open and close.

Click here to see the Shanghai subway map

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BUS

There are more than 1,100 bus lines in Shanghai. Buses. If you want to travel for a cheap price, the bus is the most common way. Buses run every 10-15 minutes from 4:30 am to midnight. There are plenty of buses and conveniently go to anywhere of Shanghai, but there are often packed to the hilt and at times, impossible to board especially at 8:00 -9:00 am and 5:00-6:00 pm when people are going to work or back to home.
The bus system in Shanghai is like a spider web. Though it may take a lot of time, you can go from one place to another without many problems on a bus. The bus fees range from 2 RMB – 3 RMB per bus ride inside the city. You can either pay in cash or use the Shanghai Public Transportation Card.

WALKING http://www.chinesetime.cn learn chinese

Walking in downtown Shanghai is one of the most exciting experiences. Shanghai is famous for its ancient alleys and buildings. To find these rare attractions, walking is the most interesting way. Though it is impossible to tour all of Shanghai by foot, several parts of downtown are worthwhile for a walk. Several buildings from the early 20th century still stand in downtown Shanghai, but are rarely publicized. Therefore, a walk in the streets of downtown Shanghai would provide one with the opportunity to observe these buildings as well as experience the true culture of Shanghai.
There are plenty of sidewalks where pedestrians can stroll at leisure. Watch out for loose tiles which are difficult to see at night.
Be careful: pedestrian crossing offers no safety; cars will not stop for you. Try to cross at traffic lights, remembering that traffic can turn right at any time regardless of a red light.

Click here to see the Shanghai Map

TIP http://www.chinesetime.cn learn chinese
The best way to travel in Shanghai is to buy the "Shanghai Public Transportation Card" operated by SMTCC.
It's 30 RMB at any subway station, and at the cashier you can add money all up to 999 RMB. Unfortunately the card will not give a discount like the Hongkong MTR Octopus Card, but it will allow you to avoid the often long queues in front of the ticket booths.
Don't loose the card - there is NO code or anything to prevent others to use it. It is valid for ferries, taxis, trains and buses. Some bus lines still require cash, so you need a few RMB in your pocket.
For taxi, remember to show your card to the driver before you start the ride in the taxis, not all have this function up and working.
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A growing interest for the chinese

A growing interest for the language
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More and more foreigners are showing interest in learning Chinese
as China increases exchanges with the outside world.
More than 9,600 foreign students from 113 countries came
to Shanghai to learn Chinese in 2005.

It is estimated that the number of foreigners coming to China
to learn the language over the last few years has maintained an
average annual growth rate of 35 percent.

Universities welcome Western http://www.chinesetime.cn learn chinese
students for the extra revenue
they bring. Courses usually
cost about US$1000 a semester.
Accommodation costs around
US$10 a day.

In Shanghai, there are more
than 10 universities offering
Chinese language courses.
So, the problem for many
foreigners is to select one
between all these universities. http://www.chinesetime.cn learn chinese

Students are usually given a placement test before the course
starts and administered an HSK upon completing the course.
Classes are generally in the morning Monday through Friday,
8:30-12:30. Intensive classes have an additional 2 hours a day from 2-4. Optional classes are available, including tai-chi, calligraphy, HSK　prep, etc.

Students are predominantly from Asia: Korean (60-85%), Japanese (15-35%), Thai or Indonesian. Westerners are a definite minority.
There is no official interaction or activities between short term
students and chinese students on campus.

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