Study Chinese Online in a Better Way
Did you know that the official language of China is Mandarin and not Chinese! A lot of us are not aware of the mentioned fact. The word ‘Mandarin' means the one who commands. The language uses four forms of tones: rising, level, high-rise and falling. These tones are used to distinguish syllables and words of the same sounds in the language. The language is spoken by approximately 800 million people around the world, which is more than any other language!
The language uses Chinese characters called Hànzì and each character has its own meaning and a distinct pronunciation. Any ordinary dictionary in Mandarin will contain approximately 10,000 Hànzì. As most of the Chinese characters depict a picture, often two or more Hànzì are incorporated into one to give a distinct meaning to the word. This clearly proves that learning Mandarin can not be an easy task. The pictures and characters involved in the language make learning difficult.
To make the learning task easy for the beginners there are many books and online tutorials that simplify the Hànzì for you. The Hànzì are often depicted in various color combinations to help the learner distinguish between each easily. Behind every Hànzì there is a story, a story that led to the formation of that Hànzì. For instance, the symbol for ‘to come' resembles the grain of wheat, reason being the wheat used ‘to come' from Europe to China in the ancient era.
The character that depicts a woman was used as a picture to illustrate a wife bowing before her husband. As previously mentioned that two or more characters are integrated to form a different word, when the character for woman is written twice it means ‘argument' and when the character is used thrice it means ‘adultery'. The reason behind this is simple, the ancient Chinese had joint families and the woman in the families used to argue, hence two women characters for argument. Also, an upper class Chinese was allowed to have more than one wife, multiple wives, so three woman characters depicts adultery.
Experts believe that once the learners master the art of identifying the Hànzì, the further tutorials will become easier for them. As these experts say that the basic Chinese characters combine to form the more complex characters. There are many online tutorials that allow you to learn Mandarin from the comfort of your home. However, the challenge to study Chinese online is to select the one that best suits your requirement and simplifies the language for you.
The language uses Chinese characters called Hànzì and each character has its own meaning and a distinct pronunciation. Any ordinary dictionary in Mandarin will contain approximately 10,000 Hànzì. As most of the Chinese characters depict a picture, often two or more Hànzì are incorporated into one to give a distinct meaning to the word. This clearly proves that learning Mandarin can not be an easy task. The pictures and characters involved in the language make learning difficult.
To make the learning task easy for the beginners there are many books and online tutorials that simplify the Hànzì for you. The Hànzì are often depicted in various color combinations to help the learner distinguish between each easily. Behind every Hànzì there is a story, a story that led to the formation of that Hànzì. For instance, the symbol for ‘to come' resembles the grain of wheat, reason being the wheat used ‘to come' from Europe to China in the ancient era.
The character that depicts a woman was used as a picture to illustrate a wife bowing before her husband. As previously mentioned that two or more characters are integrated to form a different word, when the character for woman is written twice it means ‘argument' and when the character is used thrice it means ‘adultery'. The reason behind this is simple, the ancient Chinese had joint families and the woman in the families used to argue, hence two women characters for argument. Also, an upper class Chinese was allowed to have more than one wife, multiple wives, so three woman characters depicts adultery.
Experts believe that once the learners master the art of identifying the Hànzì, the further tutorials will become easier for them. As these experts say that the basic Chinese characters combine to form the more complex characters. There are many online tutorials that allow you to learn Mandarin from the comfort of your home. However, the challenge to study Chinese online is to select the one that best suits your requirement and simplifies the language for you.
