Mandarin: the new English

[Anonymous]

For most of the last century English has easily been the most popular, and probably the most useful, second language to learn on the planet. In many of Britain’s former colonies English is considered the common unifying language used for government, the courts and business. Is this dominance now being challenged by Mandarin in some regions? Singapore, for example, has four official languages: English, Malay, Tamil and Singaporean Chinese. English has traditionally been the primary language taught in the schools, but recent trends show that Mandarin is rapidly encroaching on this monopoly. Similarly, instruction in Mandarin is preferred to Cantonese in Hong Kong. As a teacher of World Languages I find the following facts, provided by my father, a current learner of Mandarin, particularly interesting.
Mandarin is not really the name of a language. Mandarin actually refers to one of the seven Chinese dialect groups-- Mandarin being the largest of these groups.

Mandarin is more accurately described as Modern Standard Chinese or "Putonghua" to give it its Chinese name.

Modern Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, its grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation reflecting the norms of the capital.
Putonghua literally means "the common dialect" and has proved a powerful force for linguistic and political unity in a country with countless dialects, many of them mutually unintelligible.

Aside from its use in mainland China, MSC has official status in Taiwan and Singapore.

The total number of speakers world-wide is over 800 million, making Mandarin the most widely spoken "language" in the world.

Pinyin was officially adopted by the Chinese in 1958 as a way of writing Chinese using the Roman alphabet.

Today you will see Pinyin everywhere in the big cities, on maps, road signs, shop signs and brand names, although its use is very limited in rural areas.

For students learning Chinese, the sounds are relatively easy to pronounce but one challenging aspect is the use of TONES. In Mandarin you can change the meaning of a word by altering the pitch level (tone) at which it is spoken.

Many words in Mandarin appear to have the same basic pronunciation. What distinguishes these "homophones" is their tonal quality -- the raising and lowering of pitch on certain syllables.

Pinyin uses symbols above the vowel to indicate each tone.

e.g 1st tone--high ma mother
2nd tone--high rising ma hemp

3rd tone--low falling-rising ma horse

4th tone--high falling ma scold

neutral ma = asking a question

an alternative to the last one is the word "dui" (pronounced "dway") which means "right?" or "c'est vrai, n'est-ce pas?"

[Anonymous]

About 7 years ago I had the opportunity to visit China. I was excited and did some reading on China before the trip; and of course, I wanted to learn Mandarin....Yeah right! I purchased some CD's and started studying, I was not interesting in writing it, I just wanted to be able to understand a little bit once in China. Well, I had no choice but to give up. I could not make sense of the language and how it functioned. I figured I needed direct instruction. So; no, I did not learn enough to use any of it in China.

For a while I decided to learn some worlds at least, so I started with numbers. I can recognize some, but there is no way I can pronounce them. Hmmm Maybe later. After taking this class, I would probably go for a language class, even if it is not Mandarin.

[Anonymous]

There is no doubt that Mandarin will be the new English. Someone once told me that if I wanted to learn a new language it should be Mandarin because China was soon to become the world's first power. When my friend Claudia invited me to China, I must admit that I didn't know what to expect. I thought China was going to be rural and underdeveloped. I didn't know I was in for a big surprise. When we arrived to the airport, I was impressed by the architecture and the beauty of it. The building in the city were surprisingly high. Looking around and realizing how developed China was made me believe that China had nothing to envy about the US as far as architecture and development in the major cities. I have no doubt in my mind that China soon will become one of the most influencial contries and cultures in the world. Mandarin, therefore, will be one of the languages requiered to communicate with the rest of the world.

[Anonymous]

Is Mandarin a language that is currently popular or is China the direction the world is heading. English was the unofficial world language but the past decade the dollar has lost strength and so has the English language. THis is an exiting time in our lives. Witnessing a cultural shift and we are expectred to adapt to the new norms or sees to exist.

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

My father has been studying Mandarin for almost a year. An autodidact by preference, he has been striving to achieve this by means of phrase books accompanied by online audio programs for pronunciation and dictionaries. In the past two decades he used this process to learn Italian and Japanese. I interviewed him on the unique challenges he encountered with Mandarin. His main purpose for learning Mandarin is business and travel. Communicative ability, therefore, is paramount. He has no need or desire to learn Chinese writing, nor to understand ideograms. For a transliteration of Chinese words the pinyin system is used, but it is especially important to be able to hear and imitate the sounds from the audio examples. He devotes just over five hours a week to these endeavors learning one useful phrase at a time. He has already enjoyed trying out some of these expressions on recent trips to China. His pronunciation was good enough for some interlocutors to assume he would understand their full-tilt responses. That’s a good start.
This is the first time he has studied a language without much resort to reading and writing. Mandarin uses tonality to create different words with what might seem to be the same word in writing. The four tones in pinyin are identified by some form of accent over the vowel sound. The tones indicate the stress or length of a sound. Grammatically, Mandarin is quite straightforward. The Chinese communicate in mostly short blunt sentences. Verbs do not conjugate. Past and future tenses are implied by the use of adverbs like “tomorrow” or “yesterday”. Nouns do not decline. Pronouns are rarely used except for emphasis. Word order is similar to English: subject, verb, object. Questions are formed by a tag expression at the end of the sentence that sounds like “vu ay”. Negatives are formed by a word sounding like “bu” at the beginning of the sentence.

[Anonymous]

At the previous school I use to teach, the two foreign languages students could chose were Spanish and Mandarin. The Mandarin classes was always the most popular choice. According to the students, this class was very interesting and they loved the books the teacher would have them read. These student would practice the language trough out the school and for some reason wear hello kitty apparel. It is interesting that Mandarin is booming and I almost feel as if I am falling behind. I should perhaps start taking classes.

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