Pre-Lesson 1: Learning B P M F Song from Peter s1

Pre-Lesson 2: The Basics of Chinese Language (2-17-08)

Students Reading: (Show Peter’s picture with Pinyin saying: Shénmė shì zhōngwén? Hànyǚ? )

The Chinese language you are learning is Hànyǚ or Zhōngwén. It’s also called Pŭtōnghùa or Mandarin Chinese. How can it have 4 different names?

Hànyǚ means the language used by Han people, the majority of Chinese about 90% of the population. China is slightly smaller than U.S. in total area but close to 5 times of the U.S. population! There are total 56 ethnic groups. All ethnic groups have their own language. In order to communicate efficiently, Hànyǚ, the ethnic language of Han tribe, is the official Chinese language. Zhōnggúo is China in Chinese language. Therefore, Zhōngwén is the language spoken by the people. The term Pŭtōnghùa means a common language, while Mandarin Chinese is the Mandarin dialect spoken by northern and southwestern Chinese. Isn’t it amazing? All these 4 names apply to the Chinese language you are learning.

Who uses Chinese language in our world?

Currently, people outside of main land China also use Zhōngwén, such as people in Taiwan, Singapore, and China towns all over the world. In the ancient time, many nations in Asia used Chinese characters as written language, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Today Japanese still use kanji originated from Chinese characters in their writing. As for modern Korean and Vietnamese language, they’ve developed their own spelling systems and no longer using Chinese characters. According to The World Almanac, there is more people speaking Chinese than either Spanish or English on Earth. It’s also one of the six official language used by the United Nation along with Arabic, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Based on the trend of language learning in schools around the world, there will be more people using this language when we grow up.

(Wei-yun’s note: Should we add a world map, marking areas with people speaking Chinese? And a bar graph comparing the amount of people speaking major languages in the world, adapted from the data in 2007 World Almanac? )

1 What are the major difference between Chinese language and English?

Are you curious about how Chinese language work? When I first came to the U.S., I had to learn English from the very beginning. That was really difficult for me because in my own language, Chinese, there is no gender, no tense, no singular nor plural form of nouns, and no need to conjugate verbs (changing verb according to people and tense). It took me sometime to get use to all these changes needed in English. My friend told me there are even more of these changes in Spanish. So, I think learning speaking Chinese probably will be easy for you especially after you mastered the pīnyīn and tones. But, Chinese language has no spelling. Pīnyīn is only a tool to teach you how to pronounce the sound. The written form of Chinese is roughly square-shaped graphic design called character (字 zì).

When did the written Chinese language started on history? How did it change through the years?

According to the legend, Chāng Jíe, an official recorder of the Yellow Emperor, created Chinese characters over five thousand years ago. Gradually, these characters evolved into symbols called Oracle Bone Script. They were carved on bones and tortoise shells around thirty-three hundred years ago. By 221 B.C., Qínshĭhuángdì, The First Emperor of China, unified all the kingdoms and ordered everyone to write Chinese characters in the same style. Starting then, written Chinese changed little in shape. However, new characters have been added on over the years. The first dictionary – Shūo Wén Jǐe Zì written during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.) contains 9,000 characters. There are about 86,000 characters listed in a dictionary published in 1994!

How many characters do I need to learn to be able to read?

Actually, only about 3,500 characters are used in daily life. Some characters are used much more frequently than others. When learning Chinese, teacher always starts from teaching the most frequently used words to make learning efficient. A well-educated Chinese person masters about 6,000 to 7,000 characters. What about the others 80,000 characters? You will not see them unless you do research on ancient Chinese literatures.

2 How did Chinese people create so many characters?

There are 6 basic ways to create characters. The attached table shows you the name of these methods and examples of each.

Six types of How were they Examples Notes Fun with words characters created? 1. xiàng xíng zì Draw the basic 木, 人, 水, and It is the oldest Can you match shape of things. 口 way of creating up examples characters. with these Pictographs. meanings? Mouth, people, water, and wood? 2. Zhǐ shì zì Create 木 added a line It’s created Can you match pictograph with to become 本, along the 本 and 大 with an indicative 人 added a line original either origin or sign added pictographs. to become大 big? 3. Hùi yì zì Combining 日(sun) and月 The sound of Can you match existing (moon) together the created 明 and 尖 with characters to for 明; 小 words are not either tip or create new (small) and 大 the same as bright? meaning. either of the (big) for 尖 original words 4. Xíng shēng Combining 父 (dad) with Over 90% of Which word is zì existing 巴 (symbol Chinese mother? Which characters to with ba sound) characters are word is father? create new for 爸; in this category. How do you meaning still say mother and 女(female) with keep the sound father? 馬 of one of the (symbol part. with ma sound) for 媽 5. Zhuǎn zhù zì Change parts of 考 (test, kǎo) This is more Both 開 and 關 character to changed to 老 frequent than have a common create new (old, lǎo); Jĭa jìe zì. part 門 (mén). meaning. 開 (open, kāi) What do you changed to 關 think 門 looks (close down, like? guān) 6. Jĭa jìe zì Borrowing a 還 (still, hái) is Very seldom to What sound do word for borrowed for see words in you think 環 another 還 (return, this group. will have? meaning and huán) Hái or huán? sound.

3 How to use various characters to make vocabulary?

Every single Chinese character has only one syllable. A very unique situation about Chinese characters is that many different characters may sound exactly the same. There fore it is necessary to combine characters into a term to make the meaning clear.

For example: The sound diàn can be 店 (store). There fore, shāngdiàn (商店) is a general store and shūdiàn (書店) is a book store.

The sound diàn can also be 電 (electricity). Diànhùa (電話) is telephone and diànshi (電玩) is video game.

When you learn Chinese characters you’ll see your vocabulary increases quickly because of the different ways of combining them into terms.

How do you make sentences in Chinese?

I always think Chinese characters are similar to individual Lego pieces, when you link them together, you can build many things. So when you link the Chinese characters together, in the right order of course, you can make sentences or questions. a. To use STPVO general structure: The right order means arranging the English sentence “I study Chinese in school this year.” as “I this year in school study Chinese.” The time (T) and place (P) need to be placed before the action (V for verb). S indicates subject, and O indicates object. b. To make negative statement: If you want to say no or not, add bù sound before the V. For example: Learn (xúe) changed to not learn (bù xúe). Good (hǎo) changed to not good (bù hǎo). c. To make questions: There are two ways to ask “Do you learn Chinese?” One is to add a mȧ sound at the end of a straight statement of “You study Chinese”. The other is to use a positive negative combination of verb. 1. Nĭ xúe Zhōngwén. ------ Nĭ xúe Zhōngwén mȧ? 2. Nĭ xúe Zhōngwén.------ Nĭ xúe bù xúe Zhōngwén?

4 d. To change from I to you, he, she and it:

Wǒ Nǐ Tā Tā (I) (you) (he or she) (it) shì Wǒ shì Nǐ shì Tā shì Tā shì (am, is, are) (I’m) (you’re) (he’s or she’s) (It’s) mén Wǒ mén Nǐ mén Tā mén Tā mén (plural) (we, us) (you all) (they, them) (they, them) dē Wǒ dē Nǐ dē Tā dē Tā dē (possessive) (my, mine) (your, yours) (his, hers) (its)

e. To specify past or future:

A sound gùo or lē is added after the action word to indicate it has happened. I learned Chinese. Wǒ xúe gùo Zhōngwén. Wǒ xúe lē Zhōngwén. Wǒ xúe gùo Zhōngwén lē.

A sound of yào or hùi is added before the action word for future tense. I want to learn Chinese. Wǒ yào xúe Zhōngwén. I’ll learn Chinese. Wǒ hùi xúe Zhōngwén.

Now, you are ready to go into the adventure of MAGIC CHINESE with us. Let the fun begin!