Learn Chinese on your own. Mandarin Chinese for beginners from scratch

Do you know how many characters there are in Chinese?
And why does the hieroglyph "mother" consist of "woman" and "horse"?
What is the most common name in China?

Do you want to know about all this?

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Main text
Review of new words
Lexical and grammatical commentary
Tests and exercises to consolidate the studied material

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Translation of the Lingholic article

When I started learning Chinese in 2009, I followed the “traditional” path of learning a foreign language. I attended classes, took notes, sat in a cramped apartment in downtown Taipei, sketching hundreds of characters. The training progressed, but I was exhausted and bored. There was not enough motivation to go to class, knowing that each one ended with a homework assignment of dozens of written exercises. Familiar situation?

I was about to quit my studies when one day I accidentally overheard a classmate talking about an online podcast they were listening to. It turned out that there are 3 or 4 programs with which to createvirtual classrooms.Those who wish to learn Chinese gather there. I tested these programs and I liked them so much that after 2-3 years I created a virtual Chinese language class for myself.

Now I will share with you some of the ways to create such virtual classrooms. Hopefully this will help you regain motivation, streamline learning, and enjoy your journey towards fluency in Chinese. Deal?

8 websites and programs for learning Chinese - learn Chinese on your own from scratch

In a world where smartphones are everywhere and high-speed Internet is a click away from the user, the study of foreign languages has changed dramatically. Today it is not necessary to study in classes; mobile applications and websites provide an opportunity to study anytime, anywhere. So no more excuses for running out of time!

I used the following eight methods on the way from zero knowledge of Chinese to almost fluent Chinese in a year. Why don't you try them and form an opinion about them yourself?

So, let's begin.

ChinesePod

If you are serious about learning Chinese and still do not use this portal, you are missing out on a lot. ChinesePod was conceived as a regular podcast, but has since grown into a popular platform that contains a variety of content. ChinesePod archive contains 3500+ lessons with dialogues and grammar comments, vocabulary and grammar exercises. There is online teaching. Among so many lessons, it is easy to find the one you need. It's nice that they are all based on life situations - buying a SIM card in a store, booking hotels.

Listening to podcasts in Chinese will improve your comprehension by an order of magnitude. Plus, it's a great way to fill up time on your way to work or school.

ABCs of Chinese

ABCs of Chinese is a site that uses the method of memorizing hieroglyphs using pictures. This method is an alternative to cramming and endless hours of calligraphy on paper.

Here's how ABCs of Chinese describes itself:

“The basic idea of the ABC of Chinese curriculum is that hieroglyphs are pictures (images). When you look at, you realize that this is not a random collection of lines. It is a stylized pictogram or symbol. Master the basic elements (bricks) that make up most of the hieroglyphs, and then move on. "

Check out their YouTube channel for a lot of cool stuff.

Pleco

A foreign language learner needs a dictionary. This is vital for Chinese learners. Pleco is the favorite among dictionaries. The number of settings and functions in it is head and shoulders above the competition. Best of all, it's free on Android and iOS.

Pleco dictionary entries provide the following information: a number of meanings of a word, examples of use in context, spelling order. The user saves the word as a card if he wants to repeat it later. Pleco has another great thing - it can recognize the hieroglyph when you hover the camera and provides instant translation.

Nciku

Next on the list of cool dictionaries is Nciku.com. It’s a simple online dictionary, but what caught our attention was that when searching for a word, he gave an example of its use. This was very useful for me when I was studying Chinese, because I often got confused in the contexts of using a certain word. I prefer to use Nciku on my computer and Pleco on my smartphone when traveling.

Some of us have amazing ability to remember information, but most people do not. This is where Anki comes to the rescue. These are applications for memorizing information on cards. Anki analyzes the user's responses and decides which cards to show more often.

In Anki, you create a set of cards by topic, language, and so on. I had topics on the names of animals, fish, food, slang and words that I have had difficulty using in my life. You can add pictures, sound and articles to cards. Such a useful application available on computer, Android and iOS.

Language Exchange

The more spoken language, the better the knowledge of a foreign language. Facebook regularly hosts events called "language exchange" - a place where native speakers talk to foreign language learners. Therefore, use social networks to find the desired event and go!

except Facebook there are also a couple of platforms for communication. LiveMocha presents training in the form of levels, which represent the stages of learning a foreign language.

My Language Exchange Is my favorite site. 1 million people from all countries have registered on it.

Looking for a cool foreign language conversation app? Try it HelloTalk.

Tip: Don't forget about the ChinesePod lessons when chatting with Chinese people. Print 2 copies of the lesson and teach together! This will be a great practice, and besides, you won't have to sit with boring textbooks.

TV shows and films

I won't say how many hours I spent watching Chinese cartoons, female talk shows, and other mind-numbing TV shows. No matter how boring and unpleasant these TV shows are, watching them increases vocabulary, improves grammar without memorizing the rules, improves listening skills and gives an order of magnitude better understanding of the language.

There is a nuance. You probably don't want to watch technical videos. Choose videos with dialogues. If you find an unfamiliar word, then pause the broadcast and look at the translation from the dictionary. Memorize frequently used phrases.

Search for videos and films on Youku and Tudou, these are two large portals. This is how I search for a video:

Perapera

With this plugin, I confidently used Chinese sites and even paid bills (remember, I live in Taiwan).

I hope that the sites, programs and applications I have proposed will be useful to you in training. Even if you are studying with a teacher, these methods will speed up your learning of Chinese.

Video

Watch the video on how to learn Chinese.

The Chinese language is considered one of the most difficult in the world and for a reason: its writing and phonetics are fundamentally different from those we are used to. Before daring to learn such a complex language, it is worth learning about the pitfalls along the way. We learned from Yaroslava Meshcheryakova, director and senior teacher Orientalist Chinese language schools, in what Chinese is easier than Russian, how many hieroglyphs you need to learn to read newspapers and how long you have to study.

Where to start learning

In classical Soviet textbooks, they began to learn Chinese from phonetics and words suitable for it.

Children's textbooks start with simple phrases and dialogues.

Some techniques are based on the study of the simplest hieroglyphs.

None of these systems are perfect, as simple hieroglyphs do not always represent the most commonly used words. For example, the hieroglyphs "sun", "earth", "water" are difficult to immediately start using in speech. The most common phrases: "goodbye" - "zaizen" are not so easy to pronounce. The most important hieroglyphs: "ni hao" - "hello" are difficult to write.

Modern textbooks of the Chinese language and most teachers give material in proportions that include all aspects of the language and maintain the interest of students: first, the most common phrases are studied, phonetics is passed from simple tones to complex ones, the study of hieroglyphs is based on the principle from simple and memorable to those that are used most often.

How the Chinese language differs from Russian

The Russian language is very difficult in terms of grammar: it has a large number of cases, declensions, conjugations, gender and number changes. The Russian language establishes connections within sentences between almost all words. In the phrases "white dog" and "no white dog" - a change in one word entails a change in another.

In Russian, we can change words in places without losing the meaning: “I went to the library yesterday”, “I went to the library yesterday”, “I went to the library yesterday”. The accents may change, but the meaning remains.

For some words, we need to learn all possible forms, because they change beyond recognition: "I - me - me", "I go - I went - I will go."

Chinese is an isolating language, at least its written form. Strictly speaking, there are no genders, numbers, cases, tenses and even strictly fixed parts of speech in it. The native speakers themselves assure that they do not have grammar at all, it is enough to learn individual words and their order in the sentence.

It turns out that the grammar of the Russian language is more complicated than that of the Chinese one.

In my opinion, the phonetics of the Chinese language is quite simple, especially for a Russian-speaking person. The pronunciation setting depends entirely on the first teacher: a good Russian-speaking teacher can teach you to pronounce the sounds of the Chinese language correctly and clearly in a relatively short time. Chinese teachers usually cannot correctly explain with the help of which "instruments" the sound is pronounced, and rejoice at little, praise for any student's attempt to say at least something.

The hardest part of the Chinese language

Hieroglyphics - in itself, it is interesting, but often becomes the reason for the loss of motivation for learning the language. It can take a week to memorize one hieroglyph. The term of studying the language is stretched, the student does not get satisfaction from the "instant" mastery of it and throws everything halfway.

Differences between written and spoken language - there are such differences in any language, but in Chinese everything is complicated due to the use of different characters in different styles, a large difference in wording, which makes it difficult to read texts even on familiar topics.

Tones - Chinese is tonal, it is not so difficult to remember the pronunciation of a sound, but you have to work hard on the correct intonation.

Phonetics - depends on the first teacher, it is usually difficult to relearn.

Speech speed - the difficulty arises when communicating with native speakers, they adhere to a strange rule: if you are not understood, repeat faster.

Simplest in Chinese

Grammar - because the most important thing in a language is the correct word order.

The consistency of the language - in the modern spoken language, which has been formed over the past 100 years, disyllabic words were formed from monosyllabic ones. For example, due to the combination of a feature and an object: "flying car" is an airplane, "electronic brains" is a computer, "a road in the shape of a cross" (note the shape of the hieroglyph 十) is an intersection.

Is it difficult to learn hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs have a huge history of both use and appearance. In different periods, the "inventors" of hieroglyphs used different logic when creating them.

The very first were hieroglyphs-pictures (pictograms), they outwardly imitated what a person saw in nature or everyday life. An example of such hieroglyphs:

木 - tree;

日 - the sun;

鸟 is a bird.

Then hieroglyphs-icons (ideograms) appeared, which denoted abstract concepts: happiness, love.

An example of such a hieroglyph:

心 - heart, soul.

After the main hieroglyphs, which are called "keys", were formed, they began to be connected together to denote new concepts:

林 - two trees together mean "forest";

明 - hieroglyphs sun and moon together mean "light, bright";

怕 - hieroglyphs heart and white in combination give the concept of "white heart" in the meaning of "fear".

In some cases, we come across keys that suggest the reading of a hieroglyph, that is, the entire hieroglyph will be read in the same way as this key or in a similar way.

There are also clues that suggest the meaning of the hieroglyph: the tree indicates that the hieroglyph refers to some plant or wooden object.

How many hieroglyphs do you need to know

In total, the Chinese language has more than 90 thousand hieroglyphs according to modern dictionaries, but such a number is simply impossible to learn. With knowledge of 2 thousand, you will already be able to parse articles on topics of interest.

How long will it take to learn the language

You can prepare for the first level of the international Chinese language HSK exam in six months of regular classes.

Will this knowledge be enough for you in China? Most likely no.

After 10 years of hard work, will you be able to speak and translate from Chinese without looking into a dictionary? No.

But the Chinese themselves constantly forget the hieroglyphs, they may not understand each other, they use dictionaries.

In Chinese, the intermediate level of language proficiency is too long. With him you can talk and even read and translate a little. But you will never be able to fully master the language, even as a Chinese, so you should set yourself an adequate goal and constantly continue to learn the language.

Is it possible to learn Chinese on your own

It is possible, if all the necessary materials for the study are recommended to you by a great specialist in this matter. There are a huge number of textbooks, manuals, videos, articles, pages on social networks with free Chinese courses appear every day, but getting to neophytes is too easy. Look for the advice of professionals, or better find a good teacher: first a Russian-speaking, then a native speaker, and use all the accompanying materials at home to consolidate the material.

Find Chinese courses online and in your city

Learning Chinese is an ambitious task in itself and will require a lot of effort. And for self-development it will take an iron will and self-discipline. In this article, we will give several recommendations for those who are wondering "how to learn Chinese on their own" without resorting to the help of tutors and special courses.

In contact with

Self-study Chinese from scratch

For independent mastering of the subject, a self-instruction manual is a necessary element of the organization of the educational process. How to start learning Chinese?

Today on the Internet you can find many types of tutorials... All of them can be divided into the following subgroups:

Study sites. This is a fairly convenient form for self-study. On such sites, in addition to lessons and assignments, feedback and comments from those who use the portal are collected. Many different training formats can be used - text information, audio recordings, video recordings.
Video lessons. Videos that are not included in the courses on various sites are posted on the video hosting Youtube. The convenience of this format is that you can see and hear teacher.
Audio courses. They are aimed at the formation of oral perception and pronunciation, but listening must always be supplemented by communication with native speakers, since on the recordings the pronunciation does not always fully correspond to free speech.
Self-instruction manuals on paper... This is the oldest format for self-study, and it is still in demand today. There are several tutorials that are still popular today. These are, for example, Kondrashevsky's Practical Course, "Fundamentals of the Chinese Language" by TP Zadoenko and H. Shuin. They will help lay the foundation for the learner.

Important! When studying a subject on your own, you should not concentrate on one type of manuals, it is better to combine them, making the most of the merits of each.

Difficulties in learning Chinese

Is it hard to learn Chinese at home? The answer to this question is unambiguous - Chinese from scratch difficult to learn, especially for those people who are used to the letter alphabet. This is facilitated by the following factors:

If in languages based on alphabets, words are formed from separate letters, and the letter itself rarely has a meaning, then with hieroglyphic languages everything is different. Chinese characters can mean a whole word, and depending on the context, they can change the meaning. Also, spelling is important for the hieroglyph.
The pronunciation is quite complex. Firstly, it has different tonalities, and depending on how the vowel is pronounced, the meaning may change. Secondly, there are many dialects, and the pronunciation can also change from the adverb. Therefore, when teaching, it is necessary to choose the official dialect is Mandarin.

Attention! Despite the complexity, you can learn the subject, for this you need to show enough perseverance and patience.

How to quickly learn Chinese on your own

The question of the speed of language learning is very subjective. In any case, you cannot learn it in a week or a month. Success depends on the number, regularity and duration of classes.

If you devote 3-4 hours of study every day, approach the issue comprehensively and be able to communicate with native speakers - you can comprehend the basics of Chinese within a couple of months. However, if you practice from time to time - and the result will have to wait much longer.

How do some teachers answer the question "How much can you learn Chinese?" daily activities for an hour:

In about 3-4 months, you can learn simple everyday phrases, ask a simple question and maintain a simple conversation.
In 1-2 years, you can begin to talk more freely, express your thoughts on more complex topics and maintain a conversation, but there will still be topics that will be difficult to communicate;
After 2-3 years of study, you can already say that you know the language. You will be able to communicate more freely on various topics, and your pronunciation will be close to natural.

In any case, the key to a quick study is regular classes.

How to start learning Chinese on your own

To learn Chinese on your own, you need to set a clear goal and draw up a lesson plan. Even before they start, you can chat on forums or read stories of people who independently studied the subject. So in advance you can understand what difficulties and pitfalls may be.

The sound system is the main feature, and it differs from the European ones. To start successfully mastering, you need to understand the principle of building syllables. The number of syllables in Mandarin is limited, there are only 414, and each syllable has its own hieroglyph. Latin spelling of Chinese syllables called pinyin... Therefore, it is recommended that you begin your study by acquainting yourself with the sound system and memorizing it.

An important point is the tonality - 4 tones, which can be applied to each of the 414 syllables, expand the phonetic composition. The strict limitation of syllables leads to the fact that homonyms are very common. And because of this, context is very important, since it largely determines the meaning of the word.

Chinese Characters for Beginners

The second point to study is the study of written speech. The hieroglyph is the basis of Chinese. Basically, words consist of one or two hieroglyphs. Only for complex terms or foreign words, designations of three or more hieroglyphs are required.

The total number of hieroglyphs is very large, and it is difficult to learn all of them. But for ordinary communication, it is enough to know 3 thousand. This is the basis of the language, the most common to use.

Testing for beginners as a form of learning

Tests, as an element of learning, are a fairly effective way to assess the assimilation of the material. In training, they can be used as follows:

to assess memorization of keys and hieroglyphs;
to assess the perception of hieroglyphs in context;
using audio materials to assess the assimilation of pronunciation features.

Today on the Internet you can find many different sites, but the quality of tests on these portals is not always equally good. It is difficult for a beginner to judge how correct or well written a test is. But in general, you can focus on standard materials.

HSK is State exam. It is taken by foreigners to confirm their knowledge of Chinese. Therefore, any other test that can be found on many sites must comply with its standards.

The state test, unlike many others, is divided into oral and written, and they can be taken separately. At the same time, the oral exam can also be passed for the entry level.

How to teach your child Chinese

For children, learning any language happens easier and faster... Despite the misconceptions, children clearly distinguish between different language constructions and pronunciation. Especially under the age of two, babies learn new information very easily.

The main condition for successful learning is interest of the child. Therefore, for him, classes should take place in a playful way. The game additionally stimulates the imagination and thinking of the child, contributing to better memorization, since while playing, he does not just mechanically memorize words and expressions. During the game, memorization is in context, which means that in the future he will be able to more easily reproduce words and phrases in similar situations.

It will take at least two years of regular classes. In case of self-study, without resorting to Chinese language courses, a lot will depend on the ability to quickly memorize and learn.

Learning Chinese has become a fashionable trend in the modern world. Parents invite Chinese-speaking nannies or enroll their children in full immersion courses. Schools with in-depth study of the Chinese language accept students only after a preliminary interview, to which you can get on by passing a long line of applicants. In fact, it is not always easy to find a good Chinese teacher or a competent tutor who can teach in an accessible and competent way - the proposals often do not meet the demand.

Chinese language training

Over the course of over a century, English has evolved from a language spoken by several million people on the island to a global language. It continues to be the most useful language in the world. However, the benefits of learning Chinese have grown significantly over the past two decades. In the world, Chinese is spoken by almost as many people as English - about 1.5 billion people. If you isolate Standard Chinese, 909 million people speak it as their mother tongue. It is spoken in countries where large Chinese diasporas live: Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Mongolia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Macau, Brunei, Hong Kong and Australia (Cantonese is common in the United States).

In China itself, few people speak English. The oft-cited figure of 300 million English speakers is incredibly overrated, with the true number being closer to 10 million, which is less than 1% of the population.

Standard Chinese or Mandarin Chinese (meaning Common Language based on the Peking dialect) is the official language of China, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and the native language of the Han people. Chinese, if considered as one language, consists of several main dialectical groups, within which together there are more than 200 subdialects. Some linguists believe that Chinese is best viewed as a family of languages and the main dialects classified as separate languages.

The linguistic diversity in China is comparable to the types of pronunciation in the UK, where it seems that almost every city has its own specific English. Chinese citizens from different regions may not even understand each other, and use Mandarin when communicating; in Russia it means "Chinese", and in Western countries it is referred to as Mandarin or Mandarin dialect.

All Chinese dialects share a common writing form that has evolved and standardized over two millennia. The pinyin (phonetic spelling) system was developed in the mid-1950s under the guidance of linguist Zhu Yuguang, who is called the "father of pinyin," and was approved in 1978 as the standard romanization system for Mandarin. In 2000, the phonetic alphabet, hanyu pinyin, at the legislative level became a single standard for spelling and phonetic notation of the national language.

Why study?

Over the past two decades, China, thanks to a sharp economic growth, has become one of the world's leading powers. Domestic and international demand for Chinese products remains strong and the yuan is gaining ground. China's economic growth has increased interest in the Chinese language. Understanding and speaking Chinese is essential for the formation of cultural intelligence, especially for those who do business in China. In addition, China is taking steps to become a global power, expanding its economic activities overseas, and welcoming foreign companies into its economic landscape. Many corporations that trade with China or have offices in China are looking for people who can speak Chinese. Job prospects are great, whether the person is hired to work in a foreign department or travel to China as an expat.

The Chinese people are proud of their culture and history of one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Learning Chinese will not only help you travel freely around the country, but also open your eyes to a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Chinese native speakers are very welcoming, they will literally "twist" to understand you, talk to you and help you correct mistakes. The linguistic heritage of the great country is noticeable in Korean and Japanese, to some extent in Vietnamese. If you don't know Japanese, you can do without it when visiting Japan if you can speak Chinese. The kanji used in Japanese writing are Chinese characters (translated as "Han letters"), just like khancha in Korea.

You will be able to understand complex philosophical texts or read classical Chinese novels. Chinese literature (modern and ancient) is a huge and very deep cultural layer, many works have no analogies in the literary heritage of other cultures. Its history stretches back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the urban genre that emerged during the Ming Dynasty for the entertainment of literate Chinese. A large number of interesting materials have not been translated into other languages.

How many hieroglyphs are there, how many do you need to learn?

Many who want to learn Chinese are stopped by the difficulty factor. In fact, Standard Chinese is arguably the most overrated language in the world in terms of difficulty to learn. It has a logically constructed, consistent grammar: simple tenses, no conjugations, no plurals, few phonemes, the meaning of complex words immediately becomes apparent. The hardest part is, of course, memorizing the hieroglyphs.

In the Chinese language there are more than 80,000 Chinese characters (Han), to be precise, according to the Zhonghua Zihai dictionary - 85,568 characters. The largest dictionary contains every Chinese character that ever existed, from ancient Buddhist texts to symbols used by the Qing, Ming and Song dynasties. Sounds impressive, but in fact, many hieroglyphs are not currently used. The average native speaker uses somewhere in the order of 3500 characters in all conversations.

A child is expected to learn about 2,500 characters in primary school. The high school student then learns about 1,000 more specific characters. Overall, high school graduates know about 4,500 characters; educated Chinese - from 8,000. Only very talented scientists and linguists, perhaps, are approaching the level of 80,000. But even the most gifted linguist admits that one of the biggest problems that Chinese creates is not the mechanics of the language, but and the hard work required to learn.

Finding characters in a Chinese dictionary, if you take into account paper binding, is a multi-step process that takes a lot of time if you are not careful. Even a bilingual dictionary (such as Chinese-Russian) will not be a sufficient reference guide. When learning Chinese, you may need at least three dictionaries to get a general idea of what a particular symbol, word or phrase means, and even then, you will have to apply some intellectual power to understand how to use the hieroglyphs correctly. Many Chinese characters are in some way like small abstract pictures that even a toddler can draw.

In general, learning Chinese is never boring. Each hieroglyph is designed to reflect a specific meaning, puzzle. Individual characters may be words in their own right, but most words are composed of two or more characters.

Example of word formation:

手 (show: shǒu) - hand;
if we combine the word hand or the hieroglyph 手 and the symbol 表 (biao: biǎo), dial, clock, we get a wrist watch– 手表 (shǒubiǎo);
手套 - gloves (showtao: shǒutào), here 套 (tao) in the meaning of wrapper, covering:
手机 (shǒujī) - mobile phone, 机 (tszi) - generic phoneme in the names of devices, mechanisms, machines.

Another example for decryption, using the characters 上 and 手:

上 (shan: shàng) - over, up; get up;

手 (show: shǒu) - hand;
上手 (shàngshǒu) - to begin, to begin, to master.

How many characters do you need to know if you are starting to learn Chinese to become fluent? The number of hieroglyphs and words that need to be learned depends on many components: the goal of learning, the current level of language proficiency, and even the frequency of using certain hieroglyphs in colloquial speech.

How many words are there in Chinese? It's a difficult question. Chinese is a living language, it is still evolving and new terms and expressions are being created every day. Hanyu da tsydian (a large dictionary of Chinese words), lexicographically comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, contains 370,000 words, but, as with hieroglyphs, modern Chinese does not use many words (from the dictionary).

Phonetics

Pronunciation is the basis for mastering Mandarin. Pronunciation is not related to the writing of hieroglyphs. Pinyin (phonetic writing) is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese that transcribes characters to teach them how to pronounce them correctly. It is important to understand that pinyin is not the way to write Chinese words in English. This alphabet, developed by the Chinese, contains different rules for how each letter and their combination should be pronounced. Each letter combination can have up to 4 tones, so just reading the pinyin is not enough. The system includes four diacritical marks that represent tones.

The two main groups of letters in pinyin are called initials (the consonant at the beginning of a syllable) and finals (the vowel at the end of a syllable). Each syllable has three parts: initial, ending, and tone. The pinyin system has 23 initials, 24 finals, 4 tones and a neutral tone.

For those who use the Cyrillic alphabet, the official standard is the Palladian system or "Palladic" (transcription of Chinese characters into Cyrillic), created by the Russian Sinologist and cleric Pallady Kafarov in the 19th century, who spent thirty years of his life in China. However, pinyin also has to be learned and memorized!

Tones are the essence of correct pronunciation.

Many characters have the same sound, so when speaking Chinese, tones are needed to distinguish different words:

First tone: high and even.
Second tone: ascending.
Third tone: descending-ascending.
Fourth tone: descending.

A neutral tone is not considered a separate tone, but it is an unstressed syllable.

Most often, the following example is used for teaching pronunciation: mā (mother), má (hemp) mǎ (horse) mà (curse).

When a word consists of more than one syllable, which is the case in most cases, each syllable has its own tone. For example: the word apple is 苹果 píngguǒ (pingo is the first syllable in the 2nd tone, the second syllable in the 3rd tone).

How to learn to speak Chinese? It is very important to be especially disciplined about tones from the outset. Some beginners think it's better to memorize vocabulary first and add tones later. It is not right. Then it will be very difficult to correct tonal errors or learn tones from scratch. It is more useful to practice tones in pairs or combinations, given that most words in Chinese are composed of several sounds, and each syllable carries its own tone.

Always try to learn the tone of each new character, for example, 雨 (rain) yǔ (yu) in 3 tones!

When listening to Chinese speech, try to listen to the sounds, not just make out the meaning!

The wrong tone changes the meaning of the sentence!

Grammar

How do I learn Chinese? To truly understand a language, in the end to master it, you need to know grammar. Understanding the basics of grammar is critical to fluency. This is the key to being able to write sentences correctly.

Grammar Section - Beginner Level:

The rule	Example
According to the rules of Chinese grammar, a word is a word (not a letter). Words (verb, adjective) have a fixed form, regardless of how they are used and in what order they appear in the sentence; no gender or grammatical number.	她去工作. (tā qù gōngzuò) She goes to work: 去 - go 我去工作. (wǒ qù gōngzuò) I'm going to work 他们去工作. (tāmen qù gōngzuò) They go to work
Modifier + nominal 的 (de) + noun. A modifier (adjective, adverb) in a Chinese sentence comes before the word it specifies (noun, verb). 的 (de) - linkage (found in many grammatical structures).	他不喜欢贵的东西. (ta bù xǐhuān guì de dōngxī –ta bu sihuan gui de donshi) She does not like expensive things (the link "de" modifies the adjective; that is, it shows that expensive things) 我哥哥慢慢地开车. (wǒ gēgē màn man de kāichē - in gege man man de kaichē) My brother drives a car slowly.
Sentence template: subject + verb + object	她喜欢书籍. (tā xǐhuān shūjí –ta sihuan shuji) She loves books: 她 (ta), subject 喜欢 (sihuan), verb 书籍 (shuji), books, addition.
To say about someone or something located in a certain place, we use the word 在 ( zài – tsai), be, be in, na: someone (something) + 在 + place.	我在这里. (wǒ zài zhèlǐ –vo zai zheli) I am here. 猫在沙发上. (māo zài shāfā shàng - mao zai shafa shan) A cat on the couch.
The fact that someone has something is said by adding the word 有 (yǒu –y; have), subject + 有 + object.	我有一个妹妹 (wǒ yǒu yīgè mèimei) I have a sister. 他有车 (tā yǒu chē - ta yu che) He has a car.
没有 (méiyǒu - meiyu), negation (not to have)	我没有车 (wǒ méiyǒu chē) I don't have a car. 他没有钱 (tā méiyǒu qián) He has no money.
Any other verb is negated with 不 (bù – bu).	我不会去巴黎 (wǒ bù huì qù bālí) I'm not going to Paris. 她不喜欢玫瑰 (tā bù xǐhuān méiguī) She doesn't like roses.
是 (shì –shi) is a verb of being (to be), not quite the same, but similar to the English verb “to be”: subject + 是 + noun object. We cannot use 是 to associate an adjective with a noun, for example, this dress is beautiful, in this case 很 (hěn – hen) is used.	我是翻译 (wǒ shì fānyì) I am a translator. 他是老板 (tā shì lǎobǎn) He is the boss. 我们是学生 (wǒmen shì xuéshēng) We are students.
subject + 很 + adjective	她很漂亮 (tā hěn piàoliang) She is beautiful.
要 (yào-yao) is used in sentences related to desire and, if we talk about what is "going to do"; subject + 要 + complement; subject + 要 + "action plan".	我要一个三明治 (wǒ yào yīgè sānmíngzhì) I want a sandwich. 我要吃三明治 (wǒ yào chī sānmíngzhì) I'm going (or want to) eat a sandwich.
Sentence template: subject + adverb tense + verb + object	我们今天吃饭 (wǒmen jīntiān chī fàn) Today we eat rice.
和 (hé) - "and", for nouns only	我和我的朋友要去东京 (wǒ hé wǒ de péngyǒu yào qù dōngjīng) Me and my girlfriend (going) are going to Tokyo. 我喜欢大海和太阳 (wǒ xǐhuān dà huǎ hé tàiyáng) I love the sea and the sun.
Subject + verb + object + ma (“ma” at the end of a sentence turns it into an interrogative, to which the answer is unambiguous: yes or no)	你喝茶吗？ (Nǐ hē chá ma?) Do you drink tea?
Any interrogative sentence, if the answer is yes or no (so-called polar or binary questions).	日本是个美丽的国家吗? (Rìběn shìgè měilì de guójiā ma?) Is Japan a beautiful country?
Subject + tense adverb + negation + auxiliary verb + verb + object	我今天不会去北京. (Wǒ jīn tiān bù huì qù běi jīng - wu jin tian bu hui qu bei jing) I will not go to Beijing today: 我 (i), subject + 今天 (today), adverb + 不 (not ) + 会 (to be able to auxiliary verb) 去 (to drive), verb + 北京 (Beijing), addition.

To say about the number, counting words (or numerators, classifiers) are used, which can be divided into several categories, according to the semantic group of nouns or character characteristics of the subject. For example, the classifier for books is 本 běn, for cars - 台 tái, for large buildings and mountains - 座 zuò, for animals 只 (隻) zhī, and so on.

Fortunately, there is a general-purpose counting word - 个 ge. The peculiarity is that it can be used for almost everything, although, of course, when possible, it is better to use specific classifiers.

Dialects

The second most common dialect after Putonghua (or Mandarin Chinese) is Cantonese (Yue). It is spoken mainly in the southern regions of China, in Guangdong province, in the eastern and southern parts of Guangxi, and Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong and Macau. Like standard Chinese, it also has tones, but instead of four tones plus neutral, Cantonese uses at least six tones. The two dialects are very different and completely incomprehensible to each other. There are many colloquial expressions in Cantonese. Historically, Chinese communities living in other countries speak the Cantonese dialect, due to the fact that the migration of Chinese people mainly took place from the south of China. Although there are large numbers of Chinese people living overseas who speak Standard Chinese.

Linguists traditionally divide Chinese into seven main dialectal groups or languages. But a large number of linguists additionally recognize three more groups. The official opinion about dialects is that they are variations of a common language, but this is a view shaped more by politics than linguistics. Many linguists believe that Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as other dialects, are sufficiently different from each other to be classified as separate languages; they have different phonology, vocabulary.

The largest, in addition to the Northern Chinese and Cantonese dialects, are considered wu, min (or Fujian; in Fujian and Taiwan), gan (in Jiangxi province), xiang (in most of Hunan province). There are several sub-dialects in each group. For example, u includes the dialects of Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, which are somewhat mutually intelligible, but it also includes a number of other dialects that are very different from the three listed. The Shanghai dialect has become very popular among young people communicating on the Internet with the aim of standardizing and promoting it as a separate language. The lexical similarity between y and Mandarin is only 31%, which is about the same as between English and French.

How to learn Chinese on your own from scratch - choosing a method

Given the complexity of writing, as opposed to relatively simple grammar, most people who practice Chinese for beginners from scratch focus primarily on speaking skills before taking up writing.

Techniques used to study Mandarin:

Audiovisual course (using audio and video as key tools makes memorization easier and the learning process more interesting and less intimidating).
A situational approach (each new lesson offers topics based on practical, real-life situations; they are introduced in different ways, leading to the memorization of specific information and grammar).
Stimulation method (using typical examples, the student learns language patterns, recognizes language features and masters the basics).

Programs designed to acquire conversational skills and mastery of writing. In the present, the world uses two main systems of Chinese writing - traditional and simplified Chinese. Traditional hieroglyphs are derived from ancient Chinese pictograms and have been used throughout most of the history of Chinese civilization. Many hieroglyphs are both beautiful and complex at the same time and take a long time to learn how to reproduce them and form words.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, the government of mainland China began to spread an alternative Chinese writing system, which was called “simplified”, in order to increase the literacy of the population throughout the country. For many hieroglyphs, this system simplifies the style using a number of methods. For those who decide how to learn Chinese on their own faster, it is better to start with the “simplified” version. But those who are going to spend many years developing and improving their abilities need to start learning from traditional hieroglyphs and only then "superimpose" on them the knowledge of simplified symbols.

Learning difficulties

Learning Chinese characters is initially very difficult, simply because there is nothing to associate new information with. The cool method is to learn 3,500 or so characters, which account for at least 99% of the written language. It is also difficult for native speakers of Chinese, including, usually requires routine and endless copying for a single year, in which case the Chinese can forget even the most ordinary symbols. In recent years, dissatisfaction with modern language teaching methods has grown in China. Could there be a better technique?

Hieroglyphs are actually not as arbitrary and incomprehensibly diverse as they might seem. They consist of a rather limited number of sub-symbols or radicals, which themselves consist of a set of standard dashes. Moreover, radicals often contain clues about meaning or pronunciation.

There are general rules or traditional theory (六书 Liù shū) for studying the composition of hieroglyphs and constructing them from radicals. For example, when you learn that a tree is 木 (mù), it will be clearer to remember that 林 (lín) is a forest, or even so 森林 (sēnlín). There are six types in the composition of hieroglyphs: pictogram, indicative, ideograph, phonetic connection, mutual explanation and phonetic borrowing. Strictly speaking, only the first four relate to the methods of compilation, but on the whole the theory is correct and reveals the general laws of the creation and development of Chinese characters.

How to Learn Chinese - Useful Apps

Speechling: Free Language Learning Tools

FluentU: One of the best apps out there with a huge collection of subtitled videos (music videos, commercials, news, dialogue, grammar lessons, interviews) - it's free, but there is also paid content.

Anki: The flash program uses a spaced repetition technique believed to improve the memorization of new words. Free for Android users.

Skritter: The spaced repetition-based app is recommended for those who take Chinese writing seriously.

Chinese Skill: Free app for beginners. The course consists of 45 topics (food, numbers, colors, etc.) and focuses on learning vocabulary and grammar using a game mechanism.

Standart Mandarin: The application specializes in correct pronunciation.

Words for jogging application, based on the technique of the so-called unconscious mode of perception, offers 40 audio lessons, sets of popular words and colloquial expressions, vocabulary, and a pronunciation trainer.

ChinesePod is the oldest Chinese language learning platform. Services include videos and podcasts organized by level, overview exercises, flashcards with personalized word lists. The big advantage of the app is that you can download all the content and use it even without an internet connection.

Pros and cons of learning online

There are many advantages of some online resources for learning Chinese, among them two main ones can be distinguished:

Information search speed: with the help of an electronic dictionary (Large Chinese Russian Dictionary online; Pleco), you can find the meaning of any word in a few seconds. Of course, it's much more fun to open Skritter or Chinese Writer and write hieroglyphs for hours without even noticing it.

However, it should be borne in mind that quick access to everything we need is extremely distracting, especially if we are not exactly sure what to focus on. It is important to build a solid foundation in comprehending Chinese.

The technologies offered by the modern world make us lazy: this is the other side of quick access to information, which is offered literally on a silver platter. They are not able to teach us to think and analyze, rely on our memory. And this is a big mistake, since it is memory for learning that is the most valuable resource.

You need to learn how to use online resources correctly. It is foolish and anachronistic to abandon them altogether, but the advice is to filter, to use what we need and when we need it, then we can really get the most out of it. You need to learn Chinese step by step and with great patience !!!

Benefits of Watching TV and Movies in Chinese

As a primary source of study material or simply to supplement your studies, watching TV in Mandarin is an excellent resource for developing your listening skills (any foreign language welcomes this practice). Mandarin subtitling is a big advantage. They allow our brains to associate sounds with written counterparts. Of course, this only works if you already know how Chinese characters are constructed and can recognize a small number of the most common characters.

Useful resources:

Even at the initial stage (when you are still zero in Chinese), as a rule, you can follow the plot. Even to understand the essence of what is happening, using only visual images.

Chinese films are not just entertainment, they provide a vivid picture of ancient and modern China and allow you to reflect on how attitudes and social values have changed over time. This is a really important practical skill for communicating with native speakers of all ages. If you have even a little understanding of their views or the cultural connotation of the Chinese words they use, learning Chinese through watching movies can help improve your communication skills.

Advice - how to properly watch movies and TV programs. Educational value comes from active viewing. You need to revise this or that scene several times, while reading the subtitles and following the conversation of the characters. There should always be a notebook next to it, where to write down new words or sentence structures.

Live (活着, Huózhe) directed by Zhang Yimou.

An iconic epic film that tells the story of a family against the backdrop of great changes in modern China - from the 1940s to the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Blue kite (蓝风筝, Lán fēngzhēng), Tian Zhuangzhuang.

A powerful piece, perhaps one of the most faithful depictions of the communist regime, is the story of a family told by a boy nicknamed 铁头 (Tiě tóu) Iron Head, who grew up in Beijing in the 1950s and 1960s.

Raise the red lantern (大红灯笼高高挂, Dàhóng dēnglóng gāo gāo guà), Zhang Yimou.

Songlian, an educated 19-year-old girl, is forced to become the fourth wife of a wealthy fifty-year-old feudal lord after her father's death. She soon discovers that the status of wives and access to privilege is determined by a woman's ability to please her husband. The action takes place in the 1920s. The patriarchal values of Confucian society, the family hierarchy are reliably depicted for this period, when women were viewed simply as objects that could be used and thrown away at the whim of a man.

Painted Skin 畫皮, Huàpí), Gordon Chan.

Action-fantasy, film adaptation of the story by Pu Songling (Lao Zhai) from the collection "Description of the miraculous from Liao's office" (Liao-zhai-zhi-i). Time of action - the period of the Yuan dynasty, 13-14 centuries. The story begins with Wang Sheng, the commander-in-chief of the army, rescuing an orphan girl Xiaowei from bandits and bringing her home, where his wife Peizhong is waiting for him. Three months later, a strange series of murders is laid upon the city: a serial killer rips out the hearts of the victims. Peizhong begins to suspect that Xiaowei is actually a bloodthirsty demon disguised as a human, but Wei does not believe her. She calls for help from General Ban Yun, who quit the service and, as it turns out, befriended a demon hunter. Xia Bing pursued Xiaowei for years to avenge the murder of one of her family members.

Secondly, you need to develop the habit of previewing and reviewing educational material. A Chinese proverb says 磨刀不误砍柴工 (Mó dāo bù wù kǎn chái gōng), which can be translated as the better the preparation, the faster the work gets done. Each lesson must first be accompanied by a division into parts - and you need to start with the most difficult part.

Thirdly, you need to be as interactive as possible while learning. In the era of the Internet, this is not difficult to do - there are a lot of useful resources available online.

When practicing a self-directed approach, define specific and long-term goals (to achieve excellence, for example, in five years). Decide how much time to spend studying Chinese each day. Perhaps in six months the beginner will be able to read children's material or light text. The real goal is, for example, to learn (speak and write) 20 new hieroglyphs per month.