The Best Way to Learn Mandarin

Posted by seoarticle | 10 Mar, 2009
What is the best way to learning Chinese today? Everyone knows that you can Learning Chinese online - but is it effective? Is it indeed the best way? Well, aside from the fact that you can access your computer, for what amounts to be private lessons, at any time your daily schedule allows, around the clock, it is also surprisingly less expensive... conventional private lessons can be in the neighborhood of $40 per hour, while most fully equipped software packages are under $100.

Learning with such software is the best way to learn Mandarin because of the many multimedia resources available at the click of a mouse. There are multitudes of files; video for learning cultural points, audio for developing speech and pronunciation, and tons of vocabulary and conjugation exercises to fill your learning experience. There are even test and quiz games to compete against to raise your scoring, as well as writing programs to learn the Chinese ideographic script.

One of the reasons this is the best way to learning Chinese, is the support you get from literally hundreds, even thousands of your language learning peers. At any time, 24 hours a day. 7 days a week, you can log into the online forums and chat with others in Mandarin, gaining valuable experience. On these forums, you will also find those who speak more fluently, and even native speakers eager to help guide and mentor you in areas where you may have difficulties.

The fact of the matter is, that even though you are in the comfort of your own home, at any time around the clock that you are free to expand your education, you are not alone and can gain the confidence you need in order to continue on your course to speak Mandarin fluently. Certainly, these software packages and learning with them online is the best way to learn Mandarin.

An Introduction to Learning Chinese

Posted by seoarticle | 3 Mar, 2009
The Chinese language has over 40,000 characters, but only 10,000 are commonly used. To fully understand the language (at least in reading and writing), you need learning Chinese Characters. Chinese is considered one of the most beautiful, but complex languages in the world. There are over 1 billion people that live in China, not including overseas Chinese, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and parts of Malaysia -- Which makes Chinese the most spoken language in the world. With the growing economic prosperity of these areas, more and more schools are offering Chinese language programs.

Chinese is a very diversified language, with twelve different dialects of spoken Chinese. The national dialect of China is Mandarin, or "pu3 tong1 hua4" which translates into "the people's language." I would recommend learning Chinese to many people, with over 50% of China's population able to speak Mandarin. The language is based on ideaograms, or based strongly on symbols and characters. Loosely it is based on combinations of 214 elementary pictographs called "Chinese radicals."

The Chinese language is one of the oldest languages in the world. In fact, the earliest traces of written chinese go as far back as the early Zhou Dynasty, or over 3,000 years ago. While the Chinese culture itself has seen constant changes over its long life, the grammar, vocabulary, and writing system have mostly remained preserved.

The grammar and sentence structure of Chinese is very different from English. For example, in English, someone may say "I will run," "I am running," "I have ran," but in Chinese someone can say, "Wo zuo"(which means "I run") with time as an adverb such as today, tomorrow, in a little while, etc. Chinese sentences take up less space than the English translation. This is because sentences only need to consist of several characters.

Mandarin is the most widely spoken of the Chinese language and can be a bit difficult to learn, but there are many sites online that can help get you started.

A great source of articles for learning beginner chinese is the chinese crunch blog. Many newcomers have a hard time sorting through the overwhelming number of Chinese learning programs. Read on for a thorough review of chinese language programs.