Magic Chinese
FOUNDATION IV
Mandarin Chinese in Use
Q & A with Peter (彼得)
The Chinese language you are learning is called Hànyù or
Zhōngwén. It’s also called Pŭtōnghùa or Mandarin Chinese.
How can it have four different names?
Hàny& refers to the language used by people of the Han
tribe in China, the largest Chinese ethnic group, which
composes about 90% of the population. China is slightly
smaller than the U.S. in total geographical area, but has close to 5 times of the U.S.
population! There is a total of 56 ethnic groups, according to the Fifth National
Population Census in 2000. Each ethnic group has its own dialect of the Chinese
language.
In order to communicate efficiently, Hàny&, the ethnic dialect of Han tribe, has
been chosen as the official Chinese language. Zhōnggúo is China; therefore,
Zhōngwén is the language spoken by the Chinese people. The term Pŭtōnghùa
literally means “common language”, while Mandarin Chinese refers to the Mandarin
dialect. Isn’t it amazing? All these four names refer to the Chinese language you are
learning.
Who Uses Chinese in Our
World?
Currently, Zhōngwén is used as a
national language by people in
mainland China, Taiwan, and
Singapore. Zhōngwén is also used
wherever there is a large population
of Chinese people, such as
Chinatowns all over the world.
However, they might also use different dialects of Zhōngwén, such as Cantonese in
San Francisco, CA, USA.
In ancient times, many nations in Asia used Chinese characters as their written
language, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Today Japanese still uses kanji,
borrowed Chinese characters, as part of their writing system. As for modern Korean
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Foundation IV Mandarin Chinese in Use
and Vietnamese, they’ve since developed their own spelling systems and no longer
use Chinese characters.
According to The World Almanac, there are more people on Earth who speak
Chinese than either Spanish or English. It’s also one of the six official language used
by the United Nations, 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 Chinese as time goes on.
How Many Characters Must I Learn?
That depends on what you want to do. Honestly, you really only
need about 3,000 characters to do everything in your daily life,
such as watching TV or movies, reading newspapers, magazines,
novels, etc. Some characters are used more frequently than others,
so you should start learning the high-frequency words first.
A Chinese college-graduate will probably master 6,000 to 7,000 characters. So,
you might ask, what about the other 80,000 characters? The truth is that you will not
see them unless you become a linguist of the Chinese language or a scholar of the
ancient Chinese literatures.
How are Chinese and English different?
When I first came to the U.S., I had to learn English
from the very beginning, starting with ABC. That was
really difficult for me because English is so different
from Chinese. For example, in Chinese, there are no
gender-specific nouns, a chicken is just a chicken. We
also don’t have singular or plural forms of nouns. The
best part is there is no need to conjugate verbs. We
never need to change a verb according to person and tense. It took me a long time to
get used to all these grammar rules in English. My friends told me there are even
more of these changes in Spanish. Can you imagine how hard that must be!
After we have mastered Chinese Pinyin and tones, we will almost be ready to take
off for a fun language adventure. Oh, one more thing, the Chinese language’s written
form does not use alphabet letters or a spelling system. Pinyin is only a tool to teach
you how to pronounce the sound. The written form of Chinese is based on characters
(字 zì).
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Magic Chinese
Now, let me invite you to join my friends and I on this
amazing around-the-world journey with our Magic Compass.
Wait! I almost forgot. Let me introduce to you four of my
awesome friends in the adventure of Magic Chinese. Now we
are ready. Let the fun begin!
Lisa (麗莎)
Linda (琳達)
Tom (湯姆)
Reggie (瑞奇)
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