Learn four tones. Chinese is basically a tonal language. A feature of tonal languages ​​is that, even with the same spelling and pronunciation, the tonality with which the word was pronounced changes its meaning. To speak Chinese correctly, you need to learn different tones. Actually, in Mandarin Chinese, these are the following tones:

  • First tone- high, even. The voice remains level, without raising or lowering. If we take the word “ma” as an example, then the first tone is indicated by the symbol above the letter “a”: “mā”.
  • Second tone- ascending. Your voice rises from low to medium, as if you asked someone something like "huh?" or "what?" In writing, the second tone is denoted as "má".
  • Third tone- descending-ascending. The voice changes from medium to low to high, as if pronouncing the English letter “B”. When two syllables of the third tone are next to each other, the first syllable remains in the third tone, and the second goes into the fourth. In writing, the third tone is denoted as "mǎ".
  • Fourth tone- descending. The voice quickly changes from high to low, as if giving a stop command. Or, for example, as if while reading a book, you stumbled upon an interesting passage and said “aha”. The fourth tone is designated as "mà".
  • Easy, huh? Even if not, don't give up. It is highly desirable to hear the tones performed by a native speaker, because it is very difficult to understand through the text how everything should actually sound.

  • Memorize a few simple words. The more words you know, the sooner you get a good grasp of the language - this is a universal principle. Accordingly, it will be very helpful to learn a few Chinese words.

    • It will be good to start with the times of the day (morning - zǎoshàng, day - xiàwǔ, evening - wǎnshàng), body parts (head - tóu, Feet - jiǎo, hands - shǒu), food (beef - niúròu, chicken - jī, eggs - jīdàn, pasta - miàntiáo), as well as the names of colors, days, months, vehicles, weather, etc.
    • When you hear a word in your native language, think about how it would sound in Chinese. Do not know? Write it down, then look in the dictionary - for this purpose it will be very useful to carry a small notebook with you. On things and objects at home, you can stick stickers with the equivalents of their names in Chinese (in hieroglyphs, in pinyin - the system of writing Chinese words in Latin, and in transcription). The more often you see words, the faster you will remember them.
    • Large vocabulary is good, but accurate vocabulary is even better. There is no point in memorizing words with whole dictionaries if you cannot pronounce them correctly. Take, for example, an error like using mā instead of má that can turn the phrase “I want pie” into “I want cocaine”.

  • Learn to count. Alas, there is no alphabet in the Mandarin Chinese language, which is why it is difficult to learn for people brought up in the traditions of the Indo-Germanic language family. But the Chinese counting system is quite simple and straightforward! By learning the names of the first ten digits, you can count to 99.

    • Below are the symbols for numbers from one to ten, written in simplified Chinese. They are also recorded in pinyin and transcribed. Try to immediately train yourself to pronounce everything in the right tone.
      • 1 : written as (一) or yī, pronounced like .
      • 2 : written as (二) or èr, pronounced like .
      • 3 : written as (三) or sān, pronounced like .
      • 4 : spelled as (四) or sì, pronounced like .
      • 5 : written as (五) or wǔ, pronounced like .
      • 6 : written as (六) or iù, pronounced like .
      • 7 : spelled as (七) or qī, pronounced like .
      • 8 : spelled as (八) or bā, pronounced like .
      • 9 : written as (九) or jiǔ, pronounced like .
      • 10 : written as (十) or shí, pronounced like .
    • Having learned to count to 10, you will be able to count further, calling the number-value of the ten place, then the word shi and then the number-value of the one digit. For example:
    • 48 is written as sì shí bā, that is, literally speaking, “4 tens plus 8”. 30 is sān shí, that is, “3 dozen”. 19 is yī shí jiǔ, that is, “1 dozen plus 9”. However, in most Mandarin Chinese dialects yī at the beginning of words is sometimes omitted.
    • The word “one hundred” is written as (百) or baǐ so 100 is yī "baǐ, 200 - èr "baǐ, 300 - sān "baǐ etc.

  • Learn the most basic conversational phrases. Having become familiar with pronunciation and words, it's time to move on to the simplest conversational phrases used in everyday speech.

    • Hey= nǐhǎo, pronounced
    • What is your name?= nín guì xìng, pronounced
    • Yes= shì, pronounced
    • No= bú shì, pronounced as
    • thanks= xiè xiè, pronounced as
    • Please= bú yòng xiè, pronounced as
    • sorry= duì bu qǐ, pronounced
    • I do not understand= wǒ tīng bù dǒng, pronounced as
    • Goodbye= zài jiàn, pronounced

    • In the East, it is a dark matter or when the Chinese language was created. Part 2 (Mandarin)

    It is officially believed that there are 56 nationalities living in China, each of which has its own language and culture. The overwhelming majority of the population, about 91 percent, is attributed to the Han nation - the Chinese themselves. The Han language is very diverse. It consists of many hundreds of mutually incomprehensible dialects.

    Han dialects differ from each other much more than, say, individual languages ​​of the Romance group. In general, the study of Chinese (Han) dialects began only in the 30s of the 20th century. And by the beginning of the 60s, they were somehow systematized and classified with grief in half.

    According to modern concepts, Han (actually Chinese) is divided into ten dialect groups: North Chinese dialects (in Western terminology "Mandarin dialects"), dialects: Wu, Gan, Xiang, Ming, Hakka, Yue, Jin, Huizhou, Pinghua.

    The dialect group Min is considered the most diverse. Unlike other dialectal groups, consisting of many mutually incomprehensible dialects functioning in each district, within a given group, many hundreds of mutually incomprehensible dialects function in every village.

    At the same time, the work is far from complete. Some so-called "areas of great linguistic diversity" have not yet been studied, the dialects existing there have not been described. Well, some dialects, such as Danzhou and Shaoju Tuhua, do not lend themselves to classification.

    In general, China is a country of gigantic linguistic diversity. As mentioned in the first part, until 1909, the Manchu language was formally the state language in the Qin Empire. The first time after the conquest of China by the Manchus, all official documents of the empire were written in this language. However, its use gradually decreased, and already in the 18-19th centuries, few people understood the Manchu language, even among the courtiers.

    So with the help of what language was the administration of the huge empire carried out? With the help of the so-called "Mandarin" language. The name comes from the Portuguese word "mandarin", meaning officials of the Chinese empire. The Chinese themselves used the term "Guhua" to refer to this language, literally "the language of officials."

    (Mandarin Official)

    The "official language" did not have any official status in the Chinese Empire. However, his knowledge was necessary to advance officials up the career ladder. The language did not have firm rules. According to legend, in 1728, Emperor Yongzhen, due to a specific pronunciation, did not understand anything from the reports of officials from the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, and issued a decree on the creation of "academies of correct pronunciation." However, these academies did not last long.

    Traditionally, "Mandarin" was based on the dialect of the city of Nanjing. However, in the 19th century, elements from the metropolitan Peking dialect penetrated into it, gradually coming to the fore. However, according to some reports, at the beginning of the 20th century, the status of the "Nanking Mandarin" was higher than that of the "Beijing Mandarin". Office work was carried out with the help of the "Mandarin language", officials from different provinces of the country communicated in it. It was impossible for ordinary people even from neighboring Chinese provinces to communicate with each other.

    In 1909, the imperial Qing dynasty, which was at sunset, declared the state language "goyuy", literally "national language", still had to be created. The creation of a "national language" will be discussed in the next part.

    (to be continued)

    To all 大家 好! What is the connection between linguists and tangerines? What's the connection between Chinese officials and these little citrus fruits? What is the connection between Chinese and Mandarin? For an unprepared person, this is not an easy puzzle, but in fact there is a connection, huge and very logical.

    Let's start in order. Why are many linguists interested in mandarin? Because mandarin in the West is called our beloved Chinese language, namely 普通话 (Mandarin). Agree, a rather beautiful name immediately evokes thoughts about the sea breeze, the aroma of citrus fruits ... But certainly not about one and a half billion China and the incredibly complex Chinese language.

    It all started many hundreds of years ago. At that time, the Portuguese were mainly developing historical business with China and maintaining economic relations. Portuguese merchants called Chinese officials "Mantri", which in turn came from the Sanskrit language and meant "official" or "minister". Over time, the Europeans transformed this word into a consonant with the Romance verb "mandar" (to give orders) "mandrim", and later into "mandarin". Until now, in Europe, a Chinese official is often called a tangerine. I do not know how the Chinese dignitaries relate to this, because in the Chinese language, officials have nothing to do with mandarin.

    Well, we have dealt with the Chinese officials. What about the connection with the language? And here again everything is simple and logical! Let's look at the hieroglyph "official" - 管 (guan), it already seems vaguely familiar, doesn't it? It is this hieroglyph that can be found in pairs 官话 (guanhua), which literally translates as "the language of officials", in fact means "official Chinese" or "literary Chinese". The same hieroglyph when translated into Portuguese meant "official", that is, mandarin. When translating the phrase guanhua 官 the Europeans just got "Mandarin Chinese". But it is only the Europeans who call the Chinese language mandarin, in Russia, for example, this practice is not at all widespread.

    Since then, Europeans have often called everything Chinese tangerine. Once, on one of these trips, merchants brought the fruits of a small orange to Europe. Oranges in Europe have already known and loved for a long time, but they saw such tiny fruits for the first time, and of course, out of habit, they called it “Chinese orange” (“naranja mandarina”). Later, the fruit in general began to be called simply - "mandarina". So he came to us, under the name Mandarin.

    In Russia, such a practice is not widespread, we call the Chinese language the Chinese language, although Chinese officials are often called mandarins behind their backs. This is understandable, the Russian language has little in common with any Portuguese or French. This is the only way Europeans call Chinese, or rather its Mandarin dialect 普通话.

    Mandarin is spoken in Taiwan, Singapore and some other states. And, for example, in Malaysia, Mandarin is not the official language, but due to the large number of Chinese emigrated, all advertisements and signs on the streets are written in Mandarin. So the mandarin, thanks to the emigration of the Chinese, is still a “fruit”.

    In any case, tangerine is useful, both in the form of a citrus fruit and in the form of a dozen or two thousand Mandarin Chinese characters 普通话. But, unfortunately, there is and to learn mandarin is not the same thing. If with the fruit everything is more or less tasty and understandable, then with the tangerine language there are many secrets, puzzles and puzzles. This is the special charm of the mandarin as a language. All over the world it is recognized as one of the most mysterious, complex and at the same time beautiful and surprisingly melodic languages. For me personally, the similarities between the mandarin fruit and the mandarin tongue are obvious. Both give real pleasure both from eating and from studying, so all okay 学习 汉语！

    To find their place in society, it is important for a person to maintain communication, exchange ideas, express their desires and leave feedback. For this we use our main tool - language. There are hundreds of different languages ​​in the world. Each has its own story, background, melody and rhythm. Many of us have ever wondered what are the most popular and spoken languages ​​in the world? This collection will help you find out about them.

    Mandarin language

    Mandarin is spoken by almost a billion people and is one of the 6 official languages ​​of the United Nations. There are 1200 million variants of this language. It is spoken in northern and southwestern China. Mandarin belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family. Despite being at the top of the list, this is not an easy language at all. Mandarin has several dialects and each has many tones, as a result of which each region has its own distinct variant of the language.

    English

    Believe it or not, English is at the top of the list of the most widely spoken and popular languages ​​in the world. It immediately follows Mandarin in 2nd position. English is spoken by over 430 million people worldwide. It is also one of the six official languages ​​of the United Nations. Belonging to the Indo-European language family, this Germanic language is the global lingua franca. Unlike Mandarin, which is mainly spoken in a particular geographic region, English is the first language in many countries around the world. It is spread across all continents and is used by almost a billion people as a second language. One way or another, many people, at least partially, but know this common language.

    Spanish

    Spanish is also on the list of official languages ​​of the United Nations. He dropped from 2nd to 3rd position only recently. Spanish is spoken by over 410 million people. This Romance language was born from an Indo-European family and is used as a native language in Latin America and Equatorial Guinea, in addition to Spain. Spanish is so popular and widespread that many Spanish words are used in English as well.

    Hindi

    Hindi is one of the official languages ​​of India. It is a Sanskritized branch of the Hindustani language with Indo-Aryan and Indo-European roots. It is spoken by millions of indigenous people in India. Hindi is very similar to Urdu, the native language of Pakistan. A large number of Hindi dialects are spoken throughout India, with 180 million speakers of this language. The Hindi language is also spread through Bollywood films, which use it as the lingua franca.

    Bengali

    Bengali, or Bangla, is the native language of Bangladesh, as well as West Bengal, southern Assam, and Tripura in India. The national anthems of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, as well as the national songs of India, were all written in Bengali. This language has a long history of development from Indo-Aryan dialects and Sanskrit. While Bangla still retains its originality, it also absorbed some words of foreign languages. Some outstanding literary works are written in Bengali, including those of Rabindranath Tagore. An estimated 210 million people speak it, making Bengali one of the most popular languages ​​in the world.

    Portuguese

    This Romance language with Indo-European roots is spoken by over 220 million people. Portuguese is the official language in Brazil, Mozambique and is spoken in several other places. Portuguese is spoken in many countries around the world.

    Russian language

    Russian is in 7th place in the list of the most popular and spoken languages ​​in the world. This Slavic language of Indo-European origin is one of the six official languages ​​of the United Nations. Russian is spoken by more than 150 million people not only in the Russian Federation, but also in other countries of the former USSR, the Baltic countries and even in the United States. A huge number of outstanding works of literature and films have been created in Russian.

    Urdu

    Considered one of the most euphonious languages ​​in the world, Urdu has roots in common with Hindi, which is spoken by over 100 million people, mainly in Pakistan and the 6 states of India. The language bears a close resemblance to Hindi and is associated with Muslims. Urdu also belongs to the languages ​​of the Indo-European and Indo-Aryan family. Poetry and songs in this language are revered in all corners of the world.

    Indonesian

    This Austronesian language, spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia, belongs to the Malay-Polynesian family. It is spoken by over 160 million people and is the official language of Indonesia.

    Japanese language

    Japanese concludes the list of the most popular languages ​​in the world. Approximately 125 million people speak this language. It is used mainly in Japan, as well as some other parts of the world where Japanese immigrants live.

    Languages ​​are constantly evolving, absorbing new words, phrases and styles from other languages, especially English. But in essence, each language has its own history, representing it in its own unique way.

    The term "Chinese" has many meanings. Chinese (or Chinese languages) refers to one of the two main branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The ambiguity of the term is due to the fact that in a large area occupied by the so-called. "Sinic" languages, a large group of diverse dialects of the Chinese language are used. These dialects vary quite a lot, even at a small distance from each other; nevertheless, their genetic link is unambiguously traced. Therefore, in linguistic science, the question of whether these varieties of the Chinese language are languages ​​or dialects remains open.

    Scope of use

    An early informal oral form of communication ( guanhua) on a North Chinese basis, presumably began to form with the transfer of the Chinese capital in 1266 to the place of modern Beijing (then called Zhongdu, then Dadu) before the beginning of the Yuan dynasty. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the official standard, which in 1909 received the name " goyuy"(From the Japanese term" kokugo(国語) "-" state language ") and in the PRC later renamed into Mandarin, began to include not only a written, but also an oral norm.

    To determine the degree of Mandarin proficiency, since 1994, the PRC has introduced the Mandarin Chinese Proficiency Exam (Chinese exercise 普通话 水平 测试, pinyin: pǔtōnghuà shuǐpíng cèshì (PSC)), which quickly gained popularity with the ever-increasing urbanization of China. There are several levels of Mandarin proficiency assigned after passing the exam:

    However, many Chinese are able to understand Mandarin to one degree or another without even being able to speak it.

    Genealogical and areal information

    Chinese (Putonghua) belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family; broadly speaking, the Chinese language is one of its two main branches, sometimes referred to as "Sinic". It is mainly distributed in the Beijing area - the capital of the PRC, but is also used throughout China as the state language. It is also one of the 4 official languages ​​of Singapore.

    Sociolinguistic information

    Chinese in the broadest sense holds the record for the number of native speakers in the world: 1,074,000,000 native speakers in the PRC, of ​​which 896,000,000 speak it as their first language (70% of them speak a standard dialect) and 178,000,000 as a second language. The total number of speakers in the world is 1,107,162,230.

    With a large number of dialects that are difficult to understand, standard Chinese is a supra-dialectal version of the language, the state language of the People's Republic of China and the language of interethnic communication of the peoples of China. It is used in all spheres of life in the PRC and is one of the official languages ​​of the UN.

    On the basis of the Chinese language, there is a Russian-Chinese pidgin - the so-called. "Kyakhta language", which borrows Russian vocabulary, but uses the rules of Chinese grammar.

    Typological parameters

    Type (degree of freedom) of expression of grammatical meanings

    For minor members of a sentence, the Chinese language has a strict word order:

    It is worth noting that the word order is tied not so much to the grammatical or syntactic characteristics of the secondary members, but to their semantics:

    Language features

    Graphic

    The speakers of all dialects of the Chinese language use hieroglyphic (ideographic) logosyllabic writing (a way of graphically representing sounding speech, in which each sign conveys one syllable), which has developed from pictographic signs. There is a Romanization system for Mandarin - pinyin, as well as a transcription system for Chinese into Russian - the Palladium system.

    Phonological

    In Mandarin, depending on the nature of the change in the frequency of the main voice tone in time, 4 tones are distinguished: 1st ( smooth), 2nd ( ascending), 3rd ( descending-ascending) and 4th ( descending) tones (in the practice of teaching Chinese in Russian schools, they are sometimes characterized as melodious, asking, satisfied and abusive intonation). The tone acts as one of the main distinctive sound means that allow one to distinguish lexical meanings. Examples: 失 shī("To lose") - 十 shí("Ten") - 史 shǐ("History") - 事 shì("a business"); 媽 mā("Mother") - 麻 má("Hemp") - 马 mǎ("Horse") - 骂 mà("to scold") .

    Statistical studies have shown that the functional "load" of tones in Mandarin is about as high as that of vowels.

    For Mandarin, combinatorial transformations of tones are characteristic, which occur during word formation when syllables with a certain tone are combined: tones can be changed or neutralized. Such transformations can be both regular and irregular. So, the syllable is 一 yī"One" in an isolated position is pronounced under the 1st tone, but in a phrase before the syllables of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd tone, it is pronounced under the 4th tone (for example, 一 yī + 年 nián goes into yìnián), and before the syllable of the 4th tone - under the 2nd (for example, 一 yī + 定 dìng goes into yídìng) .

    Morphological

    Syntactic

    Count words

    The peculiarity of the structure of the noun phrase in Mandarin is the presence of countable words, which necessarily appear in front of a noun when it is combined with a numeral, demonstrative pronoun or quantifier (except for cases when a noun denotes a measure of something; such a noun may well act as a classifier itself). The choice of a classifier is determined by the noun itself; there are several dozen classifiers in the language.

    Types of classifiers:

    • counting words (measures of length, weight, etc.; collective ( aggregate) - stack, herd; "Containers" - box, bottle);
    • abstract ("several");
    • parts of the body (with a value like "___, full of something"), etc.

    Classifier ge refers to noun phrases denoting people, but in modern Mandarin ge is moving towards the status of a universal classifier, and many speakers use it for other noun phrases that are not related to humans.

    Topic-commentary structure

    One of the characteristic features of the Chinese language syntax is that, in addition to a number of traditional syntactic roles (subject, direct object, etc.), communicative units are distinguished in the sentence structure - topic and comment.

    Phrasal particles

    In Chinese, as in the analytical language, particles are widely used to express morphological (for example, verb form), syntactic (for example, belonging - see the section "Marking locus in a possessive noun phrase"), discursive and other meanings.

    Among the particles, the so-called "sentence-ending" ones are interesting.

    Notes (edit)

    1. BBC Russian service will transfer broadcasting to the Internet
    2. Zavyalova O. I. Chinese language // Great Russian Encyclopedia. T. 14. - M.: Publishing house "BRE", 2009.