Mandarin Lessons

In the early 1900's China adopted Mandarin as its official language. Mandarin was adopted as the standard Chinese language because it was best for the country to have one standard language. One of the most intriguing parts of the Chinese language is that the characters are all written the same way, but pronounced differently when spoken aloud. As an example, a person in China that speaks Mandarin may not understand a person who speaks Cantonese although they can read the same written characters with no problem. In discussing the characters it is important to note that there are simplified characters (used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore) and traditional characters (used in Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong).

The language and characters are very different from English or any of the romance languages. Mandarin is character based, uses a lot of tones and has sounds that have no English equivalent.

Here are some of the unique sounds in Mandarin:

c sounds like ts
z sounds like dz
zh sounds like ger
r sounds like the r in read

To make things easier for Westerners trying to learn the language there is pinyin. Pinyin is the most widely used system for writing Mandarin in the Roman alphabet.

I have taken Mandarin classes at the local community college to get more comfortable with the language. I've gotten use to the sounds, but the tones are a challenge. Depending on the tone used, the letters m and a together can have different meanings. By way of example let's look at the pinyin form "ma".

Mā (flat tone) represented by the character 妈 means "mother" or "mom".
Má, (rising tone) represented by the character 麻 means "hemp".
Mǎ, (rising falling rising tone) represented by the character马 means "horse".
Mà (sharp falling tone) represented by the character 骂 means "curse".

So an attempt at a joke:

我 妈妈 骂 马。 马 吃 我 妈妈 的 麻。

Which translates:
Wo MāMā Mà Mǎ. Mǎ chī wo MāMā de Má.

or


My mother curses the horse. The horse eats my mother's hemp.