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Chinese Language Mandarin

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Peace Corps / China

The script accompanies the following 15 audio tracks:

CN_Mandarin_Lesson_1 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_2 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_3 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_4 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_5 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_6 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_7 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_8 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_9 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_10 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_11 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_12 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_13 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_14 CN_Mandarin_Lesson_15

(Time 3:39) (Time 14:52) (Time 4:45) (Time 2:07) (Time 3:14) (Time 4:22) (Time 3:01) (Time 3:37) (Time 1:24) (Time 1:50) (Time 1:19) (Time 1:12) (Time 2:41) (Time 1:01) (Time 1:25)

(File Size:1.5MB) (File Size:6.1MB) (File Size:1.95MB) (File Size:873KB) (File Size:1.3MB) (File Size:1.8MB) (File Size:1.24MB) (File Size:1.49MB) File Size:576KB) (File Size:757KB) (File Size:544KB) (File Size:497KB) (File Size:1.1MB) (File Size:420KB) (File Size:588KB)

3/29/2007

Chinese Basic Lessons for Invitees, Peace Corps / China

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Table of Contents

Lesson 1 Introduction to Chinese Language Lesson 2 Phonetics Lesson 3 Basic Grammar Lesson 4 Greetings Lesson 5 Introductions Lesson 6 Numbers/Prices Lesson 7 Food & Drink Lesson 8 Some Chinese Dishes Lesson 9 Useful Phrases Lesson 10 Sickness and Emergency Lesson 11 Direction and Places Lesson 12 Clothes and Colors Lesson 13 Time Lesson 14 Family Lesson 15 Home Items Appendix: Measure words in Chinese (no audio)

3/29/2007

P4 P5 P9 P11 P12 P14 P16 P18 P19 P20 P21 P22 P23 P25 P26 P27

Chinese Basic Lessons for Invitees, Peace Corps / China

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3/29/2007

Lesson 1 Introduction to Chinese Language

Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China. It is the dialect spoken in the capital, Beijing. It is taught in all schools and is used for television and broadcast. Almost the entire population understands Mandarin. The language taught in Pre-Service Training (PST) for Peace Corps trainees is Mandarin.

Chinese is a language with a large number of words with the same pronunciation but different meanings; what distinguishes these `homophones' is their `tonal' quality ? the raising and lowering of pitch on certain syllables. Mandarin has four tones ? high, rising, falling-rising and falling, plus a fifth "neutral" tone. To illustrate, look at the word ma, which has four different meanings according to tone:

High

m

Rising

m?

Falling-rising m

Falling

m?

`mother' `hemp' or `numb' `horse' `to scold' or `swear'

Writing System

Chinese is not a phonetic language and the characters do not bear any resemblance to actual pronunciation. Chinese is often referred to as a language of pictographs.

There are about 56,000 characters, but the vast majority of these are archaic. It is commonly felt that a well-educated, contemporary Chinese might know and use between 6,000 and 8,000 characters. To read a Chinese newspaper you need to know 2,000 to 3,000, but 1,200 to 1,500 would be enough to get the gist.

Each Chinese character represents a spoken syllable, so many people declare that Chinese is a monosyllabic language. Actually, it's more a case of having a monosyllabic writing system. While the building block of the Chinese language is indeed the monosyllabic Chinese character, Chinese words are usually a combination of two or more characters. You could think of Chinese words as being compounds.

Phonetic system ? Pinyin

In 1958 China adopted a system of writing their language using the Roman alphabet. It's known as Pinyin. It is used in this course.

Grammar

Chinese grammar is much simpler than that of European languages. There are no articles (a/an/the), no tenses, and no plurals. The basic point to bear in mind is that, like English, Chinese word order is subject-verb-object. In other words, a basic English sentence like "I (subject) love (verb) you (object)" is constructed in exactly the same way in Chinese.

Chinese Basic Lessons for Invitees, Peace Corps / China

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3/29/2007

Lesson 2 Phonetics

There are 6 basic vowels and 21 consonants in Mandarin Chinese. A syllable always consists of a vowel (V) or a consonant with a vowel (CV), such as ba, fo, ne. Consonant clusters, two or more consonants used in succession, are not permitted in Chinese. Syllabic combinations common in English such as VC (up, at), CVC (big, pat, map), CCVC (bred, dread, stone), CVCC (mask, best, sand), CCV (fly, blue, grow) CCCV (screw, spray, stray), VCC (old, and, ink), VCCC (Olds, ants, amps), CCVCC (brand, trains, swings), CVCCC (tests, tenths, lunged), CVCCCC (thirsts, texts, worlds), CCVCCC (slurps, prints, flirts), CCCVC (street, squat, strut), CCCVCC (struts, squats, sprained), and CCCVCCC (scrimps, sprints, squelched) are not possible in Chinese. CVC, on the other hand, is possible in Chinese, but the final C can only be the nasal sounds -n and -ng and the retroflex ?r, such as jing, nan, yong and er. Consonants are often called initials because they invariably appear initially in a word with the exception of the final -n, ng or r, which can appear finally. Vowels are also called finals because they appear medially or finally in a word. Vowels can stand by themselves when no initial consonant is present.

Let's learn the finals (vowels) first:

MANDARIN

a e i o u ?

ai

SIMILAR ENGLISH SOUND Father fur see or flute German `f?r'

fly

EXAMPLE (PINYIN & CHARACTER) b? c? d? p? b? L

ni

NOTE

Written as `u' when appearing after `j q x'

ao

now

ei

day

ia

yard

ie

yes

iu

yolk

ou

low

ua

wah

`e

you ate

ui

way

uo

war

iao

miaow

uai

why

an

upon

en

broken

ang

town

eng

ehng

er

her

ian

yen

iang

yahng

in

inn

ho mi xi? xi? li? l?u hu yu?

hu? zu? y?o ku?i m?n w?n f?ng p?ng ?r din li?ng xi? xn

``e' stands for a syllable by itself, so it is written as `yue', with the 2 dots dropped

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