How to Learn the Chinese Language

Many people faced with the task of how to learn to speak the Chinese language go into an absolute panic. The characters look so strange to the Western eye, and the words sound nothing like English. But there are shortcuts to learning Chinese that will have even the most panic-stricken student speaking this unique language in no time.

You can accomplish the first issue - those strange but beautiful characters by separating the act of speaking Mandarin from the act of reading it. Unfortunately Mandarin doesn't use the Western world's normal alphabet, or technically, any alphabet at all. Those symbols are called characters, and there are a lot of them. But fortunately, many Foreign speakers learn to speak beginner Chinese without learning Chinese characters, because Chinese can be written in a Roman alphabet called Pinyin. This greatly helps people like you not speaking Chinese with how to learn Chinese!

The second problem - the sound of Mandarin words themselves can be explained by realizing that Chinese is very dependent on pitch and tone. For example, the sound "ma" said in a high-pitched tone could mean "mother" in a different tone, it could mean "horse." Thus, it's important that students concerned with how to learn Chinese approach the language in a way that allows them to hear the words and phrases pronounced. Rocket Mandarin is a excellent language course for this reason; it helps you learn the Chinese language in the quickest and most effective way starting within the next 30 minutes.

Concluding how to study Chinese, you must know what kind of Chinese you need to learn. There are quite a few variations of the Chinese language; whether these are dialects of a single language, or related but separate languages like Japanese and Arabic, for instance, is difficult to say. Two of the most commonly used variants of Chinese are Mandarin (the standard language of both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan), and Cantonese (more commonly spoken in Hong Kong). But each variant is completely different from the others, and a Cantonese-speaking person cannot be understood by a someone who speaks only Mandarin.

In addition to studying with a good audio language learning program such as Rocket Chinese, it helps greatly to befriend a native speaker to chat with. This is true when learning any new language, but it's a very important factor in how to learn Chinese. Have you ever heard someone pronounce an unfamiliar name on the telephone, and you fail to understand what they were saying? This is because you can't see the movements of their mouth as they produce the sounds. With so many Chinese words dependent upon tone and the slightest variation of pronunciation, it helps so much to have a Chinese friend to practice with.

You say you don't know any Chinese people? I'll bet you do! Is there a Chinese restaurant nearby? If employees speak the variant of Chinese you want to learn, make them your new friends, because they'll absolutely will help you on how to learn Chinese! Is there a Chinese community in your area? In all likelihood, there will be Chinese people there. Look on the Internet for social sites and meeting places featuring Chinese language and culture. And as a last plan, you can learn a great deal from viewing Mandarin films.

Finally, practice a lot! You'll never sound like a native Chinese speaker, but before you know it, you'll be able to speak conversational Chinese with ease. And your friends will never believe that only a 8 weeks ago, you had no idea how to converse Chinese!