How to Learn Mandarin in 2009

If you are thinking of learning Chinese(Mandarin), you are headed to climb a big mountain. It will especially be hard if your mother tongue has an alphabet, and doesn't use any characters. Some say that living in Spain or France, you'd be able to master the local language in 7 months, while living in China; you'd need at least 2 years. In this article I will give a few points on why it is a challenge, so then you can make that important decision if you are ready to invest your time in learning Chinese.

Chinese uses characters instead of an alphabet. Characters are made up of radicals or small pictures. In the Oxford Chinese Dictionary, it shows that there are 186 radicals in the Chinese language. A number of radicals can make up a character, a Chinese word. For instance the radical for a woman and the radical for child together mean "good". That is one character. Two or more specific characters together can also mean one word in English.
At the beginning pronunciation is all memorization. You would have to memorize each character and the sound it makes. But as many Chinese children start out, they have a helper, a Romanization of the characters. An alphabet on top of the characters so that at least there is a system of being able to pronounce them. As you progress, with fluency, you would have to drop that system, just like a child stops using the training wheels on a bike, and never comes back to them again.
Maybe you noticed Chinese people speaking, with their tone of voice going up and down. That's part of the language. Specifically 4 tones. So a simple word as "Ma" literally can mean horse, mother or hemp, each according to their tone. People with a musical mind, might find it easier to master these.

With an investment, you need to wait a while before you can reap the rewards. Deciding to learn Mandarin Chinese is an investment of your time. But as with any investment, you could reap big rewards. And looking at the world situation today, Mandarin is looking more and more like a good investment.

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