How to Learn Mandarin

Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, is the official language of China and is used by most parts of the country. When people say they are learning Chinese, more often than not, they mean that they are learning mandarin. Although there are some people who are learning Cantonese, learning mandarin is a better choice if you are a beginner. Cantonese has more tones than mandarin has, that makes it more difficult to learn. Besides that, if you go to mainland China, most people will speak mandarin. Cantonese is mainly spoken in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong of China. And most people who live in Guangdong Province or Hong Kong can still understand Putonghua.

Although mandarin is easier to learn than Cantonese, you still need to put a lot of effort in it. In fact, the grammar of Chinese is very similar to the grammar of English. The biggest difficult part of Chinese is it's pronunciation and Hanzi (Chinese characters). Chinese has four different tones, one word will has different meanings with different tones. So the tones, which are overlooked by many beginners, are very important to learn Chinese. The native speakers will not understand you if you pronounce the tones incorrectly.

Learning Hanzi can be very painful to many people. The best way to memorize Hanzi is to write them down on the paper and repeat that. Hanzi is not only difficult to learn for none natives, it is also difficult to Chinese. The Chinese students in primary school may write down a Chinese character in their exercise books dozens of times a day. Making some flash cards can help to learn Hanzi. You can memorize them in your free time.

Learning Chinese requires hard work. However, it will make the learning process much easier if you know the right methods. Click here to read more tips of Chinese learning.