Lesson 1:

READ HERE FOR THE HISTORY OF PINYIN: 

http://www.pinyinjoe.com/about-pinyin.htm

Let's start with hànyǔ pīnyīn. So, what exactly is hànyǔ pīnyīn (汉语拼音) ? As implied in its name, 汉语 (hànyǔ), is the Mandarin equivalent to saying, Chinese Language.  拼音(pīnyīn) is equivalent to the Korean's Romanization. When translated directly, it means "put together sounds" . hànyǔ pīnyīn (汉语拼音), is a simpler way of pronouncing and reading Chinese words when you do not understand the word/language.

In Chinese, the consonants are called 声母(shēngmǔ) and the vowels are called 韵母(yùnmǔ). To be able to pronounce Chinese fluently, you need to be able to pronounce all the consonants and vowels.

There are also 4 different tones when it comes to pronouncing Chinese words. These tones are attached to the vowels in hànyǔ pīnyīn and it indicates the pitch that your voice is supposed to hit when reading the word. When there are 2 vowels in a single word, the tone is attached to the main vowel. (For example: love = (ài) 爱)

      By changing the tone of the word, the meaning of the word may change. However, even without changing the tone, there may be a few (if not hundreds) of different meanings to a word. For example, 繁荣 (fán róng) means prosperity, whereas 亦凡 (yì fán) is the Chinese name of ex EXO-M member, Kris (the meaning of his name yì fán is that he is "ordinary, like a human", it somewhat implies that he is great but is willing to lower himself for others.) Meanings of other EXO member's names here . Do note, both "fán" of the two words have completely different meanings and different to write out the word, however, the pronunciation of the word is exactly the same!

More will be covered in the next chapter! There is a lot more to learn about Chinese, and the first big step you can take is to learn and pronounce the hànyǔ pīnyīn correctly. Do look for hànyǔ pīnyīn songs to start pronouncing the Chinese letters as Chinese pronunciation is quite different from English!

PinYin songs:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Teomsfl-ylA

Conversations 101

For today, we would learn how to introduce ourselves!

To say "Hello",

你好！(nǐ hǎo) Hello

你 (nǐ) = you

好 (hǎo) = good/fine

Adding another word, 吗 (mā), could change the the whole sentence to a question.

你好吗? (nǐ hǎo mā) Are you fine/okay? How are you?

To introduce yourself, you could use,

你好！我的名字是 ______。(nǐ hǎo wǒ dè mǐng zì shì_____) Hello! My name is_____.

我 (wǒ) = I / mine / my / me

的 (dè) = of / adjectival suffix

名 (mǐng) = name / rank / title / position

字 (zì) = word

是 (shì) = is

18/11/2015