Learning Mandarin through Pin Yin
I learnt very simple Chinese (Mandarin Language) when I was young but it is only in the last ten years that I have mastered Mandarin in the last ten years when I have to deal with the requests of many immigrants from China, settling in Auckland. At home, I have always spoken in either Cantonese or English.
Let me thus share my experience in the learning of Mandarin in five sentences.
(1) Do not start learning the Mandarin Language from the Chinese characters as those characters do not give us the key to their pronunciations. The characters are simply pictures without any indication of their sounds.
(2) Start learning the Mandarin Language with using Pinyin 拼音（spelling sounds) and the four intonations. (flat, inverted, up, down).
(3) Remember that the Chinese (and the Mandarin) Language has only one sound for each Chinese character.
(4) Use Google Translate (from English to Simplified Chinese) to read the words in Pinyin and make a note of the shape of each character as the shape does give us an indication of the meaning of that character. Use the sound icon to listen to how the word is pronounced and then use the icon again to mimic the pronunciation.
(5) Use Google Translate again to extend our vocabulary by choosing different English words that have the same meaning as the one given for (4) above.
To illustrate the above steps, let us start with a random sentence in English, say:
“We want to go to the library today.”
Step 1: Use Google Translate to practise the sounds for the main words in the sentence - we, want, go, library, today.
Note that the pinyin of the words are given at the bottom right-hand corner. We then click on to the voice icon immediately above these pinyin to listen to the sound of these Chinese words.
we = 我们 wo-men [make a note of the tone indication signs above the sound ‘wo’].
want = 想 xiang [there is a tone indicator here too].
to go to = 要去 yao qu [with intonation indicators too].
library = 图书馆 tu-shu guan.
today = 今天 jin-tian
Step 2: Type into google translate the entire sentence now.
“We want to go to the library today.”
“我们今天想去图书馆。”
We find that the placing of the word ‘today’ in the Chinese version of the sentence has changed to literary read “We today want to go to the library.” - the Chinese style of sentence build-up.
The pinyin is also given as:
Wǒmen jīntiān xiǎng qù túshū guǎn.
Click on the sound icon and we shall follow the pronunciation of these words several times.
That is how I learn the Chinese language and I hope that this posting will help you learn the Mandarin conversation too.
Let us end by watching the following videos:
111 Chinese Phrases for Beginners
Many people from western culture might say that learning Chinese (Mandarin) is very difficult. It is probably because of the Chinese character which is called “Hanzi”. Many people from western culture might say that learning Chinese (Mandarin) is very difficult. It is probably because of the Chinese character which is called “Hanzi” in Chinese. Chinese characters are not like any other languages in the world, as most of them are pictographs, which mean they are from pictures. They seem really interesting and beautiful, but you have no idea how to pronounce a single word. But don’t worry! There are two wonderful devices for you to make learning Mandarin much easier and more interesting: They are Pinyin and Tone. In this Session, We will learn Pinyin and Tone and how they work in Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese language so that you will be ready to read and learn any words, phrases and sentences in Chinese with your knowledge of Pinyin and Tone
Download “seemile” app in the app store and google play
Chinese(Mandarin) video class [You can use this app on your iPhone & iPad]
After a month, you can talk to Chinese through this course.
This app is enough to master basic Chinese course.
[Kindly follow on with this thread to complete the seven basic lessons in Pinyin by Xiao Qian.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dvQJlJ-a54