Boye Lafayette De Mente - Survival Chinese: How to Communicate without Fuss or Fear Instantly!

CONTENTS

Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

www.tuttlepublishing.com

Copyright 2004, 2013, 2015 Boy Lafayette De Mente
Illustrations by Akiko Saito
Cover photos: (left) Bigstock / (right) Dreamstime
Text photos Dreamstime

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-8048-4538-0
ISBN 978-1-4629-1782-2 (ebook)

18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1 1507CP
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INTRODUCTON

Chinese Written in English

The transcription of Mandarin Chinese into Roman letters, known as pnyn (peen-een) , was reformed in 1958, making it easier for foreigners to study the language without having to learn the thousands of logograms.

However, several of the letters used in the pinyin version of Chinese are still pronounced in what might be called the old way. These include c, q, x, z, and the combination of ch. C is pronounced more or less as ts, q as ch, x as sh, z as dz, and zh as j.

There are also some variations (from English) in the pronunciation of vowels in Chinese words. U may be pronounced more like o, and e may be pronounced more like u. These and other variations in pronunciation are accounted forto the extent possiblein the English phonetic version of each word and sentence in this book.

Here are some additional guidelines on how the 26 English letters are pronounced when used in Chinese words (most of them are pronounced very much like they are in English):

Those Notorious Tones

Dealing with the problem of tonal changes in the pronunciation of Chinese words remains a challenge, but with a little effort, it does not preclude one from communicating effectively in the language. For one thing, one of the four tones in the language is neutral or flat, requiring no tonal change. [This is the way most English is spoken, but if you enunciate all Chinese words in this manner you will get some surprising results!]

Fortunately, the pronunciation of the other three tones in Chinese is not absolutely precise in actual use, although there is an official tone. Different people pronounce them slightly differently, so there is some tolerance; plus the fact that the context in which words are used helps make the meaning clear.

The four tones in Mandarin Chinese are described as even, rising, falling-rising, and falling. The even tone is generally spoken in a slightly higher pitch than the normal voice. In the rising tone, the voice goes from the normal pitch to a slightly higher pitch. In the falling-rising tone the voice goes down and up, and in the falling tone the voice goes from a higher to a lower tone.

* Mispronunciation hereit should be lom .

In formal Chinese written in Roman letters the tones are indicated by diacritical marks over the appropriate lettersthe even tone by a horizontal line (e.g. ); the rising tone by a line sloping up ( ); the falling-rising tone by a v-shaped mark ( ); and the falling tone by a line slanting downward ( ). When there are no diacritical marks over letters it means they are pronounced flat.

Again, while using an incorrect tone will sometimes change the meaning of a word, pronunciation of the tones by the Chinese themselves often varies significantly, based on their education, where they were raised, etc.

Chinese is Easier than English!

It may require a stretch to think of Chinese as simpler and easier than English, but linguistically speaking that is the case. The Chinese alphabet consists of 405 syllables that use tonal differences to make up some 1,277 building blocks. English uses 26 letters and 44 basic sounds to create several thousand building blocks.

The 405 Chinese syllables are made up of combinations of five vowel sounds, 23 consonant sounds and 15 compound sounds consisting of combinations of the five vowels. While this may sound extraordinarily intimidating, the same syllables are repeated over and over, and their spelling never changeswhile there often appears to be no rhyme or reason to the spelling of English words.

Chinese is also grammatically simpler than English. The sentence order of Chinese is the same as that of English: subject, verb and object. Adjectives come before nouns, just as they do in English. But there are no verb conjugations in Chinese, no articles (the, a, an), and no plurals. To make the Chinese words for I, you, he, she and it plural, you just add the suffix men ( mern ) to them:

There is just one word in Chinese for all of the variations of the verb to be sh (pronounced shr ) , which expresses be, am, is, are and were. Similarly, the word q (chwee) incorporates go, goes, went and gone.