subject: What makes the Chinese language special and easy to learn？ [print this page] What makes the Chinese language special and easy to learn
1 Hanzi (characters) are invented to record the language
The Chinese characters originally came from the simplified drawings of living things. And some of those drawings were also borrowed to imply some abstract ideas.
In most cases, the character can tell us the meaning it carries by identifying the radicals (components), which are put together in different positions to make a character, and sometimes, roughly, it can also tell us its pronunciation. About half of the Chinese characters are a blending of meaning and sound.
One Chinese character is basically equal to one syllable of an English word. And like English, it can be a word by itself, but mostly two characters are used to make a word. More than half of the Chinese words are made up of two characters. There are also Chinese words made up of three or more characters.
2 It's a tonal language.
There are basically five tones for each sound (four fixed, one relatively flexible) in Chinese. Different tones of a sound mean definitely different things.
3 The Chinese grammar is very simple; therefore, the context is quite important to understand a word meaning. The main purpose is to avoid too much repetition.
l It's not reflexive. There are no changes in a word form for different genders, numbers and tenses etc.
l The concept of tense is not stressed, instead, the completion, progression and result of an action are narrated by adding certain particles like "le" "zhe" "guo4" after the action word.
l Basic word order in a sentence is like this:
Subject + point of time + place + action 1+object+action 2+object +length of time
* The word order ina questionstays the same as that in a statement.
l All modifying words or even a sentence (a clause) are usually put before the noun that is modified by adding the particle "de" in between.
l In a dialogue, "I" or "we" and "You" are not usually mentioned, because they are implied.
l The topic word is usually put at the beginning of a sentence, even if it works as an object in a sentence. We call that a "topic sentence." This is very popular in a conversation.
l Each noun has got a measure word to go with.
l While we mention a place or time, we usually follow the order "from big to small".
l In Chinese, there is no simple "Yes" or "No" to answer a simple question. What we usually do is to answer by repeating the verb or adjective (predicate in a sentence),etjc with a "b"( no for present/future) "mi(no forpast/complete)" before it.
4 Greeting habits
Besides "Nho (hello at any time) or Zo (hello in the early morning)", Among acquintances, and sometimes, even to strangers, Chinese people often say what they see as greetings. e.g. "N chfn a You are eating.", "N chq a (You are going out?)" or "Ch le ma?(Did you eat? at about meal time)". It's just normal concern we show for the others.
