Six Keys to Easily Speaking Mandarin Chinese

Legendary investor Jim Rogers in 2007 sold his mansion in New York City and moved to Singapore to learn Mandarin Chinese. He sent his 4-year old daughter to a school where they only speak the language, and when asked how to survive the global financial downturn, his answer is “teach your children Chinese.”

Today, Chinese presence saturates even more corners of the world, making it a huge economic cost to not learning the language.

Like every language, mastering Chinese requires considerable time, patience and practice. What’s unique to Chinese, however, is a complex tonal system and written characters. For a beginner, the journey to speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese could be easier if you grasp the six necessary keys. They are:

1. Start from the four tones
2. Master Pinyin
3. Stick to easy, short sentences
4. Build vocabulary
5. Repeat patterns
6. Speak up and expect mistakes

Let’s get into the details of each key:

1. Tone: In Chinese, tones are just as important as pronunciations, if not more. The aspect of tones also poses the most challenging task for speakers of other languages. You could unintentionally call you mom a horse or your wife a dwarf if the tones are not marked right.

To easily understand and pronounce the four tones right, try the following exercises:

Fist tone: a flat note and relatively high tone. Picture yourself singing “la”
Second tone: a rising tone. As in “far” when asking “Is it far?”
Third tone: a dipping tone, as when irritably saying, “So?”
Fourth tone: a downward tone, as when angrily saying, “No!”

In rare occasions, a word is not marked with a tone. In such a case, the unstressed syllable should be spoken quickly in a neutral tone.

2. Pinyin is a Chinese pronunciation system; it is composed of an initial sound, a final sound, and a tone. There are 23 initial sounds and 34 final sounds. The tone designates meaning to the word. Here a free Pinyin table to help you out.

3. When learning Chinese, you should try to use short and simple sentences as often as possible. The easy part of learning Chinese is that there are no verb conjugations. I , we, you, he, she, they, and it all use same verb. For example: am - “Shi”.

I am– Wo shi
You are – Ni Shi
He/She is – Ta shi
We are – Women shi
You are – Nimen shi
They are –Tamen shi

Pronouns are similarly simple and plural forms are the singular forms plus the syllable “men”. You can thus start speaking Chinese the very first day!

4. Remember small but highly utilized vocabulary. Chinese language consists of over 10,000 words; however, you don’t have to remember all of them, not even half. To be able to communicate in daily life and gain confidence speaking the language, you need to master the commonly used words --as few as 300. If you can remember and correctly pronounce them, you are on the way to take about the weather, hobbies, go shopping and even bargaining in Chinese.

5. The key to learning a new language is repetition. In Chinese, there are several highly used sentence patterns that you should keep in mind. Sticking to them will make daily conversation smooth and understandable. These include: Youmeiyou (do you have…?), you (have), yao (want), bu (no), nengbuneng (can….?) na er? (Where), etc.

6. Learn Chinese with a partner. Due to the tone variations and pronunciation rules, for a beginner speaking Chinese may make you sound funny to a native speaker but it shouldn’t deter you from seeking help. Quite the opposite, it should motivate you to practice with a partner. Ask a Chinese friend to help or exchange your language with a Chinese speaker to practice the tones. From identifying and repeating sentence patterns with a native speaker, you will better understand the context of using them.

After mastering the six keys, next time you could be well on you way to say: “ni de zhong wen bing bu jian de bi wo hao” (Your Chinese sucks worse than mine)

You are welcome to quote freely from this article once you give proper attribution. (A link to letterfromghana.blogspot.com and author: Brian Yang would be appreciated.) You are also welcome to republish this article in full once you give the proper attribution .

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to use RSS feed for get more such cross-culture pieces.

Six Keys to Working Effectively with Chinese

Here in Ghana, people are not afraid of showing their affections towards a person from a different cultural background, the so-called Oburoni. As the country enjoys decade long stable democracy and inflow of foreign aid and investment, it embraces more Oburonis, especially many Chinese who come to work or do business.

The other day, I was told that a Chinese businesswoman had a quarrel with her Ghanaian business partner. The Ghanaian complained that the Chinese was disrespectful and yelling at people and the Chinese said she was simply trying to explain the situation.

As a cross-culture trainer, I think that, “Conflict is not always a personal clash, but a clash in value and perception.” When working with people from different cultural backgrounds, preservation is everything.

To overcome cultural bias and stereotypes, I created a simple model to work with clients, the model of UNIQUE. It stands for:

Understand, before being understood.

No Presumption. Even with good intention

Inquire. ASK

Quote back and confirm

Use humor

Empathy

To elaborate the model, I developed the following six keys to guide you through the maze of working with Chinese:

1. Understand what the Chinese culture values:

· Trust

· Face and Harmony

· Long term relationships -- “guanxi”

· Reciprocity: mutually beneficial

· Loyalty. An old Chinese saying goes like this, “Dogs don’t leave poor owners; You don’t complain about your mom’s looks”

· Achievement: Fame and Profit. There are five criteria to judge the success of a Chinese man: Money, House, Wife, Son, and Car.

2. Identify characters of Chinese people:

· Pragmatism, “whatever works”

· Materialism, Money is God

· Relationship oriented, network is the way to success. Who you know is more important than what you know

· Distinguish between an insider and an outsider. Foreigners are called “lao wai” (“senior outsider”)

· Collectivist culture

· Hard working: save hard for rainy days

3. Pay attention to Chinese cultural aspects:

· Hierarchy, highly structured and everyone aware of own position

· Respect and obey the old and superiors

· Privacy is still an imported luxury, and people are inquisitive

· Education is the way to get better future

· Too flexible, “rules are set to break”

4. Communicate with Chinese:

Chinese communication style: High Context Culture

· Indirect way of communication. From A to C then B

· Informal environment is preferred

· Non-verbal communication, use a lot of body language

· Volume: speak loud, you can’t tell whether it is a talk or a quarrel

· Don’t listen well, presume

· Tolerance for ambiguity

· Avoid saying NO. Thousand ways of saying No, without actually saying it

· No is also a Yes………with a little work

5. Respect Face Factor

• Face (mianzi, pride) needs to be saved by all means. No face, no pride. Everyone needs to look good

• Harmony is maintained to keep a long term relationship

• Due to a rapid economic growth, Chinese are particularly proud of themselves

• Saving face is universally applicable. Chinese are who they are, not where they are.

6. Seek Common Ground

• Make an effort and show your understanding for the culture and the values. Appreciate what Chinese culture has to offer. Biggest complaint – “Foreigners don’t understand China”

• Seek things of common interests, not you vs. us

• Be prepare to read between the lines, understand nuance and body language

• Be humble and persistent

• Listen well. Ask a lot of good questions, then listen.

Finally, Use humor:

Chinese have a natural inclination to be afraid of black people. Why?

They think you are taller and know better Kung Fu

You are welcome to quote freely from this article once you give proper attribution. (A link to letterfromghana.blogspot.com and author: Brian Yang would be appreciated.) You are also welcome to republish this article in full once you give the proper attribution .

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to use RSS feed for get more such cross-culture pieces.

Bamboo Bikes Blossom

A recent trip to Aburi garden, a botanical plantation some 30 kilometers away from Accra, got me into bamboos and its usage of bike building.

It is all started 10 years ago when an American designer came across the idea in Ghana. The idea is to use bamboo as a frame for a bike, the rest has been history. The bikes are blossoming in the U.S, where there are multiple places you can buy, and even build yourself one. In NYC, there is a workshop that teaches people how to build one. The price is around $1,000, but you got a sturdy bike and thrill of being part of it.

In Ghana, some 40 people are now employed to work building the bikes, they use bamboos that are ready available, and require minimum tools and no electricity. Youth are encouraged to participate as apprentice.

The question is only about the cost, it seems that most of the bikes are sold in the U.S., where in Ghana, where bikes play an important role in transporting everything from people to merchandise, there are nowhere to see the bikes.

African Food Culture Gains Popularity In China

Can Made-in-China translate into Created-in-China? One Chinese company, TV and write goods maker Hi-science is testing the water in Africa.


Following my Chinese tourists in Africa post, there is a Xinhua story on how to save money and travel to Africa after the Chinese Spring Festival, which is to begin this weekend.


In Guangzhou, China, where estimated over 30,000 Africans live and work, African foods culture also takes off, such as Moroccan soup and Arabian floor cake.
I wonder how many Guangzhouese will forgo Dim Sum for the soup and cake?