Learn Chinese Mandarin Language

Product FeaturesLearn Mandarin ChineseThough English is considered a global lingua franca, there are more speakers worldwide of any Chinese language than of English; sometimes it's not so bad to blend into the crowd. Your personalized experience through the Mandarin Chinese course delivers a blend of learning features, exercises, and personalized review with an award-winning conversational learning process that focuses on the four skills necessary to connect in another language; grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and culture. Building on learned material presented in diverse contexts prepares you to start the conversation with confidence. Challenge yourself to learn something new.

If you’ve hesitated to because you’ve heard it’s difficult, take heart. With the right approach, learning Chinese doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

And there are lots of reasons why, specifically Mandarin Chinese, is worth the commitment. Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, with roughly. Although some people in China and across Asia speak Cantonese, the majority of Chinese speakers (about one billion) speak Mandarin. China has the second largest economy in the world, and Mandarin Chinese is the official language not only of China but also Singapore.If you want to learn Chinese, it’s essential to choose a language program that scales gradually towards understanding and builds confidence in speaking Chinese.

Online programs and apps that promise you can learn Chinese in a few minutes a day sound enticing, but it’s hard to develop confidence in the language unless you get beyond vocabulary acquisition and focus on all the aspects of language learning like Chinese grammar and writing.With over twenty-five years of building successful, award-winning language learning programs and apps, Rosetta Stone understands that learning Chinese is about the journey towards understanding and speaking the language. That’s why our language learning programs are built to scale naturally from simple, frequently used conversational phrases in context to more complex components of the Chinese language like verb conjugation and the characters of the simplified writing system. One of the critical aspects of learning Chinese is that it is a, which means the inflection of your tone and pronunciation of the words communicates meaning. Learning and practicing tones should be one of the first things you do as you being your language learning journey before you start trying to memorize Mandarin words and vocabulary lists.Mandarin has four main tones which are “stress-timed,” meaning the stressed syllables in a word are pronounced at regular intervals. These tones include a level tone ( ping), a rising tone ( shang), a departing tone ( qu), and a final tone ( ru).

To master the tones, language-learning experts suggest paying close attention to Mandarin pronunciations and trying to mimic them. You’ll hear that while some words are made up of the same sounds, the pitch with which you pronounce them conveys the meaning. Because English is not tonal, this component of Chinese pronunciation may be a bit trickier for beginning language learners.The key to successful language learning programs is to focus not on vocabulary acquisition and memorization, but on pronunciation and opportunities to practice speaking Chinese. Rosetta Stone incorporates practicing Mandarin pronunciations into every lesson with a patented speech recognition engine called TruAccent. TruAccent encourages language learners to repeat words or phrases, comparing your accent to that of native Chinese speakers and providing instantaneous feedback for improvement. Understanding Chinese characters is one of the areas that many language learners are hesitant about because the from a traditional alphabetic one. However, there is a method to the madness of those delicate swoops, furls, and slashes.

How To Learn Chinese Language Easily

Both Cantonese and Mandarin use the same Chinese writing systems: traditional and simplified. Simplified Chinese writing, as the name might make you believe, is easier to learn and is used widely across China. The traditional Chinese writing system lingers throughout Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan where it is used in an official capacity.Here are some tips for getting familiar and feeling comfortable with the Chinese writing system. Learn the basic characters of Chinese writingThere are about 200 primary characters in the Chinese writing system, and most of the other characters of simplified Chinese are derived from these more common symbols.

Learning just these few hundred characters can get you up to speed quickly and cover many of the more common situations in which you might need to be able to read and write Chinese, like road signs and menus. For instance, learning the characters for birth (生 ) and day (天 ) might help you decipher that 生日快乐 is “happy birthday.” Master the radicals of Chinese writing firstComponents of each character are called radicals and memorizing those first will help you understand more complex words.

Learn Chinese Mandarin Language

For instance, 氵, which looks remarkably like three water droplets trickling down an incline or stick, is a radical that represents water. While this radical may not help you translate the exact meaning of a character, you may be able to discern that 瀑布 (waterfall), 海洋 (ocean), and 湖 (lake) are all water-related words because they each contain the radical for water. Learn pinyin to help you type in ChineseChinese doesn’t have an alphabet, but pinyin is the next best thing.

Pinyin is a kind of shorthand for typing Chinese where each character is represented by a roman numeral. It is a way of representing the sounds of the Chinese language, but it can be confusing for beginners who struggle to try to equate it to a traditional alphabet. Pinyin is best learned after you have had at least an introduction to radicals and simplified Chinese. Here are a few recommendations to help you approach learning Chinese and avoid being overwhelmed by the language that is a cornerstone of communication in the East.

Focus on speaking Chinese firstBecause the writing system can be complicated, you should spend your first few weeks or months focusing on just learning to speak and perfect the tones of Mandarin Chinese. After all, your goal is to be comfortable having Chinese conversations in the real world, which involves not reading or writing in Chinese but understanding and being understood speaking Chinese. Learn Chinese radicals and the simplified writing systemJust and basic characters from the simplified version of the Chinese writing system is probably enough to get you through reading road signs, menus, and basic instructions in public spaces. Mastering the writing system is something more advanced learners can really dig into, so save that for when you feel confident having conversations in Chinese. Take your commitment to learning Chinese seriouslySet aside time daily and commit to learning the language, but understand you may have to build slowly towards confidence rather than racing towards the elusive goal of fluency. Like any language, the ease and speed at which you learn Mandarin Chinese will depend on the time you have to commit to learning and the quality of your language learning program.

Accelerate Your Chinese Learning with Immersion TechniquesWhether you partner up and practice with another language learner or use a variety of other immersion techniques, this is definitely the way to take your Mandarin to the next level. Rosetta Stone offers an online community for language learners where you can interact and chat with others who speak Mandarin on your desktop PC and get some practice with having real-world, unscripted conversations. Surround yourself with Chinese whenever, wherever with the Rosetta Stone app.Download a unit and knock it out on the train or a flight. Select a 5-10 minute lesson and sneak it in while you wait in line or for your ride to show up. And explore dynamic features, like Seek and Speak, where you can point at an object in the real world and get a translation.The best part? You don’t have to choose between app or desktop.

Both come with your subscription and sync, so you can switch between devices seamlessly.