Mandarin Language Fundamentals   by Ben Pate

in Education / Languages    (submitted 2010-12-22)

There are thousands of people who travel all over the world and still do not learn other languages, so why not try to learn Mandarin? If you plan on or ever wanted to travel to China and understand other people when they speak to you, learning Mandarin will help you to be able to do so. This is a language that is used in multiple areas and various dialects exist.

A specific dialect used in China, Mandarin is spoken in Southwestern and Northern China. Standard Mandarin is considered the language used by Beijing. Northern dialects are commonly called Mandarin Chinese. If you would like to visit these places, learning the language could be helpful.

Due to so many dialects being used, you should probably choose one that best suits the places you will travel to. Mandarin Chinese is spoken in Singapore, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. If you were to ask someone what kind of Chinese they speak, it would be referred to by the area they are from like Sichuan Mandarin. You might think many months or even years are required to learn the language, but this does not have to be certain.

When starting, some learners will find a way of making associations between Mandarin words and their first language. This could be the easiest way to learn quickly. However the most popular seems to be by hearing a word spoken and repeating it many times.

Speech and sound lessons are those that can be purchased on a CD or DVD, and many companies offer them. To learn how to speak a language could take a month or less if you were to take lessons every day, but reading or writing it could take quite a bit longer to be fluent. Your fluency level will depend on your practice, and remember that every person learns differently.

The time it takes you to learn a language could be more or less based on how you learn. Speaking after hearing a language could be done in a month, by taking on whole sentences with good grammar in only a few days. Your results will depend on the method of your lessons and the quickness with which you learn.

Most travelers long to sound as though they are natives, but this can take a long time to do; unlike learning the language. If a person learns to speak English, they will still have an accent associated with their native tongue and will not sound like a native English speaker. This is expected, and will continue without regular practice.

About the Author

To learn Mandarin online, you must decide how you will best learn. If reading from a book and listening to a pronunciation CD is easiest for you, this would be ideal for the fastest learning situation. You can find out about home programs or even local businesses that offer language lessons to help you learn.