‘Because it’s to hard’ Well, yeaÖit can be if you approach it with a bad attitude, or you have the wrong learning tools, or little discipline. Anything worth learning takes time, practice and perseverance. But remember, knowledge is power and in tomorrow’s world, you may just need to know Chinese somewhere in your career or personal life.
Learning the Chinese language can be a difficult task to embark on. Unlike other foreign languages, or the English language, the Chinese language embraces different layers of tones, phonetics, and over 3000 characters. However, the grammar and syntax of sentence structure remains simple in comparison to the English language. With the increasing demand to learn the Chinese language, many teachers have developed new instruction tools to help their students learn better and learn faster. Declan’s Flashcards used to teach Chinese are an effective resource for learning Chinese.
It is said Mandarin Chinese is one of the top languages difficult to learn. The Chinese language embraces so many levels of complex spoken and written components within their language that it can almost seem to frustrating. In order to understand Chinese, you have to dissect the pronunciations, the written characters (and there are thousands upon thousands of them), and the tonal dialects used in each word. If the task of mastering the language becomes to cumbersome, it is often the choice to just give up.
If you ever sat down to eat in a Chinese restaurant, there’s a good chance you have had the opportunity to hear Chinese spoken fluently. The menu most likely contained beautiful Chinese characters depicting food offerings. This beautiful language lends its self to roots that began over 4000 years ago from the Sino- Tibetan vernacular form. Today, the most common style of Chinese used is the Mandarin Chinese language.
The Chinese language is illusive to English speaking world, almost seems to be a complex mystery intimidating to unravel and to understand. If you wish to learn Chinese, then approach it delicately and thoroughly as a bridge to not only communication with this beautiful culture, but learn Chinese to harvest the history and ways of their world as well.
Out of 2003 came the emergence of Asian rap star ‘Jin’ with social cultural hit ‘Learn Chinese’. It appeared as refreshing insight into the music subculture of Asian American and attempted to bring a whole new perspective to rap music. It was a shout out at a rapidly growing popular trend by young Asians to get on the rap music money train and express themselves about their social concerns. One of those social concerns is how they are perceived by Americans. Much of the lyrics they sing contain a sort of animosity for racial stereotyping of their culture. Rap music has typically been reserved for the African American culture with a few white rap icons, like Eminem, bursting out into scene sparingly. Thanks to Jin, a message was developed but met with much controversy from Asians themselves. Most agreed the music including some background lyrics in Cantonese was little to be desired, and overall, was not what they would sing, but agreed in was an intriguing relief for his command of the English language. Many were not impressed, and yet some understood and appreciated his attempt at breaking social stereotyping of Asians in American culture.
If learning the Chinese language is on your list of things to do, then consider using the first tool at your fingertips on your computer. Today, the internet is chocked full of a multitude of a variety of instructions for learning Chinese. Each site offers something unique and beneficial to that site, however, there are of course, some maintained with a more serious hand in learning and others, well, just plain frumpy. Before you begin, be prepared to do a lot of surfing from your favorite search engines and bookmarking the ones appropriate for your own level of learning. You will have to separate the good sites from the not so good sites. Know what it is exactly you wish to learn. Do you wish to learn to write the beautiful characters? Do you just need to know simple communication phrases? Develop some kind of plan of purpose, to save time and struggle meandering through sites.
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America is the cultural melting pot of the world. More so today than even as defined in history. The future looks as though children will have to speak at least one other language than English in their adult lifetime. The second most widely used language in the world, contrary to beliefs, is Chinese.
So, you want to learn to speak Chinese? And it’s no wonder whyÖwith today’s world aggressively tapping into each other, we are culturally merging rapidly. The Chinese language has become increasingly popular, almost tripling the demand to learn the Chinese language in the past decade. High thanks to modern technology such as computers, cell phones, even MP3 players, language accommodation in these instruments is becoming the norm. Gone are the days of primary English communications on these devices, now you can speak and write the Chinese characters, as well as many other languages. In order to keep up with the technology advances, it is become crucial to pick up a second language in business as well. If you learn to speak Chinese, and you can demonstrate ability for the language, you are more than one step above others in career paths such a business, marketing, engineering and technology.
There is a quiet appreciation for Chinese calligraphy (called ‘Shu Fa’ in Chinese). We see it everywhere. It has been around for thousand’s of years, and has danced it’s way into the western world. Character techniques were refined throughout the history of China as their culture’s social circumstances changed. Self expression thru disciplined understanding of form and technique has been handed down by the great masters of Chinese calligraphy, with each master leaving a unique, individual style. Within this heritage many artists have taken some influence from it for their own works. Picasso and Matisse are two artists who used some Chinese calligraphy in their art. It is considered an art form and with it’s amass of many followers, it is now a sought after as a class in which one can learn the art of Chinese calligraphy.