I’m Kelly Wang, a Chinese teacher for westerners for more than 5 years. The reason I start this blog is that I want to share with anyone who is interested in learning Chinese with learning tips, my teaching experience and the Chinese culture that are related to this language.

As China’s development has been so fast these years, learning Chinese has become the new fashion, and is essential for business. So are you ready to be IN?

Let’s start our first lesson with the introduction of Pinyin. Pin means spell, and Yin means sound, so spell the sound.

The special thing of Pinyin is the tones, which considered the most difficult part for most Chinese learners.

First let’s take a look at the difference among these tones.

ma, 1st tone, flat tone, it is high and long, like when you are singing “ahhh…”
má, 2nd tone, up tone, it is short, like the rise in a question, or you can raise your eyebrow to feel it.
ma, 3rd tone, dipping tone, it is down and up, you can nod your head to feel it.
mà, 4th tone, down tone, it is very short and firm, like you say “NO” in a very strong way.
And there is another tone, which is a neutral tone, or you can call it no-tone,ma, just make it very short and light when you pronounce it.

So strictly saying there are 5 tones in total, 4 tones + 1 neutral tone.

Please don’t be scared by the tones, as Chinese is a language which is very much based on word combinations and context, even your tones are not exactly right, people will still be able to understand you (I mean, most of the time and when they are ready for you to speak Chinese)!
Once, I took a student for a field trip to a restaurant, he ordered a drink in Chinese “yi bei chéng zhi” (a glass of orange juice), his accent sounded perfect to me. While I was so proud of my student’s progress, the waitress came with the drink… It was a glass of beer!

Our ears are trained in a very different way to westerners. For westerners, the tones seem impossible to distinguish, while for Chinese, the tiny difference between the pronunciation, like the sound of “shut, shirt, shit” are almost impossible for us to tell. So our ears are focused on the pitch of the sound, but quite tolerant to the similarity of the pronunciation. So that’s why you may find out that there are 10 different ways for people saying “xie xie” (thanks), but we still can understand each other as long as the pitch is right.

So a suggestion for beginner learners, especially for those who just started. Try to get familiar with the sound is very important, you can play some Chinese CDs, listen to some Chinese songs, use the free material on our website, pay attention to what Chinese people say…of course you won’t understand everything, and you don’t need to understand everything, just warm up your ears to the Chinese sound. It would be very helpful for your further study.

Kelly Wang is author of this article on Learning Mandarin. Find more information about Studying Mandarin Online here http://www.accentmandarin.com/online.asp.