Sage-Tips

Can mandarin speakers understand Chinese?

Chinese is not simply divided into Mandarin and Cantonese. Although Cantonese and Mandarin have many similarities, they are not mutually intelligible. This means that, presuming one has no significant exposure or training, a speaker of Mandarin will understand little to nothing of Cantonese and vice-versa.

Do Chinese people actually use tones?

There also exist many dialects in China. A main difference between those dialects is the usage of tones. (There are also other differences, such as some grammar, idiomatic words and so on.) People may speak with tones different from Mandarin when they are in their hometown, talking in their local accent.

Do Chinese songs ignore tones?

The answer is: it depends on the language. For Mandarin Chinese, especially in modern pop music, the melody usually takes over and the four lexical tones are ignored. Native Mandarin speakers will still be able to understand the meaning of the song by the pronunciation of the words even without the tonal information.

Are Mandarin tones hard to learn?

Mandarin tones put a lot of people off learning Chinese. This is natural, because European languages don’t have tones. Words don’t change their meaning when you pronounce them with a different intonation. People who do learn Chinese often say that tones are one of the hardest parts of learning the language.

How many sounds are there in Mandarin Chinese?

There’s a bit of an argument over how many sounds there actually are in Mandarin Chinese. However, it’s safe to say that the number – without tones – is around 410. With tones it’s around 1200; give or take a little bit. That might seem like a lot of different sounds to learn, but it’s not actually too bad. Pinyin can be divided into two parts.

Is it good to learn Mandarin before moving to China?

I would say it is most definitely good to have, but I cannot commit to the idea of someone learning Mandarin without first committing to living here. Mandarin is a lot harder than you think. The more you learn it, the more you realize you know very little of it.

What is the most effective way to learn Chinese tones?

Watch this very detailed video by my friend (and native speaker) Yangyang on The Most Effective Way to Learn Chinese Tones. Use online tests and you’ll start to see which tones give you greatest difficulty. There are several tests available online including the Arch Chinese test and the Quick Mandarin test.