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Mandarin
Language
Studio
Explore the Fascinating Features
of the Chinese language
First Free Lesson for Beginners Now!
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Discover the Chinese language and expand your horizons;
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Open your mind to the oldest culture, traditions, religions, arts and history;
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Engage with the world in a more immediate and meaningful way;
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Build up lifelong friendships in a wholly new universe;
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Connect with 1/3 of the world;
Origin, Evolution & Writing
Is Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin is the most popular form of the Chinese language family and the most widely spoken native language in the world, with about 1 billion speakers. It is coherent, fascinating and highly intertwined with the world's oldest culture.
Your willingness to start learning Chinese with Fancy Mandarin Studio is admirable. Here we will make a brief description, outlining its most specific features. It'll help give you a rough idea of what to expect, so we'll answer some interesting questions to help you make an informed decision.
How old is the Chinese language, and how was it written down?
The Chinese language is at least 5000 years old. It also has the oldest script. The first Chinese characters were written on bones or with brush and paint due to the lack of an elaborate method of writing on leather or paper in these early historical times.
What is the origin of the Chinese language and its characters?
The Chinese language is very logical and beautiful because is strongly connected with our human and surrounding nature. Since Chinese is a pictographic language, the origin of its symbols could be understood most clearly through graphic examples like the one shown to the right.
Are the Chinese characters the same as the ones from thousands of years ago?
Chinese characters are not identical to those used 3000 years ago. Its symbols have undergone centuries of evolutional changes. Natural changes as a result of their everyday use. Pictures from our visual world are not always comfortable for the movements of a writing hand. Therefore, their form has gradually changed over time.
The deliberate changes due to regulations during different dynasties and historical periods are primarily political in nature.
What are the most recent significant changes in the Chinese language that affect its study?
The latest such actions are the introduction of Simplified Chinese with the presumption of increasing the literacy of the population. Simplified Chinese retains the graphic characteristics of the character while using fewer strokes for the most complex characters.
Another language change adopted by the People's Republic of China under the rullement of Mao Zedong communist party government in 1949 was pinyin. This writing system converted Chinese characters into words using letters from the Latin alphabet.
Using the words you just learned, you can make your first sentence. The pronunciation and spelling of words may seem unusual to Latin alphabet users, but composing a sentence is easy and follows strict rules. The sentence here is analyzed word by word.
How are word combinations formed in Chinese?
The pictographic nature of the Chinese language provides rich possibilities for combinations of symbols to obtain new meaning. Therefore, they can only be represented and understood as images and their combinations.
The logic of combinations existing in Traditional Chinese has been carried over to Simplified Chinese, and new combinations are formed literally even today.
Just a few of the many examples are shown here.
Please also take a look at our Phonetics & Learning Strategies section.
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