Chapter 1: Introduction to Chinese

To be read with the video Chinese with Mike: Lesson 1

Welcome to Chapter 1 of the textbook Chinese with Mike: Mandarin Chinese Made Fun and Easy!

In this chapter, I will break down Mandarin Chinese and provide you with a brief introduction to the
language. First, call me Mike Lǎoshī! That means Mike Teacher, literally, but we would translate that as
“Teacher Mike.” In Chinese, one’s title comes after his or her name.

What is Chinese?
Chinese is a language family. It’s a group of related languages that originated in China, and together they
have more native (first language) speakers than any other language in the world. Yes, that includes
English. Chinese has roughly 1.3 billion native speakers whereas English as around 400 million. That is
more than three times the number of speakers!

What are Chinese dialects?

A dialect is one form of a language that is usually spoken by people from a specific region of the world,
usually within a given country. The English language, for example, has several dialects: some of the
major ones include British English, American English, Canadian English, and Australian English, but there
are hundreds more, and each of these major categories can be divided into subcategories. Similarly, in
Chinese, there are hundreds, and some argue thousands, of different dialects, or forms of the Chinese
language. Let’s talk about the main ones.

Chinese Dialects that You Should Know

Mandarin (885,000,000 speakers)

Mandarin has the most native speakers of any language in the world. It is the official language of China,
Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. Additionally, it is one of the six official
languages of the United Nations (UN). In addition to being the language of Chinese government,
education, and business, it is the language you will be learning in Chinese with Mike!

Cantonese (70,000,000 speakers)

Even though Cantonese is not nearly as widely spoken as Mandarin in China, Cantonese is particularly
interesting because it is spoken by the majority of Chinese immigrants overseas. The reason for this is
that for the past 150 years, most immigrants to the West came from the southern (Canton) region of
China; it is also spoken by the majority of people in Hong Kong and Macau.

Hakka (34,000,000 speakers)

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Spoken by the Hakka people, an ethnic group that has had significant influence in Chinese history, Hakka
is spoken predominantly in southern China.

Taiwanese (15, 000,000 speakers)

Related to another dialect of Chinese called Mínnán, Taiwanese is spoken by about 70% of the
Taiwanese population. Since Mandarin is taught in Taiwanese schools, fewer and fewer children are
learning Taiwanese, and the number of total speakers is expected to gradually decline.

All dialects are unified, however, by a common writing system, which I will cover now!

The Chinese Writing System

The Chinese writing system is the oldest continuously used writing system in the world; it has
been in place for over 2000 years and has undergone several modifications. At first glance,
many are intrigued by the complexity of the writing system, and we tend to ask the same
questions: Is each word, called a character (or logogram) a picture? Is it an idea? Would it make
a good tattoo? How do characters come to be?

When Chinese was first written on bones and turtle shells, most concepts were represented by
pictograms and ideograms (see below). Eventually these ancient characters evolved into
modern characters, which is the type we use today. In all, some linguists approximate the
number of Chinese characters to be about 50,000. Does anybody know them all? No. I have
heard that people need to be able to recognize between 2000-3000 characters to read a
newspaper, and a well-educated person knows about double that number. Keep in mind that
after you know the pīnyīn alphabet (which you will have mastered after Chapter 6) you can
read any character, as long as pīnyīn is provided. You will also be able to chat in Chinese chat
rooms!

First, there are six classifications of Chinese characters, which include:

1. Pictograms- “Form imitation” characters

Pictograms are used for words that are represented by pictures. Pictograms make up a small
percentage of Chinese characters, with some estimating that number to be about 600
characters. Notice how the ancient pictogram (left) has evolved into the modern Chinese
character (right). Here are three examples:

Mountain (shān)

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Water (shuǐ)

Horse (mǎ)

2. Ideograms- “Indication” characters

Ideograms are characters used to represent concepts, or ideas. Here are some
examples:

One (yī) Two (èr) Three(sān) Up (shàng) Below (xià)

一 二 三 上 下

3. Ideogrammatic compounds- “Joined meaning” characters

Ideogrammatic compounds are formed by combining two or more pictograms or ideograms
and are used to represent words with separate meanings. See the examples below:

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Tree (shù) + Grove (lín) = Forest (sēn)

木 + 林 = 森

OR
Person (rén) + Tree (shù) = Rest (xiū) (People rest under trees!)

人 + 木 = 休

OR
Woman (nǚ) + Child (zǐ) = Good (hǎo)

女 + 子 = 好

4. Phono-semantic compounds- “Form and sound” characters

This is the most common type of Chinese character, comprising over 90% of them. One part
provides the general category, and the other part indicates the approximate pronunciation.
Notice how each character in each group has one common component. Here are some
examples:

Characters related to water:

Ice (bīng) River (hé) Lake (hú ) Sea (hǎi) Wave (làng)

冰　 河　 湖　 海　 浪

Characters related to plants:

Grass (cǎo) Flower (huā) Berry (méi) Tea (chá) Vegetables (cài)

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草　 花　 莓　 茶　 菜

Characters related to animals:

Dog (gǒu) Pig (zhū) Monkey (hóu) Lion (shī) Wolf (láng)

狗　 猪　 猴　 狮　 狼　

5. Transformed cognate- “Reciprocal meaning” characters

This category has basically disappeared from the modern classification system, but essentially,
they are pairs of words that are historically related, but their meanings and pronunciations
have since drifted apart. The most commonly cited example is:

Old (lǎo) and To test (kǎo)

老 考

6. Rebus- “borrowed characters”

This final category indicates words that were borrowed from original characters that had
different meanings. What happened was the modern character became the default meaning
associated with the original character (which meant something else), so the original character
had to be changed to indicate its original meaning. Yes, I expect you’re completely lost. Take a
look at a few examples:

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 1. 北(běi) originally meant “back (of the body)” but it currently means
“north.” Thus, the character 背(bèi) was created to mean “back (of the
body).”　

2. 要 (yào) originally meant “waist,” but it currently means “to want.” Thus,
the character 腰 (yāo) was created to mean “waist.”

3. 永 (yǒng) originally meant “to swim,” but it currently means “forever.”

Thus,泳 (yǒng) was created to mean “to swim.”

In conclusion, if you are interested in learning the Chinese writing system, you do not need to
know which category a given character belongs to, nor do you need to know the six major
classifications! Rather, the key to learning how to write Chinese characters is writing them
over and over and over and over again until they look pretty and you remember the strokes.
Trust me: I spent years doing just that, usually in front of the television with a cold beverage
at my side. Once you learn several characters, you’ll see how words that are pronounced
similarly often include similar written components, as well as other patterns that I’ve
introduced in the examples above. See Chapter 8 for more information and the guidelines for
how to write Chinese characters, and check my Website (www.chinesewithmike.com) for my
personal recommendations for character-writing dictionaries.

Traditional Versus Simplified Characters

One last point to note is that I have written the characters in this chapter using traditional
Chinese characters, which have been used for about 1500 years. Today, however, only Taiwan,
Hong Kong, Macau and Chinese communities overseas use the traditional, more “complicated”
characters. In an effort to increase literacy, the Chinese government began “simplifying” the
traditional characters in 1956, so today, mainland China uses simplified characters. Take a look:

Traditional Character Simplified Character

書 book (shū) 书 book (shū)

馬 horse (mǎ) 马 horse (mǎ)

風 wind (fēng) 风 wind (fēng)

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Note: Although I think traditional characters look prettier, I will be using simplified characters
for the remainder of this textbook and in the Chinese with Mike video series because they are
the most common style used in China. Most good character writing dictionaries contain
instructions for how to write both, so if you would prefer learning traditional characters, knock
yourself out!

Tones
Like many languages in Asia, Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, which means that a word’s
meaning can change based on the pitch you use to pronounce it. Mandarin has four major
tones and one neutral tone. Words contain a tone mark to indicate their tone. Here is the most
common example used to illustrate the tone:

1 (“high and level”) 2 (“rising”) 3 (“falling/rising”) 4 (“falling”) Neutral (toneless)

妈 (mā) 麻 (má) 马 (mǎ) 骂 (mà) 吗

(ma)
“mom” “hemp” “horse” “to scold” “a question
particle”

It is important to understand that the tone of a word can completely change its meaning, as I’ve
shown you with the previous example. Just think: Your mom might scold you if you ask her for
hemp, when you actually want a horse! Before you panic, let me remind you of something:
Since we have contexts (or situations) to our conversations, mispronouncing a tone is not the
end of the world. Usually the other person will know which tone you were trying to pronounce,
and thus understand what you meant to say. The conversation will go on. (See Chapter 7 for a
full chapter devoted to more practice with tones.)

The End
This brings us to the end of Chapter 1 of the textbook. Overwhelmed? Mentally exhausted?
Yeah, me too. That’s the price we both pay for my deciding to call a chapter “Orientation to
Chinese,” a language with thousands of years of history. I’ll slow it down from here, okay? If
you’re still with me, move on to Chapter 2. I’ll meet you there.