Crash Course in Mandarin

Chun Yan Ma explaining the tones of Mandarin

Prior to the group’s trip to China, we had the opportunity to attend four weeks of Chinese language courses. The Confucius Institute, based out of Xi’an, provided two teachers, Chun Yan Ma and Li Zhen Shi , who taught us Mandarin four times a week. During these lessons, we learned basic conversational phrases, tones, numbers, and essentials for traveling in China. We found the language to be difficult to learn because it has no root similarities to our native language. Another difficult part of learning Mandarin relates to the four tones used. Each word can be broken down into syllables, just as in English, but each syllable is usually a word by itself and also has its own tone. This means that each syllable can potentially be translated into four different meanings depending on the tone associated with your voice fluctuation. However, associating the correct tone to each syllable of the word in order to get the desired translation is quite challenging. Putting more than one word together in a sentence can also be a tricky task, as speaking with no restrictions for your entire life leaves you with bad habits. Some bad habits include ending a question with a rising tone, or expressing what you mean through how something is said and not as much through what was said.