Chinese

With the growing importance and influence of China's economy globally, Chinese is gaining popularity around the world.

When mention Chinese, don't think it mean a kind of language with uniform pronunciation, tones and characters. It is actually not. It is a group of languages with around seven to thirteen main regional dialects. But nowadays, official Chinese is Mandarin which is based on the Beijing dialect. Mandarin is part of a larger group of North-Eastern and South-Western dialects. So below we will learn some spoken mandarin for your travel to northeast Indochina where is southwest of china.

There are four tones in Mandarin:
Flat                ā
Rising              á
Falling-rising         ă
Falling              à

Chinese is a kind of language use two different system for speaking and writing. Written Chinese is composed of ideographs regardless of the dialect of the speaker. That is why chinese characters have seen far less changed than the spoken chinese even after thousands of years. Modern Chinese is applying a new Roma derived pronunciation system called Pinyin.

finals:
A   as the "o" in above
O   as the "o" in orange
E   as the "er" in kernel
I    as the English letter "e"
U   as the "w" in we
V   similar to the "yo" in yogurt but with narrow mouth
a   family - ai    ao    an    ang
o   family - ou  ong
e   family - ei  er  en  eng
i   family - ia  ie  iu  in  iao  ian  ing  iang  iong
u   family - ua  ui  uo  un  uai  uan  uang
ü   family - üe  ün  üan