| Learning Basic Mandarin Chinese 1: An Introduction |
The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語 or 中文) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world speaks some form of Chinese as its native language, making it the most common natively-spoken language in the world.
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| Learning Basic Mandarin Chinese 2: Pinyin Pronunciation | | This lesson shows the pronunciation of pinyin, the standard Romanization system used for Mandarin Chinese and the one that will be used throughout the textbook. While most of the letters are the same or very close to the English usage, there are some important differences.
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Learning Basic Mandarin Chinese 4: A Dialogue
Lesson 2 contains a dialogue of two students discussing their classes for the day.
| Learning Basic Mandarin Chinese 5: Particles
The Chinese language employs heavy usage of particles to modify the
meaning of characters and sentences. Since Chinese has neither
inflections nor tense, the mastery of particles is an absolute must if
one is to fully comprehend both written and spoken Chinese. Below, you
will find some of the most common particles in everyday Chinese.
| Learning Basic Mandarin Chinese 6: Measure Words
In Chinese, most specified or numbered nouns must be preceded by measure words according to the type of object. It is like the English use of “pair” in the phrase “two pairs of pants”. Like the word “pair,” Chinese measure words are placed between the noun and the preceding number or demonstrative pronoun.
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