Nothing is as scary as the unknown in translate arabic to english. Knowing the interesting and difficult moments in learning Chinese means mentally preparing to overcome them.
1. Features of sound reproduction, articulation
In order to achieve correct pronunciation, and without this mutual understanding is impossible, we show adult students effective exercises. If you perform them diligently and regularly, then a lot of small muscles and ligaments that are involved in articulation are trained.
Quite difficult for Russian-speaking students are the specific aspirated consonants ch (chh), c (tch), p (px), t (tx), k (kx). In addition, the sound n is pronounced in some cases as a familiar front-lingual “n”, in others – as a back-lingual sound. There are also soft and hard consonants.
There is nothing unique in this, in any foreign language it is necessary to adapt to the authentic pronunciation japanese to english.
2. Four tones
It is sometimes said that without an ear for music it is impossible to master Chinese speech, is this true? Even someone who has never studied Chinese knows that syllables can be pronounced with different intonations, and the meaning of what is said changes.
We just say, “Yes.” Or with pressure: “Yes!” Or inquiringly: “Yes?” Or ironically, incredulously: “Yes?” We do not need an ear for music to reproduce the necessary intonation. Likewise in Chinese.
Learning to pronounce a syllable in the right tone is not a problem. The problem is that the exact tone is needed not only at the end of the sentence, but in each syllable. Each word has several tones!
How long will it take to more or less successfully synchronize phonetics and tone, to bring speech by tones to automatism? If you study without a teacher, only with textbooks and audio materials, then the prospects are unclear. If with a good teacher, then at each lesson you will learn to pronounce a few new words quite correctly. The secret is to move from simple to complex, and not to study a decent layer of theory and then, breaking the language, try to reproduce words and phrases for which the speech apparatus is not prepared.
3. How to write and read it?
The hieroglyphic designation of words has nothing to do with their pronunciation. By the way, the Chinese managed to benefit from this. The peoples inhabiting the country speak their own languages and dialects, but they use the same hieroglyphs to record speech. Such a peculiar Esperanto.
Memorizing hieroglyphs is like learning another language. But it is difficult for the Chinese themselves to learn to read and write. While education was available to the elite, the secrets of hieroglyphics were taught by personal teachers. When the fight against general illiteracy began, something different was required. Since 1958, the phonetic notation of pinyin has been approved in China. It is considered educational, intermediate, designed to teach literacy to schoolchildren. And foreigners.
Pinyin is a transcription in which the tone of each syllable is indicated (which is very important). It looks something like this: pǔtōnghuà (普通话, Mandarin)
By the way, Putonghua is a northern dialect that is considered the official Chinese language.
Of course, the three points do not cover all the difficulties, but remember, Chinese courses exist for this purpose, to turn difficult into interesting.