Starting to study the Chinese language, you should immediately accept the fact that you have to form a completely new language picture of the world, which is significantly different from the usual system of thinking. However, due to sufficient motivation, correctly selected materials for training, as well as diligence and hard work, it is quite possible to learn Chinese from scratch on your own.
Hieroglyphs
In the Chinese language, there are about 80 thousand characters. For a free understanding of the press, it is enough to master 4 thousand, and for reading fiction in the original it will take at least 6-8 thousand.
There is a clear procedure for writing traits and keys. The key is a kind of simple hieroglyph that has a certain semantic meaning. Some of them are used in their pure form, but in most cases the keys are part of the whole character. Starting to learn Chinese from scratch on your own, you need to remember them. A good base will continue the successful development of this system.
According to certain rules for writing hieroglyphs, each character is written from left to right and from top to bottom. In order to learn Chinese from scratch (on your own) successfully, it is important to memorize the correct style of writing from the very beginning. This will help to navigate in the dictionary, since in Asian languages there is no alphabet familiar to us, the words are arranged in a certain order of appearance of hieroglyphic elements.
Of course, in order to remember Chinese words, you need to devote a lot of time to writing hieroglyphs. But there are original ways of remembering. Chinese words are not just a code, they are an image. Many hieroglyphs depict the subject or phenomenon whose meaning they hide in themselves.
The translation is as follows: the first line is fire, tree, sun, moon; the second line is a person, a mouth, doors, a mountain.
Sound system
Learning Chinese from scratch (on your own) will require much more effort than when working with a Romano-Germanic group. One of the features that distinguishes the Chinese language from the rest: intonation does not carry an emotional function, but a meaningful one. There are four tones plus one neutral:
- 1 tone is pronounced with high smooth and prolonged intonation;
- 2 tone resembles interrogative intonation, pronounced from bottom to top;
- 3 tone is also called low: intonation first decreases, then rises;
- 4 tone falls, starting from a high note;
- neutral is also called light and usually falls on unstressed vowels.
In some cases, tones may vary. For example, if two third tones are adjacent, then the first syllable acquires the intonation of the second tone. For example, in the word níhǎo (hello).
The same combination of sounds pronounced with each of the above tones has a different meaning. To get used to such a system, it is important to listen to the speech of native speakers as much as possible and try to repeat it out loud. For this reason, learning Chinese from scratch on your own is quite difficult. The best option would be to immerse yourself in the language environment in combination with intensive training (many hours of daily classes with representatives of the PRC). Such a study would bring tangible results in two years.
Grammar
Everyone who begins to learn Chinese from scratch on their own, has to face a completely new system. In this language there are no conjugations, declinations habitual to us. And the line between times is not always perceptible. However, the syntax plays a very important role. One and the same word can take on the role of different parts of speech, depending on its location in the sentence.
Dialects
In Chinese, as in many others, there are many dialects. Each of them has its own characteristics. And the differences are sometimes so significant that representatives of different regions of China can hardly understand each other's speech. If you do not set a goal to move to a specific city, then the best option would be to study a common literary dialect called putonghua (普通话).
Pinyin
Anyone who wants to learn Chinese from scratch on their own will come across a system called pinyin (拼音). This is a Latin transcription that was created to facilitate the reading of hieroglyphs. Moreover, a tone corresponding to it is registered above each syllable. Over time, you will learn to read original texts without pinyin, but at the beginning of training, transcription is essential.
Learn Chinese from scratch on your own
The following are some tips to help you get closer to your goal.
- One of the important principles of successful learning is willpower, diligence and regularity of classes. There are simply no secrets to learning Chinese from scratch on your own without too much difficulty. This goal can only be achieved through sincere interest in the subject being studied and hard work.
- One more tip: knowledge is better fixed in memory with intensive learning. A couple of lessons per week will not give good results. This also applies to other languages.
- To get used to speech, in addition to working with textbooks, you also need to watch TV shows and listen to audio books and songs in the original. Do not worry that some phrases remain misunderstood. It is very important to get used to the sound.
- Do not be afraid to ask the Chinese for help. Many of them are happy to help foreigners learn the language.
- For self-examination, it is recommended to pass an international exam for foreigners called HSK (Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì). The exam is divided into six levels. Successful completion of the first level requires knowledge of 150 words, and the sixth level involves the possession of 5 thousand words.
Anyone who decides to learn Chinese from scratch on their own will have to make a lot of effort. However, this is a great opportunity to plunge into the amazing world, different from the usual for us.