Chinese in the field of linguistics is
classified as a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. Despite sharing some similar
written characters, it is unrelated to Korean or Japanese, contrary to popular
belief.
Falling under the cover of Chinese course in Shanghai, there are in fact many different language dialects. The official
dialect and the one talked about in this article is Mandarin Chinese.
Due to its origin in the Beijing region, Mandarin
is the dominant dialect. This has become the centre of economic and political power
in China.
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Some of the key elements of this
fascinating language are:
No Form
Change in Chinese Characters
No matter what they are used for the
characters always stay in the same form, which another important feature of
Chinese. There are no spelling changes or conjugations.
Depending on the context in which they’re
used this is in contrast to European languages where adjectives and verbs can
change.
For beginners, this is great news as is the
case in many other languages you won’t have to remember verb tenses.
Time adverbs are used to indicate the verb
tenses in Chinese.
Chinese
Homonyms
As taught in the Chinese language school in Shanghai
numerous homonyms present in the writing system are another unique feature of Chinese.
These characters are written differently
but pronounced the same way. Significantly, a different meaning is possessed by
them.
Even in English, Homonyms are although
quite normal but in Chinese homonyms are even more common.
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Tones
in Chinese
Of the Chinese dialects and its language tones
is another unique feature. Since they do not exist in English, for a native
English speaker to get used to they can be difficult.
Chinese tones are similar to pitches in
music and are changes in the pitch of a vowel. They can stay flat, rise and
fall or go up or down.
Word
Order in Chinese
As it shares many similarities with the
English language for English speakers Chinese grammar is extremely simple.
While you learn Mandarin in Shanghai
you will know that the basic sentence structure in English is similar to that
in Chinese.
SVO
(Subject, verb, object): Followed by the verb Sentences
start off with the subject and finally ending with the object.
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