Video and text for Lesson 1. Learn Speaking Mandarin Chinese: Speak Mandarin Chinese Online for Free. Learn Chinese Characters. Introduction to chinese characters. Writing was probably invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd millenium BC. The earliest recognisable examples of written Chinese date from 1500-950 BC (Shang dynasty) and were inscribed on turtle shells used for divination.
The turtle shells were heated, then inspected, the resulting cracks determining answers to one's questions. In the beginning of the 20 th century, Wang Yirong discovered on a turtle shell that he had been prescribed by a pharmacy, symbols that looked like writing on some "dragon bones". He was the first to discover these oracle bones, which have been preciously collected as testimony of the beginning of the chinese writing. How many characters? The largest Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but most of them are archaic, obscure or rare variant forms. How does that work ? In the same way, in chinese, a word is generally composed of two characters , though words can commonly be made up of one, three, four or more characters.
The Strokes mā. Chinese Online Phrase Book - Chinese-Tools.com. Chinese Phrases and Common Sentences. Contents - Mandarin Chinese I. WCC Chinese-English dictionary - WrittenChinese.Com. Chinese Words Database. The most common Chinese characters. Rutgers - multi-media Chinese learning. 初级第一课: 对话 甲 ：你好！ 乙 ：你好！ 甲 ：你忙吗？ 乙 ：我不忙，你呢？ 甲 ：我也不忙。 你哥哥忙吗？ 乙 ：他很忙。 Learn Chinese - Learn Mandarin - Chinese Course. Chinese learning tools. Chinese phrasebook. Mandarin Chinese is the official language of Mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the official languages of Singapore.
In English, it is often just called "Mandarin" or "Chinese". In China, it is called Putonghua (普通话), meaning "common speech", while in Taiwan it is referred to as Guoyu (國語), "the national language. " It has been the main language of education in China (excluding Hong Kong and Macau) since the 1950s. Standard Mandarin is close to, but not quite identical with, the Mandarin dialect of the Beijing area. In Singapore, it is officially referred to as HuaYu (华语). Note that while the spoken Mandarin in the above places is more or less the same, the written characters are different. Understand[edit] Map of Chinese dialects Note that "dialect" has a different meaning when applied to Chinese from when it is applied to other languages. All Chinese dialects, in general, use the same set of characters in reading and writing.
Pronunciation guide[edit] a a in an e i o as in more u ü ai ao ei ia m. Greetings - Standard Mandarin Chinese Phrases. English to Chinese dictionary. Examples and Help Example queries: hello, nihao, ni3hao3, 你好, rest*, zei*, *zei*, *茶, 英*公司, chinese *文, "to rest", bill -gates Pinyin words should be entered without spaces, either with or without tone numbers: ni3hao3 or nihao. The character ü can be entered as v instead. The asterisk character * can be used as a wildcard to match zero or more characters: rest* will match any word starting with rest, such as restaurant or restrain*文 will match any word ending with 文, such as 中文 or 英文b*g will match any word starting with b and ending with g, such as big or boring*中国* will match any word containing 中国, such as 传统中国医药 or 中国人民 Double quotes " " can be used to group search terms together: "to rest" will only match entries where to and rest directly follow eachother The minus symbol - can be used to find entries without a certain search term: bill -gates will only match entries matching bill but without gates p:you will only match entries with Mandarin pinyin you.
Learn Chinese Characters. CCTV Learn Chinese 学汉语 - Free Mandarin Video Lessons. Learning Languages with Livemocha. Learn Chinese online - Free Chinese lessons - Speak Chinese. Chris (31-03-2014): Thank you. As a Chinese person born and raised in another country and not being taught to speak or learn Mandarin, you have given me a chance to learn mandarin. Thank you Patrick MacLeod (10-02-2014): Hi I would like to expand my knowledge of cultures and different races I would ultimately like aim for a job as a translator or similar thanks John (03-02-2014): I would not mind learning and living in china but I am only a simple tradesman.
This has been fun learning Mark Jennings (04-03-2013): This is helpful. I like the clear audio pronunciations. kiran padia (27-02-2013): it buy things from some people who are chinese and its makes them so proud and plesantly surprised that i try to speak some chinese!!! Emily watson (09-02-2013): it was a great help! Anon (18-01-2013): Is this Mandarin or Cantonese ?
HOUILLON (02-01-2013): bonjour ! HOUILLON (02-01-2013): c'est encore moi ! CHINESE.