๐ Chinese (Mandarin) ไธญๆ / ๆฎ้่ฏ
About 920 million native speakers, the most of any language on earth
โ๏ธ The script
Characters (ๆฑๅญ), each a whole word or part of one, plus pinyin โ the Roman spelling used to learn pronunciation
๐ฏ Why learn it
One in six people alive speaks it. China is India's largest trading partner, and engineering, trade and research all touch it. Chinese also has no tenses, no genders, no plurals and no verb endings โ the grammar is genuinely simpler than French. The difficulty is all in the sounds and the characters.
๐ฑ How this course teaches
This course starts where the difficulty actually is: the four tones. Get them into your ear in the first lesson and everything after is easier than you expect. Every phrase is given in characters, in pinyin, and in plain English sounds, so you can begin speaking before you can read a single character.
๐ The sounds to get right first
| First tone โ mฤ ๅฆ | high and flat | Hold a steady high note, like singing one note. ๅฆ mฤ = mother. |
|---|---|---|
| Second tone โ mรก ้บป | rising | Rises like an English question: 'huh?' ้บป mรก = hemp. |
| Third tone โ mว ้ฉฌ | dips and rises | Falls low then comes up. In fast speech it often just stays low. ้ฉฌ mว = horse. |
| Fourth tone โ mร ้ช | sharp fall | Like a firm 'No!' ้ช mร = to scold. Same syllable, four meanings โ this is why tones are not decoration. |
| q, x, zh, c | ch, sh, j, ts | q as in 'cheese' with a smile; x as a soft 'sh'; zh as in 'judge'; c as the ts in 'cats'. |
| Neutral tone | short and light | Some syllables have no tone at all: ๅฆๅฆ mฤma, ่ฐข่ฐข xiรจxie. The second one is unstressed. |
The lessons
Your first words, and the four tones
Greet someone, thank them, and hear the difference a tone makes.
Open โ Lesson 26 phrasesWho you are
Say your name, your country and what you do.
Open โ Lesson 36 phrasesNumbers, money and counting things
Count, ask a price, and use the measure words that Chinese insists on.
Open โ Lesson 46 phrasesTime, place and going
Say when and where โ and meet the word order rule that governs both.
Open โ Lesson 56 phrasesMeeting the characters
Understand how characters are built, and learn your first twenty for real.
Open โ Lesson 66 phrasesKeeping Chinese going
Build the daily habit, and know the exam ladder.
Open โ๐ Keeping it
Tones are not an accent โ they are the word. Drill them daily for two weeks and everything else becomes ordinary. Grammar is simple: nothing changes shape, time words come first, and big goes before small.
๐ง Ask the Acharya
He answers from your own chapters and his Life & Wisdom library โ including how to study a language without losing it.
