Learningchinese@blogspot.com

  At the onset I want to say that I want to learn to speak Mandarin the way it is intended to be spoken. I want to learn to speak it with the correct tones. Recently, I joined a number of groups on Face Book that are for sharing experiences learning Chinese. In most of the groups the beginners as well as intermediate learners complain about tones being the most difficult to learn in Mandarin. Just like many other matters people just say what others have said. Anyway, are tones as important as they are made to be? 

  There are about 408 pinyin syllables, and most of them can have any one of the four tones (some of them don't exist in certain tones, and some of them can also be pronounced as a “neutral tone”). Pinyin officially covers all possible sounds in Mandarin. There are no single characters with more than one syllable. There were such characters at one time but were all abolished in Mainland China. Checking Google, I found one such character which is no more in use today. 瓩 qiān​wǎ​ kilowatt (old) / single-character equivalent of 千瓦 Why then would anyone teach Mandarin using Phonics. Refer my post here . This is the first such YouTube post and if left unchecked more so-called teachers will promote this way of teaching kids Pinyin and create problems instead of providing solutions.

  The Westerners have screwed up phonics by teaching kids’ letters with extraneous sounds. Can anyone screw up Pinyin? Here is one girl who has screwed it up and I am afraid more will follow her.This girl is all over social media, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Face Book and I don't know where else. I happened to see her YouTube video on 15.6.24 and made the following comment:

  Here is one YouTube video to learn to speak Mandarin. I would suggest you to learn Pinyin and learn to speak from the 32 lessons on this site.You need not learn the Chinese characters for the time being.  LINK Here is another beginner course for your listening practice. LINK I will introduce more lessons which are all free of charge.  There are free of charge lessons all the way up to HSK 6.  You don't have to learn the Chinese characters if you don't want to.

  I attended the Wellness conference at SICC from the 7 th to the 9 th June and have been away from social media. I learned many valuable facts from the convention including breathing exercises. Meanwhile, I have been following an excellent YouTube channel to learn to speak Mandarin fluently. Each of the lessons has a portion for shadowing. 

  The following is what I mentioned in my second post.  LINK   Many of the Cantonese and Hakka folks will say 'fu' instead of 'hu'.  Also pay attention to the incorrect pronunciations of other words. Shi Huangdi (literally meaning first emperor) tried to unify the Chinese with one language to no avail. The Chinese Government introduced Pinyin to ensure the Chinese speak Mandarin correctly like the Americans who learned it using romanisation. The Malaysian Government introduced Pinyin in the 70s for the same reason.  Today, many Americans in China speak better Mandarin than a majority of Chinese living in Malaysia. Here is a video of a teacher teaching her mom to read correctly. LINK