Why I loved learning Mandarin Chinese

I wasn’t expecting to fall for a language, but Mandarin Chinese swept me off my feet. What started as a mild curiosity to converse with some of my friends turned into a journey that took me to Taipei three separate times. I’ve spent tens-of-thousands of hours studying the language and the more I learned, the more enthralled I became. Mandarin Chinese is special. After all, there’s no other living language that has a three-thousand-year-old, pictographic writing system.

Even still, I hear from other English speakers that Mandarin seems unapproachable if not studied from a young age. The U.S. government’s School of Language Studies also considers Mandarin to be one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn. While I can empathize with this position, I think Mandarin’s unique merits warrant attention. So, I decided to share a list of reasons why I find Mandarin Chinese to be the most fascinating major language in the world.

The characters and how they’re made

One of the most famous and distinct aspects of Chinese is its use of characters. Chinese characters are logograms, which means that they are symbols that represent words or morphemes. Unlike the English alphabet or languages with syllabaries (e.g., Cherokee, Japanese), written Chinese relies on the reader to know the meaning of a given character rather than the spelling of a given word.

Take the character 山 (shān), for instance. This character is a pictogram for the word “mountain”. While the pronunciation is not evident, its meaning never changes. The character 山 also appears in compound words, such as 火山 (huǒshān, “volcano”, literally: “fire mountain”) or as a component of more intricate characters, such as 出 (chū, or “out”).

There are thousands of unique Chinese characters to learn; however, characters share many patterns that simplify this process. These are called radicals, or components that lend characters ideographic or phonetic meaning. Sometimes radicals are basic characters (e.g., “person”, “mouth”, “tree”, “river”, etc.) that have standalone meaning, while others only exist as building blocks. Let’s look at a few examples of radicals and how they make characters:

人 (rén, “person”) + 木 (mù, “tree”) = 休 (xiū, “to rest”)

The radicals for “person” and “tree” give us the character 休. This is ideographic in meaning as a person sitting beneath a tree is resting. Another ideographic example is:

木 (mù, “tree”) + 木 (mù, “tree”) = 林 (lín, “forest”)

Two trees combined together give you a forest! Note that neither “forest” nor “to rest” are phonetic in that the radicals are pronounced differently than the characters they produce.

For an example of a phonetic radical at work:

北 (běi, “north”) + 月 (yuè, “moon”) = 背 (bèi, “back (of the body)”)

The radical for “north” gives 背 its pronunciation, although the character’s tone is different than 北. While the radicals’ meaning can be arbitrary, roughly nine-tenths of Chinese characters are phono-semantic.

There are pros and cons to this writing system. For one, it is difficult for non-native speakers to pick up on the type and patterns of characters. The written language is ancient, so many aspects of its creation and use have drifted over the millennia. However, a major benefit of learning the writing system is that it is universal. While spoken Chinese dialects like Cantonese or Hakka are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, the writing system serves as a means to communicate throughout the Sinosphere (and beyond). 水 means “water” and always conveys that concept no matter the Chinese dialect.

The characters even allow communication across disparate languages. Thanks to my knowledge of Chinese characters, I had no trouble getting around Japan when I first visited even though I didn’t speak Japanese at the time. The use of kanji, or 漢字, in Japanese meant that I could read the signage in Tokyo and mostly understand without having to speak a word of Japanese!

The idioms

Another fascinating aspect of Chinese is the prevalence of idiomatic expressions. Chinese speakers use idioms more often than any other people I’ve encountered, ranging from modern creations to thousand-year-old sayings. They present a barrier to fluency for non-native speakers, but mastering them can be fun with the right resources.

The most popular type of idiom is called 成語 (chéngyǔ). These “Chengyu” are four-character fixed expressions and often appear in both vernacular and written Chinese. The coolest thing about Chengyu is that they often borrow from history and myth to convey quite complex or contextual meanings. Here is a sample of some Chengyu:

水落石出 (shuǐ luò shí chū, literally: “when the water subsides, the rocks appear”) = this means that once the facts are known or once time has passed, the truth will become clear.

華而不實 (huá ér bù shí, literally: “flower but no fruit”) = used to describe someone that is flashy or attractive on the outside, but shallow on the inside.

囫圇吞棗 (hú lún tūn zǎo, literally: “to swallow a date whole”) = used to describe a person who accepts information without understanding or thinking critically about it.

破釜沈舟 (pò fǔ chén zhōu, literally: “breaking the pots, sinking the boats”) = this refers to a situation where you reach a point of no return, similar to the phrase, “crossing the Rubicon,” in English.

With only four phonemes a piece, you can express a breadth of meaning that take entire sentences in English to convey. And while the four examples above are some of my favorite expressions, there are tens-of-thousands more to study, as the language has accumulated Chengyu throughout time. In fact, some Chengyu date back to before the 3rd century BCE (that’s older than Alexander the Great!), and are direct quotes from works like the Book of Poetry.

The… grammar?

I know what you’re thinking: yes, I’m definitely a nerd. (Guilty as charged, but hear me out!) For native English speakers, Mandarin grammar is a wild ride. That being said, I find Mandarin grammar to be far simpler and more intuitive than English grammar.

For starters, almost all words in Mandarin lack inflection, meaning they do not change. To digest that, consider the following phrases in both English and Chinese:

I like apples. = 我喜歡蘋果。(literally: “I like apple.”)

This apple is super tasty! = 這個蘋果超級好吃！(literally: “this apple super tasty!”)

In English, the noun “apple” needs the affix “-s” to indicate when it is plural. In Mandarin, plurality is understood through context. The speaker can choose to specify the quantity of a noun or the amount of time that has passed, but the actual nouns and verbs are not modified to do so.

Speaking of verbs, Mandarin has no verb conjugations. I remember feeling confused when I first discovered this fact; however, I soon realized its simplicity and convenience. Let’s look at some examples of what I’m talking about:

English: “I drank coffee this morning.” Mandarin: 我今天早上喝了咖啡。 (literally: “I this morning drink [to completion] coffee.”)

English: “I will drink coffee tomorrow.” Mandarin: 我明天要喝咖啡。(literally: “I tomorrow [want to] drink coffee.”)

English: “She drinks coffee every day.” Mandarin: 她每天喝咖啡。 (literally: “She every day drink coffee.”)

In these three sentences, 喝 (hē, “to drink”), does not change. Rather, the speaker adds additional words to provide context to the listener, such as “this morning,” “tomorrow,” or “every day.”

The beauty of this system is that it works for almost any sentence. No need to memorize pesky verb conjugation charts— just swap out the verb and you’re good to go!

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Chinese grammar, but I don’t want this article to become entirely fixated on the topic, so let’s move on.

The particles

The final section of this article deals with particles. Just like Japanese, Chinese utilizes sentence-final particles chiefly to communicate a speaker’s mood or intent. The speaker only needs to insert a particle at the end of their sentence to dramatically change the sentence’s meaning — no pesky word-order changes required!

Here are a few examples:

嗎 (ma) = makes a statement a “yes or no” question.

吧 (ba) = similar to “don’t you think so?” or “ — , right?” in English; it also can be used to make a suggestion.

啦 (la) = conveys annoyance (whether faux or sincere). Depending upon intonation and context, it can be rude.

了 (le) = indicates a change in state or situation.

These particles do a lot of background work for you when speaking Mandarin. Instead of fretting over word order or whether you’re using the right verb tense, often all you’ll need to do is add a single particle. For instance:

明天是禮拜五。 → 明天是禮拜五嗎？ Tomorrow is Friday. → Is tomorrow Friday?

Although English has words that function similarly in colloquial speech, such as “no?” or “man”, they are certainly not integral to the meaning of the sentence nor are they grammatically required. With Mandarin, on the other hand, particles are not only essential but provide flavor to your speech and writing.

Conclusion

I’ll cease gushing over Mandarin Chinese, but I hope this article piqued your curiosity to learn more. If you’re new to the language and want to begin studying, a few good places to start your adventure are ChinesePod (they have a great platform for developing your speaking and listening skills) or Skritter (they are perfect for learning Chinese characters). While ChinesePod and Skritter are both paid services, they have free video content available. In fact, I have a few YouTube channels to recommend:

And with that, I wish you luck! 加油！