JJ Easy Chinese
Features of Chinese
China is a country with many nationalities, and every nationality has its own language. Practically, no one can exactly tell how many dialects are there in China. As the majority of early immigrants to North America are from the Canton province, for this reason, the Cantonese dialect has been spread over North America. Thus, most Americans mistook the Cantonese dialect as for Chinese official dialect.
“Zhuyin” system is based on Beijing dialect in Qing Dynasty, and it is now used in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. In 1958, the People's Republic of China employed the official phonetic system for transcribing the Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet called "Hanyu Pinyin" to help unify pronunciation and popularize dialects. Only Mandarin is an official dialect used in the whole country. In 1977, the United Nations “determined to adopt Chinese Pin Yin as international standard spelling of Chinese names with Roman letters.”
Unlike the European alphabetic system, Chinese is a logographic system. All Chinese words are made up of strokes instead of Pinyin letters. Most of the students only remember Pinyin well. As a result, they can speak little, but not read and write. While one types Pinyin into a computer, many different Chinese characters appear, he doesn’t know which one is the right character.
Chinese essential grammar is much easier than English:
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Chinese has no indefinite or definite articles.
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Chinese nouns have no plural forms.
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Chinese verbs do not change with pronouns, singular or
plural forms of nouns neither with tense.