Easy Peasy Chinese

Who are they kidding?

DDW's November Challenge Day 13: "Foreign"

To understand the challenges that learning Mandarin present, you have to appreciate that it is a tonal language. Put simply, this means that the way you say something changes it's meaning in much the same way as we can convey different meanings for the same word, e.g. surprise, sarcasm etc.

There are 4 tones in Mandarin:

- High level
/ Rising
\/ Falling then rising, and
\ Falling

So, the simple word 'Ma' when used with the 4 tones has 4 different meanings:

Ma (high level) =Mother
Ma (rising) = Hemp
Ma (falling then rising) = Horse
Ma (falling) = Scold

Being able to produce the sound with the right tone is a big enough challenge but listening for these tones when a native Chinese person is speaking to you is something else. Luckily of course, the context of the word will often help unless of course someone really thinks that your 'mother has nice fetlocks' :-)