Today I started my part time Mandarin course!
It was interesting to learn about the language itself, I didn't know that the language is actually called 'Hanyu' (language of the Han people) but this word doesn't exist in the English language.
Learning about the evolution of Chinese characters was also very interesting for me and I found I much prefer the look of traditional Chinese characters to their simplified form. We were also told we'd generally need to learn around 2000 simplified characters, I fear a little for how I'll get on but I hope knowing some traditional characters might help my cause.
[Image from: https://www.researchgate.net]
We started off with learning the different tones in Mandarin (there are 4 plus a neutral tone, compare to the 6 in Cantonese) and pinyin and I could clearly see how Mandarin is SO much easier for foreigners to learn than Cantonese.
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Overall I had a real field trip learning about my own culture and our writing system! I look forward to how I'll get on in the following weeks.
- Part Time 小姐
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