Use a Chinese dictionary
Since you usually don't know how to pronounce an unfamiliar word, it's best to consult a glossary rather than guessing. Different character organization systems are used. The most popular system organizes characters according to their radicals and the number of characteristics. Therefore, to begin with, you should be thoroughly familiar with writing characters and recognizing radicals.
The characters in the dictionary are arranged under the root it contains and the radicals are arranged according to the number of strokes, which can range from one to seventeen. Therefore, you must first determine which of the 214 radicals is in the word and then count the number of dashes in the radical. Complicated? Finding the root is not always easy, which is why most dictionaries contain a list of characters whose roots are difficult to find. They are organized according to the number of hits.
Another difficulty is that some words can contain two or even three parts, each of which is radical. Therefore, if you have tried unsuccessfully to find yourself in a radical group, you should look for another radical group. The question of finding the right tribe is made even more difficult by the fact that the position of the tribe in the characters varies. It can be right, left, top, bottom, or even right in the middle.
Once the correct root is found, count the number of strokes in the rest of the character, since all characters with the same root are organized by the number of strokes, except for radicals. It is even more complicated when a course seems to be two. So you can easily see that it is difficult to look up words in a Chinese dictionary.
He spoke the language
Foreigners who learn Chinese often have problems with so-called tones, which are inflections of the voice that distinguish one word from another. There are four tones in the Chinese language of Mandarin, namely upper uniform, lower uniform, ascending and descending, although some authorities add a fifth at the entrance. * But in Cantonese, a dialect spoken in Canton and Hong Kong, there are nine tones. The difference between one tone and another is usually very small and difficult for foreign students to distinguish. However, the small difference in pronunciation can sometimes mean a world of difference in meaning. For example, in Mandarin, the word "sir" is "chu3" while the word "pig" is "chu1". If a foreigner means "tien chu3" (Heavenly Lord, the Chinese Catholic term generally refers to God), if you are not sure of the correct tone, you can easily say "tien chu1" and refer to a celestial in instead Refer to pork to create great confusion. or peace for the Chinese listener. It is understandable that a foreigner learning the language keeps his sense of humor to avoid discouragement.
This feature of the Chinese language, a large number of words with very similar or identical pronunciations, makes it very difficult for foreigners to master it. For example, in Mandarin there are 69 words pronounced as in (short), including 7 in note 1 (upper pair), 17 in note 2 (lower pair), 7 in note 3 (extension) and 38 in note 4 (vacation). Although two different words with identical pronunciations such as darling and stag are exceptions in English, they are extremely common in Chinese. Therefore, when listening to spoken Chinese, it is necessary to rely heavily on the context to determine the meaning of the words used.
As you would expect in a large country like China, there are many dialects spoken by people from different parts of the country. In some areas of the country, especially the south, a traveler may find different dialects in countries just a few miles away. Sometimes even residents of neighboring villages find it difficult to understand each other. Some dialects are similar to those spoken in northern China while others don't even seem close, like the Cantonese dialect and the Shanghai dialect. These two dialects differ not only in their vocabulary, but also in the pronunciation of the different characters used in the written language. In addition, some words are only spoken in dialect, but do not have a written form. Without the written language, people from different parts of China would have serious difficulty understanding each other. Fortunately and surprisingly, even though the Chinese speak many different dialects, they all read a common language spoken in Mandarin.
As you would expect in a large country like China, people speak dozens of dialects in different parts of the country. In some parts of the country, especially in the south, a traveler can find different dialects in cities just a few kilometers away. Sometimes even residents of nearby villages have difficulty understanding each other. Some dialects are similar to those spoken in northern China, while others do not even sound, such as the Cantonese dialect and the Shanghai dialect. These two dialects differ not only in their vocabulary but also in the pronunciation of the different characters used in the written language. Some words in the dialect are also spoken, but have no written form. Without a written language, people from different parts of China would actually have a hard time understanding each other. Fortunately and surprisingly, although the Chinese speak many very different dialects, they all read a common language, written in Mandarin. With the exception of those who speak Mandarin, all Chinese speak one way and write another. But if two Chinese people cannot speak clearly to each other, they can at least communicate in writing.
Reform work
As Chinese is a particularly difficult language to learn today, especially for foreigners, repeated efforts have been made to simplify it with various methods. Some advocate simplifying the character, as communist China did, so that they can be more easily learned. Such an effort is not supported by the Taiwanese nationalist government, nor by the more conservative and older Chinese. Others tried romanization and replaced the characters with romanized letters. The first to do this were Catholic missionaries who came to China during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD). But the literature they wrote in Romanized letters was used only by the missionaries themselves. In the 19th century, Christian missionaries translated the Bible into various dialects, such as Soochow, Shanghai, Ningpo, Amoy, and the Cantonese dialects in Romanized letters. In 1867, the English scholar T. F. Wade published his own system of romanization, often used by authors of Chinese books and dictionaries.
In 1918, the Chinese government published a series of forty phonetic symbols to help readers pronounce the characters correctly. They are printed with the characters instead of replacing them. This phonetic system is used only as a pronunciation aid and is not intended to replace characters.
In 1934, a Latinized Chinese alphabet was published. It was a very simple system without trying to visualize certain tones of words. As a result, it was easy to get confused and I discovered that I was not very popular with people. Since then, it has been completely forgotten. Communist China has also tried to Latinize the Chinese language, but the issue is still at an experimental stage.
Future perspective
Although repeated efforts have been made to simplify the Chinese language or even change it to an alphabetical style, these efforts have so far not been very successful. The uniqueness of the above-mentioned Chinese language, which has so many words with very similar, if not identical pronunciations, makes it really difficult to express yourself clearly and accurately in alphabetical style. Of course, it would be a difficult task to convert the vast amount of classical literature into a Romanized language, not to mention teaching a new method to 800 million people! This may partly explain why the Chinese still enjoy using their language so strongly and their children spend long hours copying, reciting and memorizing the thousands of characters required to read and write.
If you look at hundreds of languages spoken in different parts of the world, you can easily see that all these different languages were a distinguishing force that prevented free communication between the inhabitants of the earth. You simply travel to a foreign country without knowing your language to realize how helpless and frustrated you can feel when you do not understand what people are saying and when they do not understand you.
