How to deal with learning Measure Words

I know measure words are tricky to understand and some people take a while to really get them. When you first here that there are a few hundred measure words for different types of objects you might despair and think learning all these and remembering how and when to use them will be impossible. You might want to default to using 个 (ge). Don’t do this… there is nothing to be afraid of here.

To kick us off, what are measure words? I imagine you have already learnt a bit about measure words but incase you haven’t here is a brief introduction. In Mandarin, when you describe a noun or something conceptually tangible you need to define its measure first. In English we would just use ‘a’ of ‘the’ or in some cases just let the noun follow the word that comes before it. Here are some examples of how it is different in Chinese:

我   借了 三    本    书         －                我    想    买   这     张      光       盘

Wǒ jièle sān běn shū                          Wǒ xiǎng mǎi zhè zhāng guāng pán

I borrowed 3 (measure word) books    I want to buy this (measure word) CD

There are many different measure words and they help classify the noun you are describing which is why in the example just given the measure word for each sentence is different. 本, from the first sentence is a measure word for books whilst 张 is measure word for long flat objects like paper DVDs etc.

Measure words are really important in making your Chinese sensical, and using the right ones will not only do that but they will make you sound much more natural and improve your speaking and listening comprehension. Using the the right measure words will actually help you understand others more, which is kind of the reason they are used in the first place in my understanding; they add context to the noun which allows you to instantly differentiate it from a similar sounding noun for example:

yī kē shù     –     yī běn shū

一 棵  树            一  本   书

  A Tree                A Book  

In this example the measure words 棵 and 本 instantly tells you that the shu you hear is either a tree or a book even if you, or the person speaking to, is not using tones so obviously; which is often the case in colloquial Mandarin, usually when it is spoken very fast.

个 (ge) can be used for a whole host of objects and is the most usable measure word while others can be extremely specific. This doesn’t mean you should default to using 个 for everything though. It can be useful if you can’t remember a specific measure word but, just like anything, a bit of practice can take you a long way.

A trick that I found helped me, was to learn all new words with their corresponding measure words. This will help your brain to associate the measure word with the noun and you will find your brain will be unable to separate them. For instance you learn 猫 (māo – cat) and 狗 (gōu – dog) – you learn 只 (zhī) with them and your brain will connect the two sounds until it sounds bizarre to say or hear 三个猫 and will default to 三只猫.

What I definitely would not do is attempt to learn a whole list of measure words and then when talking about an object trying to go through the list and work out which one to use. This technique would take you a very very long time and will cause you to pause and fumble around at your sentences.

Good luck and please contact me if you have any questions!!!

下次见！

Pinyin is your friend

I wanted to kick off things by discussing the first stages of learning. There are many things that get people interested in starting learning a language and I’ve found that your reason for studying will directly impact how quickly you learn. Whatever you reason, however, you will always want to start with the basics and keeping things simple is key to helping your brain retain new information.

This is a formula I have used in picking up new languages when I travel and also when seriously looking at studying a new language. If you are unilingual, in that you speak only 1 language, and you are beginning a new tongue, then your brain needs to get used to recognising new sounds and your mouth needs to get used to creating them.

Lets start with the mouth. Because Mandarin uses a very different sound set to most Indo-European languages, it is extremely difficult for us to create some of the sounds and pronounce them well with obvious differentiation; notably your rī/rè or cí/chī sounds.

When I first began studying Chinese in my own time I struggled with these sounds especially when trying to string words together to make basic sentences. I found that getting these sounds locked down was the most important and would actually help me to better remember new words. I would highly recommend you as a beginner to take time (and I mean a lot of time) getting to grips with Pinyin and making sure you understand the sounds that should be made.

Pinyin

You can use a Pinyin Chart and there are some good interactive ones online that are available that will help you understand Pinyin and say things properly. I would also note that what I did when first learning, was to go through all the initials (the consonant at the beginning of a syllable) and then all the finals (or vowels).You need to really understand how the sounds differ for example:

X as opposed to Sh

Z as opposed to C

uo as opposed to ou

ui as opposed to ei

u as opposed to o

A super important thing to watch out for is the relationship of z,c,s,zh,ch,sh and r, and how they affect the pronunciation of the final, i. This will clear up a lot of mispronunciations and is a really hard thing to get around if you continue learning words without getting this first. There are some good videos on YouTube about this if you want some clarity on how to say them.

Once you have these understood you can then look at how all initials and finals react when put together to create a syllable or Pinyin.

Relentlessly practicing pronunciation of Pinyin may seem like a silly exercise (especially when you are doing it in the mirror!) but while doing this you are actually pronouncing every single sound that there is in Chinese and there are only 416 of them. Already fluency doesn’t seem too far away, and believe me, it really is not.

Tones

By far the most talked about thing when learning Chinese is its tones. Yes, Chinese is as you know a tonal language but no, it is not something to be afraid of. Just like Pinyin pronunciation, you can practice your tones the same way and for each Pinyin on you chart, review it in all 4 tones. The tricky part, I remember from experience, is staring to use tones in multi syllable words and sentences. A great technique to get around this is again practicing these tones in pairs that differ.

e.g.     yīng gāi    zhōng guó    pīng shuǐ  chī fàn   chī le

             1  +   1        1    +    2        1   +   3       1  +  4     1 + Neutral 

If you have really been working on getting this tones pairs correct and the pronunciation of the Pinyin correct the congratulations, there is nothing in Chinese that you cannot say. All you need to do now is learn the words!

This is where the second part of picking up a language comes in, your brain. Now that you have trained your mouth to work with these new sounds you brain is primed and ready to soak up new information. I found that before this I had real trouble remembering words that had once sounded similar but now my the mouth and brain are trained in differentiation of the sounds, it gets a whole lot easier, trust me. Staring off slowly and learning a few nouns, verbs and pronouns and you will already be starting to piece together some very basic sentences. Do not worry your self with grammar or syntax at this point, it will only distract you from enjoying a new experience learning Chinese and will be detrimental to your spoken language.

Thats all for now but keep up the good work!

谢谢，下个星期见！

Whatever your level.

Hi,

I thought I would start off this blog by introducing myself and a little bit about my journey learning Mandarin and outline the aims of this blog and what I would like to achieve and learn though it.

I began learning Mandarin about 3 years ago and by teaching myself using various online resources and speaking with friends, I quickly found this was a language that seemed to make some sense to me! I really enjoyed speaking it and after not long at all found I could hold (very basic) conversations.

I have spent some time in China, which if possible I would definitely recommend, and this helped my language skills improve tenfold and am moving to China for a few years very soon! (Super excited about this!!!)

I wanted to write about my experiences learning Chinese so that I could offer advice to people who are just starting out and need some motivation or even just knowledge that yes, it will make sense. I know when you are starting out you will get times when you want to tear your hair out trying to understand the correct usage of 了. Trust me, there will always be periods like this but with help and time everything does make sense, and I want to be here to help you with this.

I also wanted to write for people of similar or even higher language levels than myself so we might learn from one another and I want to be accessible for contact to exchange language which I am always happy to do!!!

To begin with I am going to upload a new piece each week (every Sunday) either focusing on a certain structure, word or cultural significance and as things snowball I would love to start some beginner tutorial videos as well.

Please please please leave any comments if you have any requests or things you want to know.

谢谢