8 Quirks of Mandarin Chinese You Probably Didn’t Know
It goes way deeper than just pictographs.
To many, Mandarin Chinese is a complex, impenetrable behemoth of a language. Drawings instead of words? Tones? No alphabet? What’s going on here??
I was first introduced to the weird and wonderful world of Mandarin about eight years ago. I’m now proud to say that I’m based in Beijing, working as a guidance counselor for Chinese high school students; I’m not fluent, but I’ve attained conversational and working skills in the language. I know that I am not nearly done learning this language, every single day is another opportunity to absorb a new word, fine-tune a new piece of grammar.
Along the way, I’ve encountered surprising tidbits that I can’t find in any other form of communication. It makes the long hours practicing character-writing (somewhat) worthwhile.
First the basics. Many of you probably know that Mandarin is a tonal language, with four tones. Each word, pronounced in a different tone, has a different meaning. Written Chinese is logographic with different written characters corresponding to meaning. The characters are called 汉字 (Hànzì): those corresponding English letters are called Pīnyīn and indicate pronunciation for non-native learners. Connecting the 汉字 with Pīnyīn with English meaning is the…
