Chinese 101

Once I arrived in Shanghai, I was very interested in learning some Chinese. With all the conflicting vocabulary and grammar from English, Spanish, French and Japanese floating around in my brain why not try to learn a bit of Chinese too?

Our local Shanghai guide, William (Hong Wei), and our national guide, Rocky, were happy to help us learn a few words and phrases each day.

To impress us, or maybe to scare us, we learned about the importance of Chinese being a tonal language right off the bat. The awesome example they used was the five pronunciations and meanings of ma:

ma = flat, no emphasis = sentence ending particle that indicates a question
mā = high, level, long tone = mother
má = high, rising, medium tone = hemp
mă = low, dipping, long tone = horse
mà = loud, falling sharply, short tone = curse, scold

Using only one syllable but four tones, you can ask "Did mother curse the horse?" (Mā mà mă ma?) How cool is that?!

But, of course, with the meanings being so diverse and the pronounciatons being relatively close, it would be very easy for a new Chinese language learner to get themselves into hilarious and unintended linguistic nightmare situations. Sounds like a fun challenge to me. Bring it on!