Mandarin Chinese

欢迎! Huan Ying!

City God Temple in Shanghai

 

 

This page provides information about classes on offer, about the Mandarin Chinese language, and useful links to online resources relating to Mandarin Chinese culture and language learning. Please use the links below to find out more about:

 

For general information about the Lifelong Learning Programme please refer to the links on the left.

 

Staff

Dr Catherine H Xiang, Co-ordinator Mandarin Chinese

E-mail: Catherine.H.Xiang@bris.ac.uk Phone 0117 3310873

Yanwen Liu

E-mail: yanwen.liu@bristol.ac.uk Phone 117 3310907

Xiang Fu

E-mail: xf3280@bris.ac.uk Phone 117 3310907

 

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Introduction to Mandarin Chinese

Shanghai

Mandarin is spoken by almost one quarter of the world population. With the rapid growth of Chine’s world economy, learning Mandarin Chinese offers your great business opportunities, career perspective, joy of travelling and a taste of Chinese rich culture and long history.

Mandarin, is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and south-western China. It is the 1st language for 800 million Chinese people. The Mandarin we learn refers to Standard Chinese or Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu), which is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing. Standard Mandarin functions as the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China, the official language of the Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. ‘Chinese’ — in practice Standard Mandarin — is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

In everyday use, Mandarin refers usually to just Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu). The importance of speaking Mandarin is not just for foreign language learners but also for native Chinese people. This is because at least 50% of the Chinese population are bilingual, who speak Mandarin as well as their local dialects or languages. Thus, a lot of time, when Chinese people from different cities meet, they have to communicate with each other in Mandarin but not in other forms of Chinese languages.

However, the written form – Chinese characters are the same for everybody. The writing system for almost all the varieties of Chinese is based on a set of written symbols that has been passed down with little change for more than two thousand years – exactly due to the fact that people from different regions speak different dialect and also travelling was not as easy as nowadays. Each of these varieties of Chinese has developed some new words during this time, words for which there are no matching characters in the original set. While it is of course possible to invent new characters (as was done to represent many elements in the periodic table), a more common course of development has been to borrow old characters that have fallen into disuse on the basis of their pronunciations.To really understand and use Chinese, then one should learn Chinese characters. One needs a minimum of 2000 Chinese characters to survive or read simple newspaper articles.

Of course, if your focus of learning is conversation only, then you will be fine by just learning Pinyin, which is the phonetic form of Mandarin. One thing makes Mandarin difficult is the fact that it’s a tonal language. It contains 5 basic tones. However, it is not impossible but takes some practice and time to get use to. In the course we run, we focus on conversational skills in Pre 1 and we start to introduce Chinese characters (both reading and writing) from Pre 2 onwards.


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Course books and online resources

Focus on Mandarin: No course books, materials based on BBC Real China Programme

Pre 1: Colloquial Chinese - The Complete Course for Beginners, Kan Qian, 2003, Routledge, London, CDs available, this can be found in majority of the UK bookstores, we've pre-ordered copies at the Waterstone Bookstore of the University Branch. We will be finishing the course book throughout the academic year. The whole package costs around £35.

Pre 2: New Practical Chinese Reader Vol. 1, Text book and Work book, Beijing Language and Culture University Press, DVD, CDS for the text book as well as work books available. As this book is not available in the bookstores in the UK, we usually order copies in summer from a book agency in London. You will need the text book and the work book for the course. You will also be provided price list to choose on the first day of the class so you can either buy from the tutor or contact the agency directly. The course book and work book cost around £25, DVD and CDs cost £20 each.

Gen 1: New Practical Chinese Reader Vol. 2, Text book and Work book, Beijing Language and Culture University Press, DVD, CDS for the text book as well as work books available. As this book is not available in the bookstores in the UK, we usually order copies in summer from a book agency in London. You will need the text book and the work book for the course. You will also be provided price list to choose on the first day of the class so you can either buy from the tutor or contact the agency directly. The course book and work book cost around £25, DVD and CDs cost £20 each.

Gen 2: New Practical Chinese Reader Vol. 3, Text book and Work book, Beijing Language and Culture University Press, DVD, CDS for the text book as well as work books available. As this book is not available in the bookstores in the UK, we usually order copies in summer from a book agency in London. You will need the text book and the work book for the course. You will also be provided price list to choose on the first day of the class so you can either buy from the tutor or contact the agency directly. The course book and work book cost around 30, DVD and CDs cost 20 each.

Adv 1: New Practical Chinese Reader Vol. 4, Text book and Work book, Beijing Language and Culture University Press, DVD, CDS for the text book as well as work books available. As this book is not available in the bookstores in the UK, we usually order copies in summer from a book agency in London. You will need the text book and the work book for the course. You will also be provided price list to choose on the first day of the class so you can either buy from the tutor or contact the agency directly. The course book and work book cost around £30, DVD and CDs cost £20 each.

Adv 2: New Practical Chinese Reader Vol. 5, Text book and Work book, Beijing Language and Culture University Press, DVD, CDS for the text book as well as work books available. As this book is not available in the bookstores in the UK, we usually order copies in summer from a book agency in London. You will need the text book and the work book for the course. You will also be provided price list to choose on the first day of the class so you can either buy from the tutor or contact the agency directly. The course book and work book cost around £30, DVD and CDs cost £20 each.

On this page you will find information related to Chinese culture, studying and travelling in China, online dictionary, etc.

 

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