During my first class teaching English in Taiwan, my student Christine came up to me with an armload of Chinese books, and hand-calligraphed New Year’s scrolls.
She also provided an invitation for language exchange and a smile, which can only be described as the Cheshire cat’s official welcome to Asia.
Cats are lucky in Taiwan, I’d heard, and I now believe this to be true – along with the idea that relationships proceed a lot more quickly when you speak each other’s languages.
Nearly two years later, I know Christine not only as my student, but a friend and teacher of Chinese language and culture.
She has deepened my interest in all things Chinese, and provided me with helpful language instruction.
I think that East and West are now colliding into one big social and cultural melting pot, in which we cease to be strangers.
We are quickly becoming a global village in which businesspeople and tourists alike must learn to communicate better. For Westerners, learning Chinese is the first step in opening the doors to the wild, wonderful land that Asia is.
My teacher and I would now like to offer some helpful hints.
Studying Chinese: A Teacher’s Perspective
As someone who places great value in making international friends, it is my hope that more foreigners will learn something about the intriguing history and culture of China, Taiwan, and other Chinese-speaking countries.
Firstly, Chinese language is most accessible to foreigners through first learning Pinyin, the English spelling of Chinese sounds.
There are many types to choose from, including Taiwan Tongyong Pinyin and Hanyu Pinyin. Taiwan Tongyong Pinyin uses English letters to represent Taiwanese symols. The pronunciation follows the national language of Taiwan, Taiwanese, and is only used in Taiwan.
In contrast, Hanyu Pinyin uses English letters to represent Chinese symbols, but the pronunciation follows the Chinese used in Mainland China, which is a little different from Taiwanese, and is popularly used worldwide.
One problem with Pinyin, however, is that the sounds sometimes don’t directly translate into the sounds of the characters- they are more of a rough phonetic guide.
I suggest that foreigners first begin with Pinyin, and then gradually move on to learning the Taiwanese or Chinese characters to fine-tune their pronunciation.
Tradition versus Communist Chinese
Secondly, it is important to explore the various benefits and drawbacks of choosing to learn either the (original) traditional Chinese characters used by Taiwan, or the so-called “simplified characters” instituted by the communist government of China.
While it is recommended that students of Chinese learn both, newcomers to the language will usually pick one or the other to learn first. The simplified characters are easier to work with during the initial stages of learning Chinese.
Only the traditional characters can truly demonstrate the beauty and history of the language as it evolved through time.
However, only the traditional characters can truly demonstrate the beauty and history of the language as it evolved through time.
Original Chinese characters have their beginnings in hieroglyphs, and have developed over the years. For example, the modern character for “wooden” represents a tree’s shape, and the character for “forest” depicts what looks like three trees.
This illustrates how Chinese is a system of associations. For this reason, foreigners may find the evolution of Chinese characters to be extremely interesting.
University or Private Study
Finally, the student of Chinese must decide on their method of learning, that is, whether they would like to study at a university, private language school, or on their own.
The opportunity for Chinese language learning is becoming more and more accessible at several Chinese and Taiwanese universities, where some teachers are learning English as well, to better communicate with students.
Students should take care to find a qualified teacher with standard pronunciation skills for example, the Beijing dialect, so that they can be well-understood.
Several interesting books and websites are also available for self-study. Two course books, Practical Audio-Visual Chinese, published by National Taiwan Normal University, and Far East Everyday Chinese, are very popular in Taiwan, and come with corresponding tapes or CDs.
Essential characters can also be downloaded from the internet on the Taiwanese website, Fun With Chinese Learning. This sight also offers many unique insights into the language.
Studying Chinese: A Student’s Perspective
When undertaking any Asian language program, particularly Chinese, students should know that the language and script revolves around the concept of connectivity.
Spoken Chinese cannot be separated from art, politics, literature, or history. It is most exciting to combine Chinese language studies with one of the above subjects, to see how the language evolved throughout the ages, and to experience the many facets of Chinese-based cultures.
Students might, for example, integrate their Chinese language learning with a tea ceremony, or martial arts, both traditionally practiced in all Chinese-based cultures.
A student open to these experiences will no doubt make many Chinese friends to converse with, and will feel as if they have been blessed with the culture as well as the chance to learn the language.
The Chinese and Taiwanese are amongst the most welcoming people I have ever met. Most of my spoken Chinese has resulted from my many amazing relationships with Native speakers.
There are also over 150,000 characters to learn. However, many of them are not used in modern-day times, so don’t worry! Try to take the language one step at a time, without getting overwhelmed.
There are also over 150,000 characters to learn. However many are not used in modern-day times.
I myself began with Hanyu Pinyin, and then moved on to Chinese calligraphy, to help me remember the characters, and learn how they are used as part of a sentence or poem. If you are a visual person, the many opportunities to learn Chinese through traditional art forms, will absolutely delight you.
With these tips, we wish you luck on your journey, and whether you choose to study on your own, or attend a formal program, we hope you enjoy the process of learning.
While English is today an important language, Chinese language, history and culture continues to be a fascinating discipline, which remains at the forefront of our changing world.
Emily Hansen is a travel writer and teacher based in Shimla, India, where she is working on a book about her experiences as an expat. Her native land is Canada, and she has traveled to over 30 countries, and has lived in six, including Germany, China, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and now, India. 
Dr. Christine Yue Juan is a professor in Tainan, Taiwan, where she teaches Chinese history, culture and literature. She is also a well-known calligrapher in Taiwan, and learns English in her spare time. She has a great interest in bringing Chinese and Taiwanese culture to foreigners.About the Author
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11 Comments... join the discussion!
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Excellent article.
We in the West need to make more of an effort to understand China – after all, we’re surrounded by stuff that’s made there!
I found the part about classical v. simplified Mandarin very interesting.
What do you see as the political implications of simplifying language?
-Tim
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Very interesting article and blog. It’s the first time I read such a comparison simplified Chinese = communist Chinese. It’s very true and it made me think about it.
However, we need to remember that the Chinese language has evolved over the centuries and has gone through several simplifications. Otherwise we would write hieroglyph-like characters today
And although I can read traditional characters,I am relieved that I didn’t have to learn to write them, because they are much more complicated to memorize. This is also the reason why only a few scholars could read in ancient China while many ordinary people where iliterate.
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Naturegirl has hit on a very good point… post-1949 China used simplified characters to educate the masses. I’m far from pro-Communist, but when you examine the stranglehold the elite had on China partly based on the fact they could read & write then simplification makes a whole lot of sense. It doesn’t have to take political overtones if you don’t want it to.
As a Westerner, I’d never make a statement that traditional forms are the only way to appreciate the Chinese language. After 4 years of simplified characters, my fifth-year teacher was from Taiwan & made us read unsimplified. It was a good exercise, but nothing reinforced my opinion more that simpler is better.
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Interesting comments – thank you very much. The idea of simplifying language as an offshoot of political ideology struck me as Orwellian, but you make a good point that, in the case of China, it was a populist reform.
Of course, Mao and the CCP were directly responsible for the deaths of 10s of millions … so perhaps their motives, principled though they may have been, were less than altruistic.
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This is a very interesting article and it hepls a lot of people to learn chinese and have a posotive approach towards learnin the language, however after reading this article i should be looking forward to go to china, its a wonderfull article really appericate the effort of christine and emily.
I believe ot will be a help for many fellow travellers to look into a learning prespective, truely amazing writing with the simplified manner of learning chinese.
Keep up the good workgood luck.
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Brilliant topic. Chinese is emerging as one of the major voices of the future – it’s wonderful to hear the viewpoints of people who refuse to listen when everyone insists “Chinese is impossible.”
Some of the concepts involved in learning Chinese are really just a matter of acclimation, of getting comfortable with the idea. Also, learning a language goes so much easier if you focus on the joys of sound, the symbols, the ideas that come from discovery through curiosity, instead of “Must-learn-Chinese, I-am-learning-Chinese.”
Just like travel – you gotta get into it to get anything out of it. There’s a difference between falling in love with the idea of speaking Chinese, and falling in love with speaking Chinese.
All things come in time. If you’re on this trip, don’t give up.
Xie xie. (Forgive my lack of tones: my computer has an accent.)
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This has been interesting reading Emily’s views. I’m now back in Taiwan on a short business trip and I feel the language issue has become a touchy topic in Taiwan with the current leadership.
Now I catch up on my Chinese on the web from a mainland China site(http://chinesepod.com)and starting this week from a well produced Taiwan site ( http://worldlearnerchinese.com ). I’ve found that Chinese has become less different between to two sides. This maybe good. Maybe this is a sign of the two sides future relations.
Johnson
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Hello, my name is Sherise and I love travel. In the future I want to be able to have a career that allows me access to negotiations internationally, and it it quite evident what a powerhouse Asia is, so as a result I want to learn Chinese at some point if not at the very least, to have a slight networking edge even if the actual negotiations are in English.
So, I was wondering how is Chinese? Can they all understand each other more or less, like different English speaking countries? Or are the differences more tricky, like how I am learning Brazilian Portuguese but I would have to strain to understand European Portuguese with different spellings and verb tenses and such?
Or does it end up completely different?
How does that work?
Thank you,
Sherise (18 year old exchange student)↵ -
It is the first time that I heard the term “communist Chinese”. how pathetic it is to label language learning with yet another political stereotype. Language is a communication tool and is not subject to degrade just because it is used in a authoritative nation. If you truly know some Chinese characters, you should know that traditional characters and simplified ones are NOT two different systems. Only a small portion in the traditional characters were simplified, or rather, standardized. Regardless of the characters you are learning, you are learning—Chinese, not human rights, democracy, speech freedom, or other beautifully decorated terms which should be be forcefully tied with human communication and interaction.
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As far as the traditional vs. simplified debate, the idea of the “beauty” of the traditional characters being a selling point is rather silly for the learner of Chinese. The point of learning a language is to communicate — when the majority of Chinese (and all mainland media) is in the simplified form. Learning traditional characters is more an exercise in vanity rather than practicality.
Just because it was a Mao initiative, doesn’t make it bad. Remember pinyin was also invented by the Red Chinese (with Soviet help.) Imagine learning Chinese without pinyin — it would be a nightmare. Just as a bit of trivia, simplified characters are also used in Singapore as well as taught in the schools. Hanyu pinyin, in my opinion is much better than the Taiwanese version simply because it represents how Mandarin is actually pronounced. Remember pinyin wasn’t designed for English speakers — it was created to help Chinese school children learn to read their own language.
Personally, I wish Mao would have gone further and make pinyin the official Chinese writing system — while characters are beautiful, their usefulness, especially in the digital age is waning. After all, to type Chinese, most people must use pinyin and then the software converts the pinyin to characters.. An inefficient and often imprecise system. China’s growing economic influence also demands that more foreigners learn Chinese — something that isn’t easy. China would be well served in further simplifying the writing system and relegating characters to the poetic and calligraphic arts. Kind of the way cursive writing is all but obsolete in the English world..
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