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PREFACE

The “Language Wall” is Down!

There are at least eight primary Chinese languages, and although they belong to the same family and historically have been referred to as dialects, they are as different as French, Italian, Spanish and other so-called Romance languages. And that’s why they are sometimes considered as different languages by some people.

Westerners have also traditionally regarded learning and speaking any of the Chinese “dialects” as especially difficult because they are all “tonal languages.” That is, changing the tone of voice in the pronunciation of words changes the meanings of the words.

These circumstances, combined with the forbidding appearance of the “characters,” or logograms, used to write all of the Chinese languages, have long been viewed by Westerners as insurmountable barriers. Furthermore, many Chinese words have dozens of homonyms [words that are spelled the same and may be pronounced the same but have different meanings], further complicating matters.

The National Language

But this view of the Chinese language is outdated. In 1949 the newly established Communist government of Mao Zedong decreed that Mandarin Chinese, the “dialect” spoken in Beijing and the surrounding areas, was to be the official language of China, and thereafter would be taught in all of the schools throughout the country.

Today, the majority of Chinese speak Mandarin Chinese, known as pǔtōnghuà (poo-tohng-hwah) 普通话 or “the common language,” as their first or second language. A further boon to foreigners taking up the study of the national Chinese language is the fact that Mandarin Chinese has only four tones. [Some of the other dialects have as many as eight tones.]

Boyé Lafayette De Mente