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Welcome to China 中中中中中 The Chinese Language and Culture 中中 中中中

Introduction to chinese

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This is the Chinese powerpoint for the fifth grade presentations.

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Page 1: Introduction to chinese

Welcome to China中国欢迎你

The Chinese Language and Culture

中国,和中文

Page 2: Introduction to chinese

About Chinese, and China China-World’s most populated country

(1,338,299,500 people) Chinese-Not a single language. (Many

dialects) All Chinese dialects are spoken differently, but

use the same characters. We will be learning Mandarin Chinese, which is

the most spoken dialect, and the most spoken first language in the world. (836 million speakers)

Chinese isn’t difficult, IT’S JUST DIFFERENT!

Page 3: Introduction to chinese

About Chinese Characters Chinese is written with a system of symbols or characters,

instead of an alphabet like English There are around 50,000 characters total, used to write

Chinese, however many of these are ancient, and no longer used, and many are created by companies for a specific purpose, and are also rarely used.

Around 2,000 characters are needed for basic proficiency. A well educated adult is expected to know 5,000-10,000

characters. There are two basic types of Chinese characters used today,

traditional and simplified. They are each used in different areas. In the Chinese program, you will be taught simplified characters.

There are advantages to both. Simplified characters are much easier to write, though traditional characters are more pictographic.

Page 4: Introduction to chinese

Simplified Vs. Traditional Characters

Page 5: Introduction to chinese

Chinese Character Development Every Chinese Character, can trace it’s history

back to a pictograph from ancient China

Shan (mountain)

Knowing the original pictograph can be a great strategy for remembering Chinese characters

Page 6: Introduction to chinese

Other types of Chinese characters. Radicals-Radicals are part of a character, and are used to symbolize

an entire category of words. Often radicals are combined with a component that shows pronunciation.

Ex. 妈 , ma = mother. This character contains the component 女 , which means female, and the component 马 , which is pronounced ma.

Abstract Characters - Some characters are abstractly represented, or symbolized.

Ex. 一二三 = 1 , 2 , 3 , or 上 and 下 =, above and belowCombinations- Sometimes certain simple characters combine, and

also combine their meanings.Ex. 明= Sun + moon (Bright) , or 森= tree + tree + tree (forest)休, rest- 人 , (man) + 术 , tree

=Speech RadicalEx. 说 话 语

=Water radicalEx. 汁 冰 游泳

Page 7: Introduction to chinese

Tones Tones are used in Chinese, and many other

languages, but not in English. When using tones, we pronounce the word the same, but change the way we inflect it.

There are four tones in Chinese High tone 妈 -ma (mother) Rising Tone 麻 -ma (rough) Low Tone 马 -ma (horse) Falling Tone 骂 -ma (scold)

Page 8: Introduction to chinese

Pinyin Pinyin is the Chinese romanization system, or how we write

Chinese with English letters. In the beginning of the Chinese program we will be using a lot

of pinyin, along with characters, before more characters are introduced.

There are a very limited number of Pinyin syllables Pinyin is also used for typing Chinese on the computer. When writing pinyin, tone marks are also often used. There are a very limited number of syllables in Chinese,

(around 400). If you multiply this by 4, for the tones, you get a little over 1200 syllables, which is a very small number considering this is an entire language.

This means many syllables have multiple meanings. It is preferred to use characters, because each character only

has one meaning.

Page 9: Introduction to chinese
Page 10: Introduction to chinese

Sentence Structure The Chinese sentence structure is very

different from that of English. 我今天早上十点,去图书馆看书跟我妈妈。I today morning ten o’clock, go library look

books, with my mom. The sentence structure is also very simple

compared to English in many cases. Chinese has very few extra words.

我要去上点。 This literally means, I want go store. If we wanted to say this in English, It would read I want to go to the store. There are a lot of small extra words in that sentence that aren’t used in Chinese.

Page 11: Introduction to chinese

Thank You For Watching!感谢你的收看!

We hope you will take Chinese with us next year at Bethlehem Central Middle School.

你们明年应该上中文课!