{"id":8882,"date":"2022-04-11T13:10:30","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T17:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=8882"},"modified":"2023-09-06T12:21:29","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T16:21:29","slug":"new-courses-chinese-tones-chinese-radicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2022\/04\/11\/new-courses-chinese-tones-chinese-radicals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chinese Beginner Trifecta: Tones, Pinyin, and Radicals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mandarin Chinese can be an overwhelming language for adults to learn from scratch.<\/p>\n

Embrace the beginning of your journey and get started on the right foot with our two new beginner courses: Chinese Tones & Chinese Radicals Familiarization. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Developed by a veteran Chinese teacher, Lei Zeng, these courses apply her lessons learned from more than 10 years of teaching the language to professionals relocating to China:<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall steps bring big results. Mastering these fundamentals shows learners that Chinese characters are not just a bunch of lines that you draw. There is a logic behind it. The moment students understand the logic and can see why a character means what it does is a beautiful moment as a teacher.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chinese Tones Course<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Chinese<\/p>\n

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language\u2014you can\u2019t speak or understand spoken Chinese if you can\u2019t distinguish and pronounce the tones.<\/p>\n

In Chinese, the same syllable can be pronounced in different tones to give a word wildly different meanings. For example, if you say the expression for \u201cexcuse me\u201d with the wrong tone, you could accidentally say \u201cto kiss\u201d.<\/p>\n

These kinds of mistakes are very common among beginners and even among intermediate learners who haven\u2019t quite mastered the way tones behave together. Unfortunately, most textbooks give a quick overview of tones before moving on and they miss an important middle step: practicing tones in combination in multisyllable words.<\/p>\n

In ~2.5 hours, our Chinese Tones Course will prepare you to identify and pronounce tones both alone and in multisyllable words.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ll work your way up from tones by themselves, to tones in combination, to full words and phrases\u2014all using vocab and language that beginner Chinese learners are likely to come across.<\/p>\n

The course also focuses on real world applications. For example, no one in China actually fully pronounces the third tone, so we\u2019ll help you practice it the way you\u2019ll actually hear it in real conversations.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about helping you learn what you really<\/em> need to get off to a good start in Chinese.<\/p>\n

Chinese Pinyin Course<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Another tool to help you refine your Chinese pronunciation is pinyin.<\/p>\n

Pinyin is a Romanization system, which essentially spells out Chinese characters using Latin letters (and tone markers, because we know how important those are now!)<\/p>\n

It was originally developed in China during the 1950s as a way to improve literacy rates among native Chinese speakers. It’s since become an incredibly helpful pronunciation aid for Chinese learners. It’s also used to type Chinese characters using a Latin keyboard; type in the pinyin syllable and character options appear.<\/p>\n

In ~5 hours, the Chinese Pinyin Course will teach you how to pronounce all 400+ pinyin syllables and master challenging sounds you may not be familiar with.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You’ll start by learning the composition of pinyin syllables, focusing on initials (consonants) and finals (vowel sounds). You’ll dive into pronouncing all 57 syllables in the first tone to ease you in. You’ll build up to compound finals (two vowel sounds) and practice all syllables in all tones.<\/p>\n

\"Chinese<\/p>\n

Chinese Radicals Course<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Chinese<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t listen or speak without tones\u2014and you can\u2019t read or write Mandarin Chinese without radicals.<\/p>\n

There is no Chinese alphabet. There are tens of thousands of characters (!!) that must be memorized. Fortunately, characters are made up of radicals and there’s only about 200 of those (and even native speakers might not know all of them).<\/p>\n

When you relate characters to one another using radicals, you can learn more characters in less time.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in most Chinese textbooks, you\u2019ll get maybe a few pages on radicals. If you\u2019re lucky enough to be working with a teacher, he or she will spend hours and hours<\/em> expanding on what the textbook teaches so you can make sense of radicals and their implications for stroke order, character meanings, and beyond.<\/p>\n

In 6 hours, our Chinese Radicals Course will help you master the 40 most common and essential radicals, both on their own and within characters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Think of radicals like a key that unlocks the rest of Chinese learning. This course will help you get to the root of Chinese (pun totally intended) through:<\/p>\n