Before you’re going to learn Chinese or Mandarin, you’ll heard these two words frequently. Does Mandarin the same to Chinese? Which one should I learn firstly? You’re so confused with Mandarin and Chinese. Actually Mandarin and Chinese isn’t the same thing. You will solve all questions about differences between Mandarin and Chinese. Besides, I will also help you fully understand what’s Chinese characters, what’s Chinese Pinyin.
Mandarin and Chinese are mostly used in China (Including China Mainland, China Taiwan, China Macau, China Hong Kong), and other countries where Overseas Chinese lived in. Mandarin is what we called Putonghua(普通话) in Chinese. As for Chinese, we called it 中文. it means a lot. Basically, Chinese including Mandarin(for speaking), characters(for reading), even culture, history.
NOTE: if you refer to the language, then it’s totally ok to say Mandarin, or Chinese. Like, you can say you’re learning Mandarin or learning Chinese. I think most of people can understand what you meant. If you refer to reading and speaking Chinese language, then you should say learning Chinese.
What’s Mandarin?
Like I said, Mandarin(Standard Mandarin/Putonghua 普通话) is only for speaking or talking. And this is exactly most foreigners need. You just want to talk to, speak to Mandarin-speaking friends. with that said, it’s so much easier speak Mandarin frequently than learning Chinese well. Mandarin(普通话) is a tonal language, which means that different tones can change the meaning of a word, even if the pronunciation and spelling are otherwise the same.
When it comes to speaking, you need to learn how to pronounce correctly. Then, how to pronounce correctly? wel, you need to count on a tool to help you pronounce. That is Pinyin(拼音) doing.
What’s Pinyin?
No matter what level you get on Mandarin or Chinese learning. You all need to start with Pinyin if you want to learn it in a faster way. Imaging that, how did you learn English at very beginning? You start with a,b,c,d…. and then pronounce English word with IPA (international phonetic alphabet), right? So, the function of Pinyin is similar to IPA. it will guide you yo pronounce correctly. But you should know that Pinyin can never be the substitute of Chinese characters.
The structure of a Chinese syllable(音节) or Pinyin(拼音) is quite simple, Usually being composed of an initial(声母) and a final (韵母)with a tone(音调). tone marks are placed on the major vowels of the final. And the tone marks are always placed on the top of the final.
Normally, Chinese syllable start with initial then followed a final. and tone mark on the top of final. Therefore, now you can understand the order of initial and final. Initial, literally means initial part of Pinyin. And final, literally means final part of Pinyin.
You should learn to pronounce each initial and final sounds correctly, and then add tone to them. Once you already master pronounce finals and initials with tone. Then, you can lean Chinese or Mandarin from textbooks that added Pinyin mark.
As far as I know, most foreigners have a big challenge to pronounce Mandarin tone correctly. Even if there are only 4 main tone. They’re the first tone (1st tone), second tone(2nd tone), third tone (3rd tone) and forth tone (4th tone). And the last tone is a natural tone, this tone is easy to handle and not used so often.
The first tone is a flat, steady tone. The tone mark is a level line【ˉ】. eg. 【mā】
The second tone is a rising tone. your tone is rising from the basic leave. The tone mark is simply a rising line【ˊ】. eg.【má】
The third tone is falling-rising tone【ˇ】. eg.【mǎ】
The fourth tone is a falling tone. 4th tone is a stressed sound compared to the others【ˋ】. eg.【mà】
as for the neutral tone, it’s a light and unstressed sound. You don’t need add any tone mark to neutral tone. 【ma】
Check the image below, the yellow part is the Chinese tone.
What’s Chinese characters?
You must see some characters looks like a square ⬜ , just like this “学习中文”. Each square stands for a Chinese character. Maybe you will say how come I can remember these square Characters? Trust me Chinese Characters has a fully recognizing system, because it’s a hieroglyph Character. So you should know that before you try to mesmerize them. It will 100 percent save your time.
And you will not find how beautiful the Chinese characters is right now. As you don’t know it’s writing history. What you see is only some Characters printing on the screen. You need to see the handwritten Chinese characters. it’s an art. we call it 书法（shū fǎ） .
In this picture, you will learn what’s the Pinyin and Chinese characters. The square part is Chinese characters, there are four Chinese characters, 学习中文. and above each Chinese characters, that’s Pinyin, which helps you to read Chinese correctly. And the yellow parts, it’s Chinese tone. LIke I said before, Pinyin is composed of initial, final and tone. As for initials and finials, I will make a full serials tutorials in other articles.
What’s Chinese (中文)?
Chinese mainly including Mandarin, Chinese Characters, Chinese grammar,etc. Obviously, you can see that the Mandarin is only one part of Chinese. I pretty much sure that you want to learn Chinese, not only spoken language. Why I’m so sure? That’s because no matter why you learn Chinese, you all need to read Chinese characters. Otherwise, you need to make phone calls every time. You just can’t read the messages. (*^_^*)Lmao
Conclusion:
The main difference between Mandarin and Chinese is Mandarin just only a spoken language, it’s all about speaking. Mandarin is Chinese official language. Every Chinese can speak and understand Mandarin, even though there’re many dialogs in China.
