Learning Chinese Speaking Versus Writing

Many people have asked me, how did I start learning Chinese? My best friend growing up was Chinese. I started learning Chinese so I could speak to his mother who couldn't speak English. It wasn't easy since the language was very strange to me! It sounded almost like singing with many tones. Some sounds took a longer time for me to learn. I later found that the Chinese I was learning was a dialect of Cantonese. Cantonese has 9 tones and is very different from other dialects of Chinese. Later I learned that Cantonese is the oldest dialect of Chinese. What impresses me about Chinese? Chinese writing or Chinese characters are what separates it from all other languages. Chinese is the only language used today that comes from pictures and has no alphabet! Chinese characters are derived from pictures from 5,000 years ago. Most people do not even realize that there is no alphabet in the Chinese language.

My best friend started showing me Chinese characters and I became very interested in learning how to write. In the beginning I was unable to remember how to write the pictogram or character. Later I found a book that explained how the Chinese characters evolved! It was very interesting but I was lucky to find the book that gave me the savvy on writing Chinese characters. Finding the correct books is very important when learning any subject. The book that helped me to understand the most was, "Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification". This book was written by a Jesuit priest. The other book I used was, "Read Chinese" by Fred Wang. Years later I took a course in Chinese Calligraphy and the professor was using this same book to teach Chinese characters. My friend asked me one day to take a course in Mandarin Chinese given at a church school. Since he didn't know Mandarin he thought it would be a good experience for us to learn together. Chinese speech is very different because there are many dialects and sub-dialects but Chinese writing for the most part is the same! There are some Chinese characters that are regional or archaic. The Mandarin instructor told me to find a Chinese Calligraphy teacher. He was impressed that I was using a Chinese brush to write my lessons. Taking his advice I found a school called China Institute that was near my job in New York City. I registered for two courses: Cantonese and Chinese Calligraphy. This is when I found out that my friend was really teaching me his village dialect or sub-dialect of Cantonese. Now I was in the course that taught standard Cantonese or the language of the city of Canton! When speaking in class, my teacher would tell me that I am not speaking standard Cantonese but a popular county sub-dialect.

Some people ask me what one should learn: Cantonese or Mandarin. Mandarin is the national language of China, Taiwan and Singapore. Today most people learn the national language and most overseas Chinese learn Mandarin in Chinese school. Cantonese is still popular where there is large a population of Cantonese people. These people can be found anywhere in the world since they were the Chinese that first ventured out of China! Any place where money could be made, the Cantonese went. When I was growing up 80% of the Chinese were Cantonese and 80% of them were from the same county speaking a sub-dialect as well as Standard Cantonese if educated.

I quickly realized that knowing Chinese characters had important advantages. It's great to be able to speak Chinese but what happens when someone doesn't understand you? If you can write, everyone understands. All Chinese may not be able to speak to each other but they all can read the same Chinese writing. I have even used Chinese writing with Japanese and Koreans. I found my best Chinese book with my Japanese friend in a book store just looking around. I learned a little Japanese from my Japanese friend. I wanted to know how Japanese and Chinese were related. Written Japanese uses Chinese characters and a phonetic system that was also derived from Chinese. Koreans originally used Chinese characters until a Korean emperor invented the Korean alphabet. Most educated Korean can write their names in Chinese and know many characters.

Chinese Calligraphy is the art of Chinese writing. Calligraphy is written with a special writing utensil called a brush. Many western people enjoy calligraphy as an art form. Japanese and Koreans also highly praise Chinese calligraphy. The writing can be enjoyed and one doesn't even have to know how to speak the language. Many non-Chinese people today enjoy learning Chinese calligraphy. Many don't not even know the meaning in English. Others cannot pronounce it! Some people prefer to speak while others prefer to write, you be the judge. I challenge you to at least to try it, you might like it.