Hi there,

I’m Vincent, master trainer of Belajar Bahasa Cina BBC. After teaching

Mandarin to Malaysians and foreigners, I realised that Malaysians have the

advantages to learn Mandarin. It’s because Mandarin language is very

similar to Malay in terms of pronunciation and sentence structure.

Belajar Bahasa Cina BBC is established in May 2015 to help more people

to learn Mandarin for daily conversation, workplace and academic purpose.

We have branches in Shah Alam, Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur and

Cyberjaya. Currently, we do not have plan to expand to more locations as

we are focusing on our teaching quality and students’ results.

Why do we start to teach Mandarin? Here are the main reasons:

First of all, I was born in Indonesia and I had the opportunity to migrate to

Malaysia for Mandarin education. That is exactly where I picked up my

Mandarin, which has always been an interesting language to me.

My experience in China, particularly in Guangzhou, made me realise that

Western people can speak fluent Mandarin and even crack a joke in

Mandarin!

Then I wondered why not Malaysians? As we know, there is around 20% of

Chinese population in Malaysia. Chinese can speak English, Malay and

Mandarin. Why not non-Chinese can speak Mandarin as well? We hope

more Malaysians can pick up Mandarin to foster unity and bonding among

races.

The main reason we started teaching Mandarin is because we have super

effective technique and ways for you to understand Mandarin. You will be

able to speak accurately, understand the vocabulary and create your own

sentence right after the first class.

In this book, I will share with you 5 key steps to learn Mandarin. You will

also discover that learning Chinese is not that hard, it is like learning Malay

and English language.

Learning outcome & our expectation:

After 3 months, students should be able to speak around 15% in Mandarin

After 6 months, students should be able to speak around 45% in Mandarin

After 12 months, students should be able to speak around 85% in Mandarin

Being able to speak a language takes time and effort. Stay focused and

motivated by rotating learning methods and make them diverse. Our

greatest satisfaction is to be able to help every BBC student speak fluent

Mandarin!

All the best in your learning Mandarin journey! Remember the best

investment that pays best interest is to invest in yourself. Once you already

master Mandarin, you can’t unlearn it and you will be speaking Mandarin

for your lifetime, and we know that it is worth your time and effort to learn it.

Best regards,

Vincent

Introduction
INDEX

Introduction :

Why learn Mandarin?

Is Mandarin easy or hard?

Step 1. Learn to pronounce han yu pin yin

Step 2. Learn to understand & remember vocabulary

Step 3. Learn to construct sentence structure

Step 4. Speak Mandarin everyday

Step 5. Learn Mandarin characters

Bonus: 4 common mistakes made by Mandarin learners

Introduction INTRODUCTION : WHY LEARN MANDARIN?

We list down four main benefits of mastering Mandarin:

1.International businesses - As China has become a huge market, and

business leaders are looking for people who can speak Chinese and

operate successfully in a Chinese cultural context. China play a major role

in world affairs.

2.Competitive edge - Knowing Chinese may give you an edge when

competing for an important position. Do you know that employer will

usually choose the candidates who can speak Mandarin? Yes it is true,

even some companies are willing to pay up additional RM1,000 salary to

employees who can speak Mandarin.

3.Most widely spoken first language in the world- Do you know that one

fifth of the planet speaks Chinese? In addition to the People’s Republic of

China and Taiwan, Mandarin Chinese is also spoken in important and

influential Chinese communities of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia,

Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, and Mongolia

4. Stronger bonding among Malaysians - This is the reason we started

BBC Belajar Bahasa Cina. We hope every Malaysian can speak Malay,

English, Mandarin and Tamil. So, what is your main purpose of learning

Mandarin? It must be very clear and strong reason so that you won’t easily

give up learning Mandarin. Please write down on your book.

1. ______________________________________

2. ______________________________________

3. ______________________________________

Let us Belajar Bahasa Cina together and create stronger bonding among

Malaysians!
Introduction INTRODUCTION: IS MANDARIN EASY OR HARD?

3 main reasons why people think Mandarin is difficult:

–Characters

Yes, Mandarin has two systems, one is called pinyin (the Romanization of

the Chinese characters based on their pronunciation) and the other one is

called Hànzì 汉字(Chinese characters) .” It is true that Chinese characters

are the most difficult characters in the world. Even the simplest word in

English “I / me” is written as 我 wǒ (which has 7 strokes)

– 4 different tones

New students will be confused by these 4 tones and different tones mean

different meaning. For example:

Character Pinyin Meaning

妈 mā (first tone) Mom

麻 má (second tone) Numb

马 mǎ (third tone) Horse

骂 mà (fourth tone) Scold

– Same pinyin, but could be different characters or meanings.

When you learn more words, you notice that the words sound the same,

but they have totally different meaning.

For example:

Character Pinyin Meaning

书 shū Book

输 shū Lose

Both have exactly same pronunciation, but they are different characters

and different meaning.

In order to answer whether Mandarin is easy or hard? We have to compare

Mandarin language to other languages. Every language has its own unique

features that might be regarded as hard or troublesome in some way, but

we believe that focusing on these problems is counterproductive for

language learning.

If you want to learn something, you want to become friends with it, you

don’t want to regard it as an unbeatable enemy! We won’t deny that

Mandarin has unique challenges that are difficult to overcome, but try to
look at Mandarin as being easy and exciting, rather than difficult or

impossible. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here are 8 reasons that make Mandarin easier to learn:

1. No grammatical cases – Chinese words don’t change according to

function. Whatever function a word has in a sentence, it generally looks

the same. But in English, we have to differentiate “We / us, They/them, I/

me” . In English, “he goes to class”; “he go school” is wrong. Chinese

Mandarin does not need to differentiate am /is /are /was /were or has

/have /had, etc.

2. Flexible parts of speech – For non-natives, a difficult part of learning

English is to figure out how to make a noun out of a verb or an adjective out

of a verb. For example, we say “ice” (noun), “icy” (adjective) and “to ice

(over)/freeze” (verb). In Chinese, there is only one single verb 冰 (bīng).

This means that speaking and writing becomes much easier since you

don’t need to remember so many different forms.

In Chinese, it’s not obvious what’s an adjective and what’s a verb, they

merge and float into each other, which generally means it’s easier to
understand and easier to guess how to use.

3. No gender – When you learn French, you need to remember if each

noun is meant to be “le” or “la”; when learning German, you have “der”,

“die” and “das”. Chinese has no (grammatical) gender. In Chinese, you

don’t need to bother about gender, because there is no such thing as

grammatical gender.

4. No tenses – Chinese doesn’t distinguish between yesterday, today and

tomorrow. We also don’t have to differentiate “am, is, are, was, were”

5. Neat use of numbers – Some languages have really difficult ways of

counting. In French, 99 is said as “4 20 19”, in Danish 70 is “half fourth”, but

90 is “half fifth”. Chinese is really simple. 11 is “10 1”, 250 is “2 100 5 10”

and 9490 is “9 1000 400 9 10”.

Monday is “week one”, Tuesday is “week two”, and so on. Same for the

months! Number 1 is yī, 10 is shí, 11 is shí yī “ten, one”, 99 is jiǔ shí jiǔ

“nine ten nine = sembilan puluh sembilan.

6. Logical character creation– Chinese characters aren’t random brush

strokes, there is reason behind these mysterious and beautiful symbols.

7. Logical word creation– Words, i.e. characters put together, contain a

lot more meaning than characters. They are created in a way which is often

obvious or at least understandable for a student.

For instance：

Character Pinyin Meaning

电脑 diàn nǎo Computer

电话 diàn huà Telephone

电池 diàn chí Battery

电影 diàn yǐng Movie

The first word for these vocabulary are the same.

Character Pinyin Meaning

电 diàn Electric

电脑 diàn nǎo literally direct translate is “electric brain”. It actually means

computer.
Character Pinyin Meaning

话 huà Talk

电话 diàn huà literally direct translate is “electric talk”. It actually means

telephone.

Character Pinyin Meaning

池 chí Reservoir

电池 diàn chí literally direct translate is “electric reservoir. It actually means

battery.

Character Pinyin Meaning

影 yǐng Shadow

电影 diàn yǐng literally direct translate is “electric shadow”. It actually means

movie.

Take a guess. What is 电视机 diàn shì jī ?

Tips: 视 shì = view ; 机 jī = machine

Your answer : _____________

8. Sentence Structure– There are only a few patterns you need to learn,

and once you’ve done that, you can just fill in the words you’ve learnt and

people will be able to understand. Even if you mix things up, people will

usually still understand.

In overall, Mandarin has a simple grammar and very logical word

creation.Mandarin is not very different from English and Malay. In fact,

there are many similarities. However, Chinese characters is the hardest

language to read and write in the world. That is why we advise new

learners to focus on conversational first, put aside the Chinese characters.

Conclusion

Mandarin is not as difficult as what you think. After you learn for 1 class,

you will notice that Mandarin is actually very similar to Malay in terms of

pronunciation and sentence structure.

IntroductionSTEP 1 : LEARN TO PRONOUNCE HAN YU PIN YIN

Han yu means Mandarin while pin yin means spelling.

There are 3 components of han yu pin yin;

6 vowels , 4+1 tones, 21 consonants

(Please check our email for the link to learn the pronunciation)

6 Vowels In Malay In English

a Ayam

o Orang Obama

e Emak

i Ibu

u Ular

ü Yui > Yü

4 + 1 Tone Symbol Sounds like

1st Flat & high tone, Hi!

2nd Rising tone, What?

3rd Flat & low tone, Err…

4th Power tone, Yes! Go!

5th Neutral/Soft tone

a o e i u ü
Introduction
āáǎà ōóǒò ēéěè īíǐì ūúǔù ǖǘǚǜ Introduc
tion STEP 2 : LEARN TO UNDERSTAND VOCABULARY

After you have mastered the pronunciation, here is the second step which

is to understand and memorise vocabulary. Mandarin vocabulary is rather

straight forward compared to English.

For instance,

Computer 电 脑 diàn nǎo

Handphone 电 话 diàn huà

Battery 电池 diàn chí

Movie 电影 diàn yǐng

The first word for these vocabulary are the same. 电 diàn means electric.

脑 nǎo = brain. 电脑 diàn nǎo literally direct translate is “electric brain”. It

actually means computer.

话 huà = talk. 电话 diàn huà literally direct translate is “electric talk”. It

actually means telephone.

池 chí = reservoir. 电池 diàn chí literally direct translate is “electric reservoir.

It actually means battery

影 yǐng = shadow. 电 影 diàn yǐng literally direct translate is “electric

shadow”. It actually means movie

Take a guess. What is 电视机 diàn shì jī ?

Tips: 视 shì = view ; 机 jī = machine

Your answer : _____________

(We will learn more vocabularies in the videos)

Introd STEP 3 : LEARN TO CONSTRUCT SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Learning vocabularies alone is not good enough. So, what is the effective

way to learn? It is to apply the vocabularies into a sentence. Here are 10

Mandarin vocabularies, we will construct into 3 questions and answers:

EN Malay CN pinyin

I / me Saya 我 wǒ

You Kamu 你 nǐ

Called as Panggil 叫 jiào

What Apa 什么 shén me

Name Nama 名字 míng zì

How many/much Berapa 几 jǐ

Years old Umur 岁 suì

Live Tinggal 住 zhù

At/in/on Di 在 zài

Where Mana 哪里 nǎ lǐ

How to create Mandarin sentence? (Tips: Think like Malay /broken English)
Q1: What do you called as?

Awak panggil apa nama?

你叫什么名字？

nǐ jiào shén me míng zì?

A1: wǒ jiào Vincent

(Tips: To answer the question, just copy and paste)

Q2: How old are you?

Awak berapa umur?

你几岁？

nǐ jǐ suì?

A2: wǒ 33 suì

Q3: Where do you live?

Awak tinggal di mana?

你住在哪里？

nǐ zhù zài nǎ lǐ?

A3: wǒ zhù zài Malaysia

For long sentence, you can use STPA/ TSPA formula to create sentence

structure. Where:

S = Subjects (who) come at the beginning of the sentence,

T = Time (when) expressions come immediately before or after the subject.

P = Place (where) To explain where an event happened, the place

expression comes before the verb.

A = Action, do something.

Princess | yesterday | went to the hospital | see the doctor.

gōng zhǔ | zuó tiān | qù yī yuàn | kàn yī shēng

公主昨天去医院 看医生。
Introduction STEP 4 : SPEAK MANDARIN EVERYDAY

After you have learned the pronunciation, vocabularies and sentence

structure, you have to apply what you have learned and speak Mandarin

everyday.

Here are top 9 ways to speak fluent Mandarin.

1. Choose the right material & course

(we produced our course materials in house suitable for beginners)

2. Read Chinese conversations aloud

(we will read the conversations aloud together in class)

3. Listen to Chinese audio and repeat

(There are audio, video files for every page of BBC book)

4. Write down conversations in pin yin

(you have to write and take note in class)

5. Practice with Chinese songs

(we will sing Chinese songs together)

6. Get a language tutor

(you will have 2 tutors, one is your offline tutor and also online tutor)

7. Understand & memorise the vocabulary

(we have effective way to help you understand the vocabulary)

8. Don’t be shy to speak with anyone

(every student has to do Mandarin presentation/dialogue in class)

9. Speak Mandarin everyday

(You always can call/whatsapp BBC tutor)

Introduction STEP 5 : LEARN MANDARIN CHARACTERS

After you can speak around 85% of Mandarin, you are no longer a

Beginner. You can now learn to read and write Chinese characters.

We don’t encourage Beginner to learn Chinese characters at the first place

as it may not be easy for you. Most people agree that Chinese characters

is the hardest language to learn. So we leave this to Step 5, only after you

can speak around 85% of Mandarin.

A Chinese character contains an indication of pronunciation as well as an

indication of meaning. There are more than 100,000 different Chinese

characters.

.
BONUS : 4 COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY MANDARIN LEARNERS

Mistake 1: Difference between shì (是) & hěn (很)

It is wrong to say “wǒ shì hǎo” (我是好) – I am good

One of the first things you learn is that the verb “to be” is “shì (是).

So you automatically assume that whenever you need to say “is, am, are,

were, was,” you should use “shì (是).” This assumption is wrong.

shì (是) = ialah / adalah in Malay.

Do you say” Saya ialah baik” ?

No right. So, in this case we have to use the word “hěn (很).

“hěn (很)” means “very,” but its meaning is weak here. You can think that it

also means “am/is/are/was/were ”

am/is/are/was/were - for Noun shì 是

am/is/are/was/were -for Adjective hěn 很

Examples of using the word “shì” for Noun

1. I am student = Wǒ shì xué shēng

2. i am malaysian = Wǒ shì mǎ lái xī yǎ rén

Examples of using the word “hěn” for Adjective

1. She is beautiful = Tā hěn piào liang

2. i am tall = Wǒ hěn gāo

Mistake 2: Ignoring Chinese measure word (Penjodoh bilangan)

When a quantity is involved – you must insert a measure word in between

number of the object and name of the object.

In English it is like : a slice of cake, a box of chocolate, a set of furniture

In Malay it is like: sebuah kereta, sebiji telur, sepinggan nasi

In Chinese, you can use gè个, it is the “general/universal” measure word,

can be used for many things. For examples,

One person = yī gè rén

One school bag = yī gè shū bāo

Three eggs = sān gè jī dàn

Mistake 3: Difference between “bù (不) & méi (没)

You should never say “bù yǒu (不有)” in Chinese.

The verb “to have – yǒu (有 )” is verb with a VIP

“Yǒu” is a status, it means “have/got”. It deserves its own very special

negation word which is “méi (没).”

To say “don’t have,” you should say “méi yǒu (没有).”

You should never say “bù yǒu (不有).” There is no such thing!

Have, Don’t have yǒu, méi yǒu 有,没有

Yes, No shì, bù shì 是,不是

Want, Don’t want yào, bù yào 要,不要

Wish, Don’t wish xiǎng, bù xiǎng 想,不想

Need xū yào 需要

No need bù yòng/ bù xū yào 不用/不需要

Know(How to)/Will huì, bù huì 会,不会

Know(Aware) zhī dào, bù zhī dào 知道,不知道

Can, Cannot kě yǐ, bù kě yǐ 可以,不可以

Able, Not able néng, bù néng 能,不能

Understand, Don't understand míng bái, bù míng bái 明白, 不明白

Mistake 4: Forget to insert de (的)” in between the adjective and the

noun.

de (的)” means belonging/ punya in Malay

In English, you can use the same word “cute” for both “He is cute” and “He

is a cute boy” and nothing needs to change for the word “cute”

But in Chinese, to use an adjective that contains more than one word to

describe a noun, you have to insert “de (的)” in between adjective and noun.

For example:

He is cute = Tā hěn kě ài

Cute boy (Comel punya budak lelaki) = Kě ài de nán hái

For adjectives that only contain one word, you don’t need to insert “de (的).”

For example,

Good student = hào xué shēng

Pretty girl = měi nǚ

Thank you for reading our book. Next step, is to watch our videos to learn

pronounciation, vocabularies & sentences

Click https://www.belajarbahasacina.com.my/chinese-class/