Základní škola, Praha 9 – Satalice, K Cihelně 137

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A comparison of languages: Chinese and English

Jméno a příjmení: Yitian Huang

Třída: IX.
Školní rok: 2019/ 2020
Předmět: AJ
Vedoucí práce:Renata Prokopová
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Content

What is Chinese Language?

Learning Chinese

Chinese pronunciation
Comparison English and Chinese
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Introduction
My final work is to compare English and Chinese languages, because at my home
my mum speaks with me in English and my dad speaks with me in Chinese. As the title
suggests, the aim of this essay is to look at some distinguishing features and difference
between the English and Chinese languages. When I was six years old I learned with my
uncle Chinese and English. Uncle told me that my Chinese was better than my English.
When my mom came to me she said: “Whenever you fall down, I will also cheer you up”.
First let us look at the Chinese language. The Chinese language is more interesting
in written form than it’s in spoken form. A lot of people say it is difficult to write in Chinese,
but it isn’t and in this discussions, I will show you step by step, how to start writing Chinese
characters.
Then I will not only tell you a comparison of languages English and Chinese, but
also I will tell you the most important and the most amazing things.
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1. What is Chinese language?

The Chinese language is not made up of the alphabet like the English language but
it comprises of what is called logograms or logograph. This is written or pictorial symbol
intended to represent a word. (Talk briefly about logogram). There are two types of
handwritings: simplified Chinese and tradition Chinese. The difference is that simplified
Chinese is easier to write than tradition Chinese. Chinese word is not only amazing and
interesting but also has a long history and rich culture. Chinese word was born more than
4,000 ago and it is one of the most popular languages in the world. Chinese handwriting is
very specially a unique art. Are you now interested in Chinese word? I do believe that in the
future, Chinese will become more and more regarded by the world.

1.2 Example of Chinese Word

For example, if you have Chinese word 人(person), you can put the same word next
to it and it makes a new Chinese Word 从(from). Place the same character at the top of 从
(from) and will have you composed another new Chinese word 众(multiple).
In Chinese there are a lot of interesting things. For example, if you have a Chinese
word 平常 (usually), you take away 常(often) and you put another new word 静(quite), you
composed a new word 平静(clam). They have nothing in common.
Again, if you have a Chinese word such as 火 meaning fire (a very radical character),
any other characters that go along with it are usually related to fire, hot things, burning or
something similar. For example: 烧 means burning, 烤 means toast, 烫 means something
extremely hot, and so on. This is a technique that can be applied to any radical such as 平
(level). If you put these radicals “偏旁部” differently, you will get different meanin such as
评 (comment) or 苹(apple). You can also have 坪(grass) and so on. In all, they can be written
in different forms and handwriting but the pronunciation remains the same.
In Chinese language, we can put one or two different Chinese characters together. Examples:
你(you)+好(good)=你好(hello) or 成群(group)+结队(team)=成群结队(together)
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1.3 Chinese poem.

Like I said before, Chinese language has no alphabet, but makes use of logograms
(or logographs) which are pictorial representation of what the writer is saying. To show you
further examples of logogram, we will make use of a Chinese poem, (Chinese poems have
over five thousand years history). Here is a poem written in logograph.
故诗-poem
静夜思-Through for a quite night.
李白-LiBai
床前明月光, 疑是地上霜。-The bright beams shine across my coverlet, reminding me of
frost covering the ground.
举头望明月, 底头思故乡。- I gaze up at the bright moon, then bow my head and suddenly
think of my home.

2. Learning Chinese
Learning Chinese characters is really hard in the beginning simply because, you
have nothing to link the new information to. Generally, Chinese children start learning
Chinese from the moment they begin to say words, and when they enter school, they start to
learn Chinese language systematically from Pinyin and character and articles. Chinese
people use special notebooks with 田字格 where each character is written within a square
frame. Chinese children are also taught to recognise the approximate meaning of a character
by simply knowing the meaning of the components that make it up.

2.1 Beginning learning Chinese

Step 1: Determine if Learning Mandarin is right for you –Learning Chinese is not
for everybody and it requires investing a lot of precious time to become good at it.
Step 2: Find some Chinese learning Materials. Fulfilling your personal goals in
learning Chinese will require much more than taking a course in Chinese.
Step 3: Learn Pinyin- Pinyin is the most commonly used system for writing
Chinese using roman letters. For example, 我是中国人 in pinyin is wõ shì zhõng guó rén.
Each character in Chinese represents one syllable and can be spelled out phonetically in
pinyin
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Step 4: Start Speaking in Chinese –To help you nail down pinyin and proper
pronunciation in Mandarin, try speaking with a native speaker. Native speaker will ensure
you are pronouncing words correctly and help you transition from saying simple words and
phrases to having basic conversation.
Step 5: Start listening to Chinese - It's also important to start listening to Chinese
as much as possible. We learned our native language through listening and you should
apply the same strategy to learn Mandarin Chinese.
Step 6: Get your head around Chinese tones–You may have heard that Mandarin
Chinese is a tonal language. As Mandarin has significantly fewer sounds than English.
Tones are essential to convey different ideas with the same syllabic sounds.
Step 7: Start learning Chinese Characters – I suggest in learning Chinese
characters, once as a beginner, you become confident, you have Chinese basics like pinyin
down. Once you start learning Characters, start with the goal of understanding how
Chinese characters work as a system rather than rote memorisation.
Step 8: Practice Chinese every day – Start small with 30 minutes of studying
Chinese per day. You want to study only as long as you are having a fun and enjoying the
process. The more you study,
the faster you will improve.
But the more you enjoy
studying, the more you will
study.
Final Thoughts:
Learning Chinese –The last
thing is to be consistent in how
you learn. Once you find a
method of learning, stick to it.
By sticking to a regular
routine, you are more likely to
remember what you have
learned and can expand your
knowledge of Chinese with
new content.
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3. Pronunciations in Chinese
Similar to above, characters often take the sounds of their components. You can
often guess the pronunciation of a character simply by knowing the pronunciation of its
components. The right part of the character 旗 is pronounced (qi), which is similar with its
pronunciation (qi). As another example, the right part of the character 烤 is (kao), which is
an exact copy of it is pronunciation. In Chinese we have 24 vowels (韵母) and 23 consonants
(声母).
Chinese vowels(韵母) – a, o, e, i, u,ü, ai, ei, ui, ao, ou, iu,üe, er, an, en, in, un, ün,
ang, eng, ing, ong
Chinese consonants (声母) –b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh,r, z, c, s, y,
h

3.1 Chinese character with multiple pronunciations

Every Chinese character is pronounced as one syllable. A two-character word will
be two syllables. Most of them have different meanings when they are pronounced in
different ways. In Chinese we have four tones. In some cases, the tone can vary, and in some
cases the pronunciation can change completely. There are 30 Chinese characters with
multiple pronunciations. I will show you some examples of multiple pronunciations.

3.2 Example of multiple pronunciations

好 hăo or hào –This is one of the characters that any beginner in Chinese will learn.
Most of the time it is pronounced hăo and it means good or easy, as in 很好 (very good) or
好人 (a good person). But, in a handful of words and expressions it is pronounced in the
fourth tone (hào) and it's a verb ‘to like’. You will see it in 爱好(hobby),好奇(curious) etc.
为 wèi or wéi- This character is used most in the words for because 因为，为什么
( why) and 为了( in order to), where it is pronounced in the fourth tone. However,为 can
sometime be pronounced in the second tone, in 成为(become), 认为 (think that) and 以为
(to think wrongly that...).
便 biàn or pián- This is one that a lot of beginners come across. It is pián in 便宜
(cheap) piányí and biàn in 方便(convenient) fāng biàn.
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的 de, dí or do – 90% of the time this is a grammar word it is pronounced de, but in
的 确 díquè ( in reality/ certainly) it is pronounced dí, and in 目 的 (goal/target) it is
pronounced dì. Just learn these and you will pretty much be ok.

4. Comparison English and Chinese

One of the most distinctive different between Chinese and English is that Chinese
is a tonal language while English is an intonation language. In other words, the meaning of
a Chinese word depends not only on the phonemes which make up the word pronunciation,
but also the pitch variations of the syllables or word.

4.1 English emphasizes the structure, while Chinese focuses on the

meaning
In English, it is very common to see one long sentence with long modifier and use
of pronouns. The sentence may be long and complicated, but it is still clear enough to
understand. In Chinese, the situation is very different where a long sentence in Chinese
would be very complicated and cannot be understand properly. Therefore, in Chinese we can
only find short sentences or long sentences divided to short phrases separated by comma. To
conclude, we can say: English sentences are usually long and Chinese sentences are usually
short. Let look at some examples here:
The computer program is completely in the computing mode and will only do
computing tasks.
现在，程序的显示区完全处于这种工具的模态中。

4.2 English puts more emphasis on the first part of the sentence
while Chinese put the emphasis on the last part of the
sentence.

This characteristic is especially apparent in sentences, which include logic with

drawing conclusions or expressions of results. In English, the conclusion is described first
and the facts are described at the end of the sentence. In Chinese it is the opposite. First,
the facts will be described then the results, conclusions and etc.
For example:
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His assertion that „ it was difficult, if not impossible, for a people to enjoy it is
basic rights unless it was able to determine freely it is political status and to ensure freely it
is economic, social and cultural development “was now scarcely contested.
如果一个民族不能自由地决定其政治地位，不能自由地保证其经济，社会和
文化的发展，要享受其基本权利，即使不是不可能，也是不容易。这一论断几乎是
无可辩的了。

4.3 Grammar - Tense/verb in Chinese and in English

Much information is carried by the use of auxiliary and by verb inflections:
am/is/are/was/were, eat/eats/ate/eaten etc. Chinese, on the other hand, is an uninflected
language and conveys meaning through word order, adverbials or shared understanding of
the context. The concept of time in Chinese is not handled through the use of different tenses
and verb forms, as it is in English. For all these reasons it is not surprising that Chinese
learners have trouble with the complexities of the English verb system. Look at the example:
I will go to England next week.
我会去英国下个星期。

Conclusion
I can clearly see an interesting point that Chinese emphasizes short and clear
expression so that the listener or reader will easily get accurate meaning of the idea
expressed. For this aim, Chinese „gives up" long and complicated sentences which are based
on language grammar and prefer to use simple and short sentences. English sentences tend
to be longer because since it needs to be specific. In addition, the Chinese also does not omit
repeated words in order to make sure that the listener (reader) will not misunderstand the
meaning of the sentence.
The other method the Chinese language uses to make expressions the most accurate
is using idioms. The idioms are an integral part of the Chinese culture and wisdom since
almost each of them is a conclusion of a traditional Chinese legend, and expresses a sort of
an insight. I hope you learned a lot about the differences between the two languages and
understand how to start comprehending the Chinese language.
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Zdroje
Ņ�范英语. 3.1. 中国青年出版社: 图书馆 CIP, 2013. ISBN 978-7-5153-1403-7.
ȯ�文. 6.1. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2013. ISBN 978-7-107-14628-2.
ȯ�文. 6.1. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2013. ISBN 978-7-107-16622-8.
ȯ�文. 6.1. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2016. ISBN 978-7-107-18704-9.
ȯ�文. 12.1. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2013. ISBN 978-7-107-15283-2.
ȯ�文 12.1. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2012. ISBN 978-7-107-16134-6.
ȯ�文. 12.1. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2013. ISBN 978-7-107-17124-6.
ȯ�文. 12.1. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2012. ISBN 978-7-107-15035-7.
ȯ�文. 7.3. 人民教育: 全国新华书店经销, 2013. ISBN 978-7-107-19173-2.