In order to truly understand an art or discipline, we must understand the culture that gave rise to it. And in order to understand the culture, we must cultivate an understanding of the language. Below are common words and phrases used in our school. It is of course impossible to boil down an entire language into a brief informational page, but this can be used as a starting point from which to explore the Chinese language and the words/phrases we use in our daily classes.
Four Tones of Chinese
Some quick notes about pronunciation: standard Chinese - also referred to as Mandrin, or Pǔtōnghuà (普通话) - is a tonal language. Vowels are given tones that change the way the word is said, in turn changing the meaning. This makes the phrase, "It's not what you say but how you say it," very important. There are four tones:
- 1st: This is a higher-pitched, steady tone on the vowel.
- 2nd: This tone starts mid-pitched and rises towards the end of the vowel.
- 3rd: A falling-rising tone, it starts low, dips, and then increases in pitch.
- 4th: Falling tone, usually short, going from a high to low pitch
A word pronounced with the wrong tone changes meaning. But, it should be noted that even though the language is tonal, like most languages, it is also contextual. Though you can be misunderstood by having bad pronunciation of the tones - or at minimum made fun-of 😉 - the words surrounding the mispronounced word give it context, which means you will probably be understood unless you really garble your words.