2019/1/18
What are the differences between Chinese and Mandarin? | Lingo Bus
What are the di erences between Chinese and Mandarin? Posted on 01/07/2019 by Lingo Bus Deciding to learn ‘Chinese’ comes with a list of never ending questions and decisions. As a new learner you might nd yourself thinking, where to study, how to study, and what resources to use, etc. But something that many new learners misunderstand is that you don’t learn ‘Chinese’! Yet there were many times where I would be asked ‘What language are you learning?” and I would reply with “Chinese”. I’ll be honest I still do it now even though I know better. You might nd yourself thinking, what are you going on about? Of course I’m learning Chinese! Think of Chinese like a family, for example as if they were your neighbors. A family with lots of family members. You might say you know the ‘Chinese’ family and that they live next door. But when asked further you probably mean you know their dad Mr. Mandarin Chinese and no one else. When you decide to learn Chinese you are actually picking one of the family members to get to know! When we say Chinese we usually mean Mandarin Chinese but ‘Chinese’ actually encompasses a whole set of languages. Need some in-depth help with handwriting Mandarin Chinese characters? Read how. I know it seems a bit confusing so we’ll get right to it!
What is Chinese? Well unfortunately technically speaking there is no such language as Chinese. So when we say ‘I’m going to learn Chinese’ it’s actually not quite speci c enough. Chinese is a term that can refer to many languages. It’s usually language learners (not native speakers) that refer to learning Mandarin as learning Chinese.
https://blog.lingobus.com/learn-chinese/differences-between-chinese-and-mandarin/
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