Speak Chinese
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Speak Chinese
The first major hurdle you have to hop over if you want to reach the Hakka
Chinese is figuring out how to communicate with them. Ah, the joys of language study! Here are a few things you might find interesting about
learning the Chinese language:
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Mandarin Chinese (see note below) has four basic tones. When you
say a word, great care should be taken to use the correct tone or you’ll end up getting a lot of puzzled looks or suppressed grins. |
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The normal language student (neither a prodigy nor a dunce) takes about two years of full time study to get a basic grasp of Chinese conversation. And “basic” is good, but not anywhere near fluent enough to lead a small group Bible Study. |
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Chinese writing is not based on a phonetic-style alphabet, but on “picture” characters. (You are not able to “work out” a pronunciation by looking at the character.) Each Chinese character represents one syllable in the spoken language, and can sometimes stand by itself to form a word or can combine with other characters to form a word. For example, the word for “computer” (dian nau) is made up of the two characters for “electric” (dian) and “brain” (nau.) |
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There are about 5000 Chinese characters in use today. You’ll need to memorize a minimum of 2000 of these characters if you want to be able to read a Chinese newspaper. |
Well … hope this little language primer has helped a bit. If you are interested
in learning how to say a few basic “survival” Chinese phrases, or just want an
amusing look at some of our own language learning experiences, we invite
you to come on in and take a peek.
Note: For various strategic reasons, we’ve chosen to use Mandarin Chinese in our ministry
here. If you’d like more information about our decision-making process, please keep your
eyes open for the upcoming “Church Planting Challenge” that deals with this important issue.
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