Immigrants From Mainland China And Taiwan Spoke Mostly Mandarin

The immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan spoke mostly Mandarin, and those from Hong Kong spoke Cantonese; both groups continued to use traditional Chinese characters as a means of communication. As social and political conditions in the PRC began to stabilize, the second wave of immigrants decreased considerably. The third wave of immigration started in the last decades of the 20th century and continues today.

The immigrants were composed of mainland Chinese from various socioeconomic backgrounds, with professionals as the most represented group. They spoke mainly Mandarin and used simplified Chinese characters to communicate. Part of the motivation to emigrate, specifically from Hong Kong, was the change in the political status of this territory, which was associated with the turnover of political control to the PRC.

The Chinese population in the United States has been characterized by a steady and fast growth over the past 40 years. The U.S. Census of 2000 indicated that the total Chinese population had grown from 435,000 in 1970 to over 2 million. It is estimated that a large portion of the Chinese population in the United States lives in the West and about 30% lives in the Northeast.

California and New York are the states with the first- and second-largest Chinese immigrant communities, hosting about 40% and 18% of the total Chinese population, respectively. Language has been a huge issue for Chinese immigrants in the United States. In 2000, the U.S. Census reported that nearly half the Chinese in the United States did not speak English at home or spoke English "less than very well."

According to this source, Chinese persons did less well in speaking English when compared with other Asian groups. Despite the language disadvantage, 48.1% of Chinese in the United States had at least a bachelor's degree by 2000, although the place where they received their tertiary education was not reported. About one quarter of the Chinese population in the United States had less than a high school diploma.

An important historical feature of Chinese immigrants has been the phenomenon of Chinese community schools, where Chinese language, calligraphy, and culture are taught to the young.

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Learning Chinese - A Few Thoughts on Mandarin and Pinyin

The official language of mainland China and Taiwan is usually referred to as Mandarin in the Western world. The Chinese however, depending on the country or region you are in, use different expressions to refer to Mandarin. Literally translated from Chinese, they call it common speech, Han language, national language or just plain "Chinese (language)."

Keep in mind that China is a vast country with about eight major dialect groups, not counting the languages spoken by the different ethnic minority groups. While the majority of Chinese can speak Mandarin, their accents will differ greatly, reflecting their local dialect and making comprehension difficult at times. It is generally acknowledged that the correct Mandarin pronunciation can be heard in and around the capital Beijing.

Another characteristic of the arguably correctly pronounced Mandarin is the rolling 'r' which gets added to the end of a lot of words and expressions. Again, this is the typical Mandarin you will hear in the Beijing region. A more common and also correct pronunciation of Mandarin is spoken in Shanghai and Taiwan.

To a Westerner, the hardest and trickiest part in learning Chinese is mastering the tones. The example that comes to mind is the word "ma." This word means mother in most western languages. To a Chinese-speaking person, depending on the tone, this word might mean mother, to scold, horse, hemp or just an interrogative particle.

That is why audio lessons play a very important role in learning Chinese. It is vital to have a good Chinese learning software program that includes audio lessons if you want to learn Mandarin through self-study.

Another extra hurdle to take for a Westerners is reading Chinese. Their written language consists of pictographs. Luckily, the Chinese government adopted a romanization system for their writing language, commonly named Pinyin. Its counterpart in Taiwan is a phonetic system called bopomofo. A student learning Chinese will have to master one of these phonetic writing systems before he or she can begin to read Chinese without being able to read the characters or pictographs.

The good news is that it is much easier to learn how to read and write Pinyin or bopomofo than to learn how to read or write the traditional characters. Unfortunately, different types of romanization systems have been used in the past and you will still find a lot of street signs on the mainland and in Taiwan which do not conform to standard Pinyin. A good example is Peking which in proper Pinyin became Beijing.

So for those of you interested in studying Chinese at home I would recommend you invest in some good Chinese learning software that teaches you proper Pinyin and offers relevant audio lessons.

If you're looking to learn Chinese and don't know where to start, or just want to start to learn for whatever reason, why not take a look at http://chineselearningsoftware.net.

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Learning Mandarin - Western Awareness of China

Learning Mandarin is becoming more and more popular with every passing year. It is hard to imagine it today but western interest in China and Mandarin is a very new development. In 2010 the Chinese government estimated that 100 million foreigners were actively pursuing proficiency, 20 years ago that figure would have been a lot closer to 0. The reason for the sharp increase in interest is of course the matching growth in the relative importance of China's economy, its diplomatic stature and western awareness of China.

If you think of what China actually is, it is a very strange notion that we westerners were not more aware of China a long time ago. China is the fourth largest country by area, and by far the largest by population. The total head count of all Chinese people comes to above 1.2 billion, that's more than 1200 million, or 12.000% bigger than my home country Sweden. The value is just too big to make sense of. If all Chinese people were to line up around the equator and hold hands, the line would stretch something like 28 times around the world. When growing up I used to love to read the CIA World Fact Book. It gave really cool facts in a language that I could understand even as a kid. Like Sweden is roughly the size of California. Denmark is the size of The State of New York. If CIA would try to put China's population in terms of a relative grouping in The United States, they would find it difficult. Chinas population is roughly equal to the combined population of Canada, The United States, All of The European Union, Norway, Switzerland and Russia. That is, in other words, 2 whole continents, plus all of northern Asia. There are a lot of Chinese people. If you think about it like that, China is not really a country; it is not even enough to call it a very large country. China is actually a very large continent in its own right. If there were a sea between China and the rest of Asia the Chinese Continent would be the worlds second most populous. There really are a lot of people in China.

The reason that this very large and very old (at least 4000 years, some books put it at 5000) country managed to escape, largely, under the radar of popular western awareness during the last century was of course that China did not want anything to do with the west and the west did not want anything to do with China. Wars tend to bring that out in civilizations. The American sponsored national army that was defeated by the communists in the Chinese civil war in the thirties and forties of the last century was not a good start for western - Chinese communist relations. The war in Korea where American and Chinese troops actually fought was not exactly optimal either. The fact that General MacArthur was really keen on using nuclear weapons on 30 cities on Mainland China was also not the best way to build permanent relations of chumminess between NATO and the new communist party republic. Perhaps the source of most angry feelings, however, was the fact that American effort to interfere with what is arguably actually a very Chinese issue (Taiwan) has never actually seized, even after the nationalist defeat. The nationalists were never in line to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Nor were they likely to ever secure a price for human rights activities. The main policy of the national movement seems to have been to reinstate feudalism by actively promoting corruption and using guns to kill lots of people that did not like the idea and had no guns. Thinking about it like that always makes me think that China was never really at fault when it comes to the frozen state of Sino Western relations. Since the Opium Wars the west has not been a very positive force in The Middle Kingdom. Luckily, that seems to have changed, and today we are much more welcome.

Rui Ming works for a Chinese language school in China that is a great option for those that want to learn Mandarin. See the program overview page for more information about learning Mandarin.

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Studying Mandarin in China

The first type is the one that is commonly known as Standard Mandarin or Chinese which is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China (Taiwan). The other type is Mandarin as a dialect which is spoken across northern and south west China.

Any reference to Mandarin usually means Standard Mandarin. Standard Mandarin also varies from Mainland China to the version spoken in Taiwan. They also take on different names to distinguish the different versions. While Standard Mandarin acquires the name "Putonghua" in Mainland China its Taiwanese version is known as "Guoyu". The only common factor among both the versions is that the phonology is based on the Beijing dialect.

There are various internationally recognized Chinese universities that offer affordable study programs to learn the Mandarin Chinese language in local environs. Renowned universities also offer varying levels of service to international students to meet their requirements and such services include: accommodation arrangements, students lounge facilities, communication networks, guided tours, excursions, travel planning assistance etc.

Unique and value added services provided by universities offering Mandarin language learning programs are:

o Language Labs: To enable practice and guidance in the use of the language through specially designed tapes to assist students with the use of the language.

o Language Partners: This service allows a student to have a local Chinese student as a language partner. This helps build a socio-cultural exchange apart from learning the language effectively.

o Corporate Programs: Such programs help educate international organizations willing to set up a branch or franchise in China but find a language barrier. Such corporate language learning courses can help overcome the language barrier. Language translators or interpreters are also provided by the university to help your cause.

PRC Study offers affordable study abroad programs for learning & Studying Mandarin in China through top Chinese universities that are internationally recognized.

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How to Learn Mandarin Chinese - Four Things the Beginner Needs to Know

So you've decided to learn Chinese, but not quite sure what you've gotten yourself into? No problem! We have identified four things that all beginner Mandarin learners need to know to start learning Chinese!

1 - Chinese Pinyins

You probably know that Chinese characters are the standard for written Chinese, but they're not very helpful when it comes to pronunciation for beginners. As a newbie, your best friend is pinyin. Pinyin is a system for writing out the sounds of the Chinese language using the Roman alphabet. It's not a "pronunciation key," it's a way of representing the sounds of the Chinese language in a phonetic way. This means reading pinyin correctly will still require you to learn some new sounds.

2 - Chinese Tones

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, which means that every syllable has a tone, and the meaning of each syllable can change, depending on the tone. This means that if you want to express yourself in Chinese and get the correct meaning across, you have to pay attention to those tones! There are four main tones in Mandarin Chinese, plus one "neutral" tone. The tones are simply referred to as "first tone," "second tone," "third tone," and "fourth tone." We could describe them here, but the best thing to do is to listen to them, and keep listening until they become familiar.

3 - Chinese Characters

While the casual learner of Mandarin Chinese may opt not to spend too much time on learning Chinese characters, the serious student will want to dive right in. There are just a few main points you should know about characters to make the most out of your studies:

a - There are two sets of Chinese characters: simplified and traditional. Simplified characters are used in mainland China, whereas Hong Kong and Taiwan still use traditional characters. Most students of Chinese will want to study simplified characters (unless they are focused on Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Chinese history).

b - All Chinese characters are composed of strokes. The order of the strokes that is used when writing a character is called that character's "stroke order." Each Chinese character is not a unique "drawing," however. As you learn more and more characters, you will notice that certain parts of a character appear again in other characters. These recurring component parts have the same stroke order every time, and their use helps us to make sense of Chinese characters. These component parts, when used to classify characters, are called "radicals."

c - Every Chinese character has a one-syllable reading. This means that a one-character word is one syllable, a two-character word is two syllables, etc. Most Chinese characters have one reading, but the number of Chinese characters far outnumbers the total number of syllables in Mandarin Chinese. As a result, for most syllables in Chinese, there is more than one corresponding character.

d - When writing in Chinese characters, there are no spaces between words. This can make it difficult to tell where one word ends and the next begins. Practice is the key. Modern Chinese in mainland China runs left to right, top to bottom (just like English text), but you will occasionally see old texts or signs printed vertically.

4 - Standard Mandarin

You often hear about various "Chinese dialects," such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Hokkien, and you may imagine that they are as similar to each other as American English, Australian English, and British English. In actuality, they are as different as the Romance languages Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian. Mandarin is by far the most common of the Chinese "dialects" mentioned above,and is the official language in both mainland China and Taiwan. (Cantonese is the language of Hong Kong and Guangdong.) Mandarin is what is usually meant by "Chinese" in casual usage.

You will sometimes hear mentions of "standard Mandarin" in discussions about learning Chinese. China was once fractured by innumerable dialects, and a unifying dialect helped bring the nation together. Standard Mandarin, or putonghua in Chinese, was originally based on the Beijing dialect in northern China, but has long since spread throughout the country. Just as a traveler in the USA will hear the difference in the local accents of Texas, New York, California, and Boston, a visitor to China will notice differences in the Mandarin of the residents of Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, and Sichuan. These differences add to the richness and variety of the language.

So now you know the 4 most important aspects of learning Mandarin Chinese - so why not get started!

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Why You'll Have a Lot More Sucess Having Mandarin Chinese Business Cards

This posting attempts to help people who either already or may possibly in the upcoming be carrying out business with individuals in places this sort of as Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. It aids you decide if you need Chinese business cards and what is the positive aspects of them.

Have you considered receiving some Chinese business cards?. Maybe you really feel that in these days of the global economy your English business card will suffice with every person being capable to understand it. On the other hand, this view could necessarily mean you don't have very much achievement when performing negotiations in regions this sort of as mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

It's crucial to take into account that inside of the above regions, business cards are seen as a very important business tool. They are presented and accepted two hands to show respect and the content of the card can play an progressively essential part in making certain you have prosperous business talks. Men and women like to really feel that they are negotiating with and obtaining to know someone who is at or near the best of the organization when they are negotiating. It may possibly be the event that the individual you are negotiating with has by no means heard the phrase 'chief technical officer' and as this kind of be unsure as to whether or not they are dealing with a person with sufficient authority to make a package. So, ensuring that an accurate Mandarin Chinese translation of the title of your work on your name card is very essential.

The individuals that you are meeting might quite nicely not be ready to speak or understand the English language. While they may really nicely be capable to go through and write English well, it may possibly surely be the situation that they do not use spoken English on a regular basis and as these kinds of may well not want or be self-confident adequate to connect verbally. When reading your business card and seeing a name this kind of as 'Arthur Turner-Prendegast' they may, understandably, have totally no concept how to pronounce. As this kind of, if you have a dual English Chinese business card then you can be assured to stay away from any embarrassing moments for both your self and your host People who are comfortable with English may possibly choose to use your English name whilst people who are not might determine against it. It is beneficial if they at least have the opportunity to use the Chinese equivalent of your name, regardless of whether it is a translation that succeeds in capturing the seems in just your name or is instead an authentic Chinese name selected for whatever reason; perhaps the optimistic meanings of the characters.

Obtaining a Chinese business card will also guarantee that the individuals you are meeting with will be impressed that you have taken the time and expense to do so. You may well effectively be paid back with extra respect simply because of this. You are showing cultural understandings that your hosts will appreciate and in the end result in obtaining an extremely beneficial business final result.

Think about the reality that when you pick a layout for your Chinese business cards it ought to be chosen so that colors are not too dark and the information is simple to go through.Keep in mind, the only issue even worse than getting a double-sided Chinese and English name card is to have one that is badly translated, so make sure you select a decent Chinese name card translation company to undertake the work!

Get an expert to translate and layout your card.
Don't use altavista or comparable web dependent translators to translate your name.
Select a provider that will give you feedback and offer you with a selection of name possibilities such as meanings.
Current your card to recipients with two hands.

A Chinese business cards online program that has exceptional feedback and offers a range of choices is accessible at: Lantern Chinese Business Cards.

Wilfred writes about doing business with China and has undertaken regular consulting work for Lantern Chinese Business Cards.

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