A Lesson in Mandarin Chinese

posted May 2004

*Chinese characters are written in two ways (or styles). There is the simple character representation (simple Chinese) that is commonly used in newspapers and on signs that are taught to students in schools in China. Then there is the complex character (traditional Chinese) which is used in some art and literature and is generally considered to be for scholars. The complex form is just the simple form made more complex. The characters below are in the simple form.

When the sounds the characters represent are written as words in the Roman alphabet, a number from 1 to 4 is appended to denote the tone form. There are four tone forms in Mandarin:

middle flat tone
going up from low to high tone
going up and down tone from low to high then low again
going from high to low tone

Alpaca:		yang2 tuo2 (Sheep Camel)
Australia:		ao4 zhou1 (Deep Waters Island)
China:		zhong1 guo2 (Middle Country)

Look for these characters in the Alpaca Export to China story!

*Information and resources were kindly provided by Kim Lau.