Impossible to Learn Mandarin @ the Global Hanyu Centre

Arrgh! Another attempt at Mandarin class foiled. The first Level (Groupon) was fine, but the follow up level was impossible to catch up. Actually for first time beginners, I think the first level may be a little too tough. This could explain the high number of absentees and slackers. I was on the other hand a rung above with my history grappling with Mandarin.

I was a good student, at least I thought so. I actually revised past weeks’ lessons and tried to copy whatever there was on the board, tried to ask questions when in doubt, attended every lesson, on time as well.

After Level 1, a test was conducted, I scored well, earning me a place in the next level with a discount price. In Level 2, I was in for a surprise. She stopped speaking English altogether. She said, “We need to learn fast.” Also, she wrote less pinyin on the board and started teaching Chinese characters (something I look forward to).

Problem is, I can no longer ask questions, because every 1 in 2 words is new to me. Sometimes she takes up to half an hour delivering her ‘grandmother stories’ which the other 4 students more advanced than I, seemed to understand, laugh even. The official material looked like a photocopied primary school textbook, from which we learnt Chinese characters. Now and then she would derive certain new characters because they are related to some other character we’re learning.

Bottom line is, from the first lesson to the last, the difficulty level increased exponentially. Once she hits your current level, she only goes upwards from there, and that’s when you’re doomed.

My buddy system failed, because my ‘buddy’ has been holding out on me. Apparently he understands everything and his level is a lot higher than mine. It’s just that he refuses to speak unless forced to. That's a lesson for me. Next time pick a buddy who's on par with you, and not secretly hiding his linguistic skills.

The lessons weren’t all that bad, she was clearly trying to shake things up with her lesson plan. Once she had a dumpling festival celebration in a potluck style. One of our homework assignments was to sing a friendly song in Mandarin and record ourselves. One time she made us watch half a movie (thank God it has English subtitles).

But the killer was definitely the second level final exam. Not only do we have to take a written test where half of the questions were based on things never taught (kind of like University), we had to prepare a presentation based on a certain topic and present it to the class. I mean I haven’t learnt enough words, conjunctions not even for a wholesome conversation, and now a PowerPoint presentation?

I really love to continue with the next level, I do, but at this point I expect Level 3 to astronomically difficult, probably discussing Confucius teachings, Fengshui theories etc. Alas I concede defeat, I cannot continue to Level 3.

Phonetic Differences between Standard Mandarin (普通话Pǔtōnghuà) and Malaysian-Singaporean Mandarin (花语Huāyǔ)

The idea for this piece came about because while I’m taking Mandarin language courses from a Chinese cultural centre from mainland China, I live in Malaysia where the majority of local Chinese are schooled and brought up speaking Huayu, the local Malaysian dialect of Mandarin. There are differences such as the usage of certain words, grammatical deviations and even the pronunciation differences for many phonemes.


History had a hand in determining the variation in Malaysian/Singaporean Mandarin. First of all, when the Chinese settled in then Malaya in the 19th century, none of them were native speakers of the Mandarin dialect. Only when the Republic of China formed, the Chinese in Malaya gained a sense of Chinese nationalism towards the mainland. Mandarin was adopted as the Chinese people’s unifying language to be taught in local Chinese schools in Malaya, mirroring developments in China.


However, since the Malaysian Chinese were in a foreign land, they were heavily influenced by their original dialects (like Hokkien and Cantonese) as well as Malay and English. This was exacerbated when the Communists took over China and implemented a closed door policy. The cultural link to China had been all but severed. Hence, the local variety of Mandarin was free to evolve on its own.


Personally, if I were creating a new universal language, it would sound nothing like Mandarin. The problems that I have with Mandarin, as do so many people in the world have, are that so many consonants sound so similar. I compiled a list that compares between Standard Mandarin, what Malaysians think they know about Mandarin and how Malaysian Mandarin speakers really sound like. This is following my exasperating attempt to make sense of all the indecipherable chatter I hear.


Understanding of the pinyin system is needed to understanding the following list. In addition, there are a few concepts to introduce for the table to make sense:

*Aspirated means that a strong puff of air accompanies the consonant when it is sounded. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, you can hold a tissue up to your mouth. The tissue flutters with aspirated consonants while it doesn’t flutter with unaspirated ones.

Fricatives	Affricate
Consonant sounds produced by forcing air through a narrow channel in the mouth. In English s (sing) and z (zoom) are examples.	Consonants sounds that comprise of two stages. First, vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. Next, that restriction is loosened a little, while air is blown, resulting in a frication sound. In English, j (juice) and ch (choose) are examples.

Tongue Position	Description
Blade-alveolar	Roll up the tip of the tongue (blade) against the bony ridge behind the front teeth at the top of the mouth (alveolar ridge)
Blade-palatal	Roll up the tip of the tongue (blade) against the centre of the roof of the mouth (hard palate).
Palatal	The tip of the tongue is pressed against the back of the lower teeth, the rest of the tongue is against the roof of the mouth (hard palate)

The Phonetic/Pronunciation Differences between Standard Mandarin and Malaysian Mandarin

Initial Consonant	Standard Mandarin(普通话Pǔtōnghuà)	Malaysian Mandarin(花语Huāyǔ)	Malaysian Mandarin(Fast & Lazy Speech)
ch	Blade-palatal position, aspirated, affricate. Sounds not too dissimilar from the English ‘ch’	Very much like the English ‘ch’. Malaysians do not grasp concept of aspiration	Same as left
zh	Blade-palatal position, unaspirated, affricate. Has slight buzzing quality to sound.	Sound similar to Standard Mandarin, but tongue not rolled back enough.	Very much like the English ‘ch’.
sh	Blade-palatal position, fricative. Sounds similar to English ‘sh’ but with tongue rolled up	Very much like the English ‘sh’.	Sound like the English ‘s’.
c	Blade-alveolar position, aspirated, affricate.	Very much like the English ‘ch’.	Same as left
z	Blade-alveolar position, unaspirated, affricate. Has slight buzzing quality to sound.	Same as left	Very much like the English ‘ch’.
x	Palatal position, fricative. Not too dissimilar from the English ‘sh’	Sound like the English ‘s’.	Same as left
q	Palatal position, aspirated, affricate. Pursed lips help the aspiration process.	Same as left	Very much like the English ‘ch’.
j	Palatal position, unaspirated, affricate	Same as left	Same as left
s	Blade-alveolar position, fricative.	Same as left	Same as left

Malaysians narrow down the number of consonants when they speak fast. Five distinct consonants end up sounding like the English ‘ch’. Mandarin uses a lot of aspiration as a means to differentiate between different consonants. That’s an issue when people speak fast because no one can produce that puff of air in such short time. Aspirated consonants therefore sound unaspirated.

A good resource: ChinesePod 

Mandarin is so hard. Cantonese is a walk in the park by comparison. Just watch Hong Kong dramas/movies, and you’re speaking like the locals. For Mandarin, it’s been a hundred years and we still couldn’t get it. For me personally, I find that the written characters much easier than spoken Mandarin despite the number of characters to remember.

Learning Mandarin is Hard

Permanently itemised in my Life’s To Do List, learning mandarin was placed front and centre when a Groupon offer came about. I took up a 3 month beginners Groupon-grade Mandarin course with a buddy (in hopes that a buddy system will pull me through). This was my chance to right my failed past endeavours.

In the past, my on again off again approach to learning mandarin was not really seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I only had 3 years of P.O.L. (Pupil’s Own Language) in primary school. It wasn’t enough to reach a self-sustaining ‘critical mass’ of words and grammar to really survive. I tried enrolling in a language class before starting university, although it was sold to me as a beginner’s class, it actually wasn’t. I got lost in the mandarin chatter and practically after every class, suffered extreme mental dehydration. It didn’t work. I bought books and audio tapes, but that too failed because I needed interaction, a class of equals.

One horrid interview made me realise how important Mandarin can be in today’s world. But I was ‘lethargic’ and ‘passionless’ when it came to learning new languages following my less than successful attempts. My short stint with learning sign language just rekindled my sputtering flame. I was now ready to take on new languages.

The centre I joined is called the Global Hanyu and Culture Center. The unique thing about it is not a typical language centre; instead it is more of a cultural exchange centre between Malaysia and China, equivalent to a non-governmental British Council that offers language courses.

The Groupon class I joined was specially crafted to be simpler than their normal beginner’s course, focussing on common conversational language rather than the more conventional formal approach. Also they would not be teaching the written form of mandarin at all.

Be that as it may, coming from an English speaking background, Mandarin is hard! Buy all the books you want, take up those enticing online courses but you’re not going to learn Mandarin that way. You need either immersion (live with the natives), lots of observation (watch lots of Chinese movies) or join a class full of people roughly the same proficiency as you. Since immersion requires very patient friends and observation requires an undying love for that foreign culture, the third option seemed like a simpler solution for me.

Why is this Language so Hard?

Mandarin is the national language of China. However there are many other dialects that use the same writing system as Mandarin but have different grammar, different norms and expressions and sound completely different word for word.

Chinese is written in a string of monosyllabic characters, where each syllable corresponds to a Chinese character. But Mandarin is rampant with homophones – same sounding syllables, different character, and some heterographs - characters which have a few ways to pronounce depending on meaning.

Mandarin pronunciation is represented by the common pinyin system using Romanized alphabets. This is probably what you would start with when you are learning Mandarin.  Although pinyin uses alphabets, it may or may not have any relationship to the English counterparts. The pinyin alphabet ‘z’ sounds more like a ‘ch’. In fact there are 6 initial consonants (z, c, ch, zh, j, q) that sound similar to ‘ch’ but they do not sound the same to the Mandarin speaker. A g is actually a soft k, a b is a soft p. Furthermore, the pronunciation set is so constrained and limited; there are only a fixed amount of syllables you can make. As a result., many English consonants and vowels do not have counterparts.

Mandarin is a tonal language. That means a single syllable like ‘feng’ can be pronounced in 4 different ways according to the tones they are spoken with (tones as in musical tones) and instantly be recognised as four different words. Yup, you can say Mandarin is not spoken, it is sung! (But no one says that). That adds a whole new dimension to speaking a language. For beginners, listening to people speaking rapid fire Mandarin, words jumble up and sound the same.  Confusion is inevitable. And a nagging question I have is “Are tone deaf Chinese basically deaf in the ears of the Chinese?”

The written form of Mandarin is represented by an abstract pictographic ‘character’, with seemingly no alphabets in sight. Each character is made up of many strokes of the brush. Most people shudder at the thought of learning the Chinese characters, worrying that the infinite combinations of strokes of characters might overwhelm the brain. Also since the written form has no relationship to the way it sounds, you have to memorise the pronunciation, the characters and the matchup between the two. So learning Mandarin is actually like learning 2 languages, and that’s why some courses just offer conversational Mandarin, because one language is maddening enough.

Mandarin reuses too many syllables/characters. To all who say Chinese doesn’t use alphabets, this fact challenges that claim. You see in Chinese, words can be 1 character, 2 characters and however many characters that word needs to be. The problem is in the words which are 2 or more characters in length. In a 2 character word, the individual characters themselves have their own meanings but when they combine they would mean something else.

So you have to be armed with complete Mandarin grammar, local culture, knowledge of regional adaptations and a large vocabulary of words in order to understand certain scripts. Dangerously, you might get into ambiguous territory where a combination of characters may mean one thing, and another might mean something else. It’s like deciphering internet URLs. I hope you see the innocent side of “thispenisforyourconvenience”.

Mandarin transliteration of foreign proper nouns poses an issue. In most languages, when foreign words enter the vocabulary, native speakers would probably find local pronunciations that sort of match the original. For instance the ubiquitous ‘Starbucks’ name from America; Americans themselves could identify with that translated word (give or take a second). But not so in Mandarin where you have such a limited set of syllables.

Starbucks is “Xing ba ke”, Xing – means star while bake – is phonetic translation. Carrefour is ‘Jia le fu’ – phonetic translation. Microsoft is ‘Weiruan’ – translated literally as micro + soft. Google is ‘Guge’ - phonetic translation. Transliterations into Mandarin are neither uniform nor do they sound like their original pronunciation. Worst of all, in Mandarin text and speech, there is no hint of the word being a proper noun, and that’s a headache considering proper nouns are constructed using everyday words and characters.

It has been commonly claimed that all you need to know is around 2000 characters, because characters can join up to form compound and complex words, but is that really enough for full mastery?

In my Groupon introductory class, the disparity is great between the know-a-lots and the fresh meats. The know-a-lots have one thing in common; they already know a lot of Cantonese, a Chinese dialect very similar to Mandarin. At the fast pace of each lesson, the clueless fresh meats couldn’t follow at all and end up skipping class (all except one – Qishin Tariq).

I was a fresh meat too, 10 years ago at that language class. I lost all enthusiasm and drive to learn when ‘expert’ students hijack my so called beginner’s class. It took me another language, some self-reading and perseverance to enrol in this class again. I had only wished they have a true beginner’s class where all, especially the fresh meats can follow.

Learning Mandarin is hard, and if you are not living in a Mandarin speaking environment, impossible to master. But I guess it’s ultimately worth the effort just to reach that ‘critical mass’.

What do you mean you only Speak TWO Languages?

Truth be told, French is the language I really want to learn. Phonetically, I think French is the most beautiful language in the world and I vow that I would learn some French in this lifetime. However, in the meantime, one has to wake up and smell the coffee. Except in the most niche of engagements is French ever spoken – usually involving a French national.


Growing up in Malaysia is unlike other countries. The political reality is that cultural assimilation does not take place like in Thailand or Indonesia. It doesn’t have a homogenous population like Taiwan or Korea either. Malaysian social model is more like that of metropolitan cities e.g. New York and London, anything goes and you can find Chinatowns, Little Indias or Little Nepals everywhere.


I was brought up in an English speaking family and I was sent to national public school for my secondary education. I am proud of my personal heritage; English is my first language as was my Peranakan forefathers who sought to better their livelihoods in the British colonial era. Proud and comfortable with the language, I sought to better my English in the absence of a formal education to this day.


For me, Malay was obligatory, and is only appropriate that the medium of instruction at my school be the National language. I did quite well too, bagged an A2 in my SPM. But for me, unlike English Malay would never take that exclusive spot – the tip of my tongue. And neither will any Chinese dialect.



So English and Malay are the two languages that I can command. I can’t claim any more languages because I know too little to converse with native speakers. I admire those who can so easily pick up languages by just socializing. This is where my introverted nature works against me. One exception is if I were abducted and dumped in some remote foreign village where no one speaks English or Malay. Otherwise, the classroom is the only solution for me.



I am all too aware of Chinese-educated Chinese who can’t stand the likes of the Mandarin illiterate like me. But I shrug it off; I should be able to survive with my two horse stable of languages. That is turning out to be less and less true. More and more English educated Chinese parents are sending their children to Chinese schools purportedly for a better education. My kind is endangered.



So, I have compiled several reasons for my third language must be Mandarin:

1. The Anglophone world is losing out in global prominence. The 20th century belonged to the British Empire and the USA, but in the 21st century will emerging China lead? Nevertheless, English was dominant in the 20th century, the century that witnessed the greatest advancements of science and technology. English will stick around for a long time.
2. The great exodus, we know Malaysian Chinese are the largest number of Malaysians to have immigrated. English educated Chinese are more global in perspective and also more globally demanded. Regrettably, out of all the English educated Chinese friends I’ve ever known, I would say half of them are working overseas. More my Chinese speaking friends stick around so it’s time to speak their language.
3. In IT, there are some companies that just prefer to do business in Mandarin instead of English as I have painfully found out.
4. The best bootleg sites are in Chinese
5. Any credible Chinese politician must speak the language of the Chinese masses: Mandarin. Not that I want to be a politician, just saying.

My friend who works in HuaWei (a Chinese telecoms company which has a regional office in Kuala Lumpur) said the managers once commented that Malaysians (probably referring to Malaysian Chinese) do not face any language barriers wherever they go. With our Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) we can communicate with Indonesians, most of the time. So it pays to be bilingual, trilingual or even quadrilingual.


Languages are hard to learn especially Chinese. I figure I have to give my dogged determination to reach that critical juncture in Mandarin proficiency, whatever that may be. What I could really use is a partner in crime, a co-implementer of a buddy system. Anyone?