Itâs good to remind ourselves of its many different uses, especially on those days when getting students to participate feels like pulling hensâ teeth. 1  Participation adds interest âItâs hard to maintain studentsâ focus and attention when all they hear is the professor talking.
Quora User, fluent speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese. Knowing Cantonese alone does not make you understand Mandarin due to the large differences in the language/dialect. However, I believe the majority of Cantonese speakers can understand Mandarin, but only because they have separately studied Mandarin (either formally in school, or self-taught).
Pinyin is the most widely-used system of writing Mandarin Chinese that uses the Latin alphabet. It is a great tool to help you learn the accurate pronunciation of Mandarin words. First, you need to learn how to read pinyin, as Mandarin contains some sounds which do not exist in English. Have a look at our guide, listen to the voices in Real Chinese and our tone and character games to hear how native speakers pronounce the sounds. Donât worry if you donât get it right first time, learning pinyin needs a fair bit of practice.