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Learn Mandarin and you will join a billion speakers
If you learn Mandarin you will speak the official language of China. In China, Mandarin is spoken north of the Yangtze River and is the native language of two-thirds of the population. Mandarin is the most widely spoken form of Chinese and there are nearly a billion Mandarin speakers in the world, making it the world's most commonly spoken language. Around 21% of the world's population can read Chinese, while just 8.3% read English.
Mandarin, also known as Putonghua (Common Speech), is one of the official languages of the United Nations. MSA is the official language of Taiwan, and is also spoken in Singapore and Malaysia, where it is referred to as simple "Chinese".
When you learn Mandarin, also called Guoyu (National language) by Chinese abroad, you are leaning a dialect. As with Putonghua, both generally refer to the same Beijing dialect, which is the standardized MSA or Modern Standard Chinese.
Use four tones to learn Mandarin
The Mandarin language utilizes four tones to make a distinction between words or syllables. When you learn Mandarin you learn to use the four tones: level, rising, falling, and high-rising, to distinguish words or syllables. They have the same series of consonants and vowels, but different meanings. To learn Mandarin, like all other varieties of Chinese, you must grasp the mostly monosyllabic words and word elements.
If you look through the pages of this site you will find the best way to learn Mandarin. There is a short Mandarin tutorial and you will also find out the best places where you can learn Mandarin.
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