Chinese Basics

• Chinese is one of the earliest written languages in the world with a history of 6,000 years. The "Four Treasures" of traditional Chinese calligraphy are brush(笔), ink(墨), Chinese Xuan paper(宣纸), and ink-stone(砚).
• Chinese has an estimated 1.3 billion speakers. The standardized form of spoken Chinese is called Standard Mandarin (or simply Mandarin, or Putonghua[普通话 Mainland] or Guoyu[国 语 Taiwan]). It's based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Mandarin is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and has around 850 million native speakers. There are also several other major Chinese dialects, most notably Wu dialect (by 90 million, which includes Shanghainese), and Cantonese (by 70 million).
• Chinese characters were originated from natural things, such as cloud, moon, sun, mountain, etc. The following illustrates some of the Chinese Pictographs:
  

Consonant and Vowel letters

     b p m f 
        d t n l 
        g k h   
        j q x   
        z c s   
        zh ch sh r 
        y w 

a 啊  o 喔  e 鹅  i 衣  u 乌  ü 鱼

韵母 (yùnmǔ)
ai 哀  ao 袄  an 安  ang 昂
ei 欸        en 恩  (h)eng 亨
(l)ia 俩  (l)ie 列  (l)iao 了  iou 优  (l)ian 连  (y)in 因  (l)iang 亮  
(y)ing 英  (x)iong 雄  (d)iu 丢
ou 欧  (h)ong 红
(h)ua 话  (h)uo 火  (h)uai 坏  (h)ui 会  uei 威  uen 温  (h)uang 黄  ueng 翁
(y)üe(ue) 约  (y)üan(uan) 冤  (y)ün(un) 晕

Chinese Tones

       1st tone: high and long  (e.g., 关 (guān) close)
        2nd tone: rising and long  (e.g., 钱 (qián) money)
        3rd tone: low and short  (e.g., 想 (xiǎng) want)
        4th tone: falling and short  (e.g., 市 (shì) city)

Chinese Grammar

我 吃   鱼    和   土豆     片. (wǒ chī yú hé tǔ dòu piàn)
I eat fish and potato chips.

我们  想     分别        付款. (wǒ mén xiǎng fēn bié fù kuǎn)
we  want separately  pay

卫生间    在  哪里? (wèi shēng jiān zài nǎ li ?)
restroom is where?

• Two perfectives:

  1. 车子出了故障. (chē zǐ chū le gù zhàng.)
  The car broke down. (And the car still does)
  2. 车子出过故障. (chē zǐ chū gùo gù zhàng.)
  The car had broken down. (The car is ok now)

• Imperfective:

  哪些队在进行比赛? (nǎ xiē duì zài jìn xíng bǐ sài ?)
  Which teams are playing?