Chinese is one of the most difficult languages that require familiarity of thousands of characters and accurate pronunciation in order to attain fluency. However, this article will help you discover some techniques on how to learn Chinese in five minutes everyday. Daily language exercises in small doses can make the memorization of vocabulary words easier without overwhelming your brain with too many unfamiliar Asian character strokes in one sitting.
How to learn Chinese in five minutes – Day 1
On your first day of learning Chinese, understand certainly that there are 4 basic tones in pronouncing each Chinese character. A different tone could certainly entail a different meaning as it could refer to a different word. A lot of Chinese characters are written differently but they have the same pronunciation. On the other hand, there are cases that one character has two or three pronunciation that denotes various meanings.
For instance, if you mispronounce the word guāi using a different tone, the meaning shall therefore change from being kind to being not straight or weird.
汉字 Hànzì refers to Chinese character, and 字 zì means character or word. In the ancient days, the Chinese race refers to the Han race, as a result, Chinese language is also called Han language or 汉语 Hànyu.
拼音 Pinyin refers to the phonetic system of writing Chinese using the English alphabet. Moreover, 拼 pīn means to spell and 音 yīn means sound.
How to learn Chinese in five minutes – Day 2
Firstly, memorize the following characters and their corresponding meaning based on pictographs. Seeing the Chinese characters as pictures of the objects they represent aids in memory retention.
Secondly, pronounce each character correctly by reading them out loud for at least 5 times each.
Thirdly, learn a new word related to the above mentioned characters.
明 Míng means bright. This character is a combination of the sun and the moon, both gives light and causes brightness.
明天 Míng tiān means tomorrow. Because tomorrow is always a brighter day.
Furthermore, read and pronounce the character 明 míng and the word 明天 míng tiān for at least 5 times each. To sum it up, you have learned 5 Chinese characters and one Chinese word in 5 minutes.
Above all, by understanding the etymology or origin of the characters, you can easily remember the meaning and form of each character.
How to learn Chinese in five minutes – Day 3
Refer to the table to learn how to count in Chinese. You can certainly continue on counting after ten by combining the character ten ( 十 shí ) with the particular character for one to nine.
For example, 十一 shí yī means eleven, 十二 shí èr is twelve, 十三 shí sān means thirteen and so forth.. until you reach twenty, you need to add the number two (二 èr) before ten ( 十 shí ) to create the word for twenty, which is 二十 èr shí.
After that, go back to adding the particular character for one to nine at the end of the word for twenty. Similarly, this is how it is being done in English grammar. For example:
How to learn Chinese in five minutes – Day 4
Let’s add a few more vocabulary words and learn basic Chinese grammar. Most importantly, construct a sentence in Chinese.
To clarify, 是 shì is the verb “be” in Chinese. It can be am, is, are, was or were depending on the sentence. In Chinese language, past tense is denoted by adding or using certain words.
Likewise, spend the remaining time out of five minutes to learn how to construct a sentence in Chinese.
Let us say the date today is January 5.
For example:
今天是一月五日。 Today is January 5.
Jīn tiān shì yī yùe wǔ rì.
明天是一月六日。 Tomorrow is January 6.
Míng tiān shì yī yùe liù rì.
In addition, practice saying the current date by filling the blanks with the actual date today or tomorrow:
今天是 ( )月( )日. Today is ( ) month ( ) day.
明天是 ( )月( )日. Tomorrow is ( ) month ( ) day.