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Arts in Education Grant—Fall 2013-14 McDougle Elementary School PTA <br /> NMI <br /> The official language of The People's Republic of China is called "Putong Hua" <br /> or"the common tongue." We refer to it in English as Mandarin.There is some <br /> disagreement among linguists as to just how many Chinese'languages"there <br /> actually are because so many dialects are spoken in different parts of the country. <br /> This is due in large part to the fact that there are SG officially recognized ethnic <br /> groups within the boundaries of present-day China. In the south of China,in addi- <br /> tion to speaking Mandarin, people also speak Cantonese or"Guangdong Hua.'• <br /> Mandarin is characterized by its four tones. Depending on what tone a word is <br /> = given,its meaning can vary quite dramatically.Tonal languages are generally <br /> thought of by westerners as being extremely difficult to learn.While this may be <br /> true, there are some enthrallingly easy aspects of spoken Chinese. For example, <br /> words do not change endings in the plural,there are no tenses and there are no <br /> verb conjugations! <br /> "Tomorrow,I will go to the store to buy some things" would be translated as <br /> "Mingtian wo qu shangdian mai dongxi"or"Tomorrow, I go store buy thing,"Such <br /> foreign-sounding syntax takes some getting used to,but once the patterns are <br /> learned,they can be applied to communicate countless ideas.Additionally,a <br /> form of the roman script called pinyin can be used so that traditional Chinese <br /> characters called ideographs or Hanzi can be written using our alphabet! <br /> Following are some of the more common Chinese words and phrases, which are <br /> written in pinyin. If you have a classmate or a friend who speaks Chinese,ask him <br /> or her to help you out with the pronunciation. Pay special attention to the tones! <br /> Numbers Some Common Phrases <br /> One-Yi How are you?- Ni hao ma? <br /> Two-Er Good morning- Zaoshang hao(Morning good) <br /> Three- San Good night -Wan an(Night peaceful) <br /> Four- Si Where are you going? -Ni dao nar qu? <br /> Five-Wu 'What's your name?-Ni jiao shenme mingzi? <br /> Six-Liu Please help me-Cling ni bang wo de mang <br /> Seven -Qi Pease come in! - Gong jin! (Please near!) <br /> Eight- Ba See ycrra lat€=r-Zai jian <br /> Nine-Jlu T.1ank you - Xlexie ni <br /> Ten-Shi You are welcome-Bu keji <br /> Page 20 of 21 <br />