LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION - Living Abroad in Beijing - page 182

in Beijing is extremely diverse and very welcoming to new members, and there are endless
opportunities to form relationships with English-speaking people.
CHINESE
Firstly, no one says “Mandarin” in Beijing. You may see the word in the names of language
schools, but other than that, Mandarin is simply referred to as Chinese, or p ǔ t ō nghuà. While
Beijing is home to millions of migrants from all over China, from areas where the dialects
differ dramatically, everyone speaks the standard dialect in the big smoke. Accents do vary,
but generally it's one language. Cantonese is almost never heard, and even films coming
out of Hong Kong are increasingly being made in the mainland tongue.
Though you might assume Beijing, being the capital, would be the home of pure, stand-
ard p ǔ t ō nghuà, it's not exactly. The Beijing accent can be extremely strong, weighed down
by an almost guttural rolling “r” sound. For example, Sanlitun would be pronounced as
s ā nl ǐ tún in standard Chinese; however, your Beijing taxi driver is more likely to drive you
to a place that sounds more like “ s ā nl ǐ térr .” Some people will tell you that these “r” sounds
are laden on the Beijing accent only and not part of pure Chinese—this isn't true, but
Beijingers do enjoy extra lashings of them.
Chinese is a tonal language, meaning changes in pitch alone can produce different mean-
ings. In standard Chinese there are essentially four tones plus a neutral one (much better
than Cantonese, which has approximately nine tones). The first tone is a high flat tone, the
second a rising tone, the third a dipping or rather a low squashed tone, and the fourth a
falling tone. For example (using a pronunciation that rhymes with sung, not sang), the first-
toned t ā ng ( 汤 ) means “soup”; the second-toned táng ( 糖 ) means “sugar”; the third-toned
t ǎ ng ( 躺 ) means “to lie on your back”; and the fourth-toned tàng ( 烫 ) means “boiling hot.”
If you can discipline yourself to pay attention to and learn the tones, you'll do much
better. Not only will other people understand you better and vice versa, but you may find
words seem to stick more if you've put effort into learning their correct pronunciation. I've
been to various schools, and have found that I have better recall for those words that were
taught by teachers who placed emphasis on tone. It's not always easy, and you might need
to come up with some creative memory techniques to help you remember the differences,
but the effort is worth it if you're serious about communicating in Chinese.
Though learning this language can be a little difficult, it is really interesting, and gives
you wonderful insight into the culture. It's not that you need a sky-high IQ to master it, you
just need patience and the willingness to immerse yourself a little. Accents vary consider-
ably, so the way words are pronounced by those around you varies greatly. The grammar