Mandarin Minutes

Mandarin is the mother tongue for over half of the officially counted 1.3 billion people in China, according to the PRC’s Ministry of Education, and is also widely spoken in the Chinese diaspora throughout the rest of the world. Spend a minute with Mandarin Chinese and familiarize yourself with mainland China’s putonghua (also called guoyu, hanyu, and zhongwen on the mainland, Taiwan, and anywhere the language is spoken). Mandarin Minutes will write Mandarin Chinese using pinyin, the standard romanization system devised in the PRC in the 1950’s. Pinyin literally means ’spell sound’ (‘pin yin’) and is probably the easiest and fastest way for new learners to pick up Mandarin. Even the young kids in mainland China are started out with pinyin when they begin learning the language at school. Sometimes Mandarin Minutes will display Chinese characters (汉字) and they may be simplified (jianti), like the ones used in mainland China or traditional (fanti), like the ones used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chinatowns all over the world. Enjoy learning a really fun and useful language – Mandarin.

Any questions, mandarin dot minutes at gmail dot com