Even now, each of these monosyllables is represented by a single character, but often words have been made by putting two characters together, sometimes both with the same meaning, thus reinforcing one another. Originally, one sound equaled one idea and one word. Most sounds in Mandarin begin with a consonant and end in a vowel (or -n, or -ng), which leaves the language with very few distinct noises compared to English. There are a few sounds in Mandarin that are not used in English, but the main difficulty for foreigners lies in tones. "Tomorrow I go New York," is clear enough, as is "Yesterday I go New York." It's a little more complicated than these brief notes can suggest, but not much. To make matters of time clear, Chinese depends on simple expressions such as "yesterday," "before," "originally," "next year," and the like. Instead of past, present, and future, Chinese is more concerned with whether an action is continuing or has been completed, and with the order in which events take place. The same sound also covers "am," "are," "is," "was," "will be," and so on, since there are also no tenses. There are no equivalents for the definite and indefinite articles ("the," "a," "an"), so there is no need to make those agree either. There are no genders, so there is no need to remember long lists of endings for adjectives and to make them agree, with variations according to case. Mandarin is less well known in Hong Kong and Macau, but it is also spoken in Taiwan and Singapore, and among growing communities of recent immigrants to North America and Europe.Ĭhinese grammar is considerably more straightforward than that of English or other European languages, even Spanish or Italian. While throughout much of mainland China people speak their own local flavor of Chinese for everyday communication, they've all been educated in Mandarin, which, in general terms, is the language of Beijing and the north. But the official national language of China is Mandarin ( Putonghua - "common speech"), sometimes called Modern Standard Chinese, and viewed in mainland China as the language of administration, of the classics, and of the educated. The Chinese you are likely to hear spoken in your local Chinatown or Chinese restaurant, or used by your friends of Chinese descent when they speak to their parents, is more than likely to be Cantonese, which is the version of Chinese used in Hong Kong and in much of southern China. Speakers of each are unintelligible to each other, and there are, in addition, a host of dialects. There are six major languages called Chinese. Given that I stayed in Fairmont Gold, the restaurant staff should have refunded the money to my client regardless of whether he wanted the money back or not.ĭuring my checkout, I complained about the closure of the Fairmont Gold lounge for one evening and they did give me a discount of CNY 400 which is why I didn't rate my overall experience as "dissatisfied." But clearly the service level of the hotel should improve given the fact that it's part of Fairmont.Chinese is not as difficult a language to learn as it may first appear to be - at least not once you've decided what kind of Chinese to learn. My client didn't really want the refund and didn't push the restaurant manager. When I found out about this, I asked the restaurant manager to refund the bill to my client but nothing happened. The following morning, my client arrived before me for breakfast and ended up paying the bill before I arrived. Very embarrassing given that I was with a client. I ended up having happy hour drinks at the hotel bar but it took over 20 minutes for both the food and drinks to arrive. Fairmont Gold lounge was closed one evening due to "maintenance" issues.
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