This is a monthly program. Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Norwegian, Hindi, Japanese, and Chinese classes will be offered on the third Wednesday each month.
Joy Cheung, a TVIH member since 2014, was born in Chungking, China and grew up in Taiwan. She came to the US when she was 19. Mandarin Chinese is her mother tongue.
Chinese is widely considered as one of the most difficult languages to learn by a westerner. In this introductory Chinese language class, Joy will explain the Chinese characters (words), strokes, pinyin, and tones. Each written Chinese character fits into a square. There is a specific order of writing each stroke in a character. There are traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese characters. Joy will show you some interesting characters that evolved from pictures carved on animal bones, shells, and bronze vessels thousands of years ago.
Have a piece of paper ready with 1 inch squares drawn. You will learn how to write 10 numbers and 15 simple characters.
Unlike sounding an English word by the alphabets in a word, one has no idea how to say a Chinese word by looking at it. Pinyin is a Romanized system that aids Chinese children and westerners in pronouncing a word.
In addition to sounding a character, you need to learn the proper tone of the sound. Like music, there are 4 tones to each sound: 1 flat, 2 up, 3 down and up, 4 down. You will practice the 4 tones with Joy and learn to say the numbers and a few commonly used phrases in Chinese.
