To me, Mandarin is a complex and mysterious language. While there are over 56,000 Chinese characters, a well-educated person will know about 6000 to 8000. To read a newspaper you need to know 2000-3000 characters. Each character actually represents a spoken sound or a syllable and most words are two or more characters stuck together. Despite the introduction of 'simplified' characters, my attempt at writing this artistic script was frustrating. 'Fried rice' and 'stir-fried veggies' take forever to construct. The spoken language is apparently simple since there are no verb tenses, no plurals, and no articles, but just try to pronounce the vast array of tones. No one in China understood any of the Mandarin that I muttered.Here's one saying to practice - with all accents omitted:
"Mama qi ma, ma man, mama ma ma."
(Mother rides a horse. The horse is slow. Mother scolds the horse.)
Now you're cookin'.
