4 Common Mistakes Everyone Makes When Learning Chinese

To err is human, and when learning a new language, erring is inevitable. And learning Chinese is no exception. Here are the most common errors made by Chinese learners in Chinese classes.

1. The tones

This is always deemed the most common mistake for new Chinese learners and has been quite troublesome for them. Even for intermediate to experts in the language, they still make a mistake in the tone. Many tones in the language are underestimated but you must realize that they matter a lot. You can even land into troubles with incorrect pronunciation if you mix up the vowels and consonants. But, if the tone is a little incorrect, it can turn people off. Hence, focus on the tone when learning Chinese from the beginning. It is essential to focus on the vowels and consonants to be able to adapt to the language tone by listening to the conversation to understand it deeply.

2. Adverbials

This is the most inevitable topic to focus on when it comes to the errors made while learning Chinese. Many learners tend to put the adverbials at the end of the sentence, instead of before the verb. Adverbials refer to the information about the verb and are classified into time, manner, and place. In Chinese, the very information should go before the verb. Hence, it is best to steer away from the temptation to put this end of the line as it will sound weird and may end up confusing people.

3. Topic comment structure

Chinese sentence structure is usually topic-prominent. In other words, you should put the most important topic in the starting of the sentence, even though it is making a grammatical role. It means that always put what the sentence is talking about, and then add the assisting information or the comment to that topic.

4. Too long sentences or information

Chinese is very efficient and always leaves another person to understand the sentence. Subjects are commonly taken out of the subject if it is inevitable enough in the context. Many new learners entail information that can or sometimes be left out in the sentence. Encompass only important parts of the sentence that are more elegant and sound more natural.

To conclude, learning Chinese is easy nonetheless, and doesn’t really matter if you make these common errors. That is why they are actually deemed as common mistakes in the first place. It is still fun to know that you might encounter this blunders in advance.