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The Chinese Language
Chinese can't be considered a single language, as there are at least six forms of Chinese, which are Mandarin, Yue, Pu-Xian, Min Dong, Min Nan and Hakka Chinese. These varieties are the language of around 1.2 billion people (one fifth of world population), which make Chinese the language with most native speakers.Among the numerous dialects, standard Mandarin has been recognised as the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan and at the same time it has became one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
Dialects
All Chinese speakers share the same written code, but as for oral communication there is a great variety of forms, which are also called dialects, that can be radically different one with the other.The official language of People's Republic of China and Taiwan is Mandarin, which is the standard form of Chinese and for this reason it is used in education. In Taiwan, the language of education is Guoyu while in Singapore and Malaysia it is Huayu.
In many countries, the language of tv is taken as an example of standard and correct language...in many countries but not in every, as in China the media do not represent the purest form of language. For instance, anchorpersons in Beijing, in an effort to imitate standard dialect, force they tone resulting unnatural. Things are a little better in Taiwan, as there those who work in tv speak with a more natural tone..Unfortunately, it is possible to hear them using antique forms together with consonants typical of Taiwan, which are quite far from correct Chinese. For all these reasons, it has been said that the only people who are able to speak Standard Chinese are professors of important Univeristies.
Grammar
Understanding the script is the first difficulty you have to face if you decide to study Chinese. Chinese script is composed by isolated syllables and one syllable stands for a word. This might seem an advantage, but in reality it can create problems to learners. Indeed, there are very few syllables, which results in many words sounding the same and consequentely for a non-native speaker it can be a problem distinguishing one word from the other. But Chinese script is not a problem for everyone...for those who have Chinese as their mother-toungue, the script represents an universal mean of communication, as there is a single script for all the different spoken varieties. The fact that every dialect is unified under the same script allows communication also between people whose dialects are unintelligible.But the alphabet is only the starting point, because the grammar, which is totally different from that of Romance languages, might deserve unexpected surprises. Conjugation and inflection are the easiest part, as there is only one grammatical form and verb decline in a simple way. On the contrary, syntax has some harder rules; for instance, the "topic-prominent" structure, which determines the topic to be at the beginning of the sentence and allows curious constructions which correspond to "Swimming I am the best" or "Today climb mountains, tomorrow camp outdoors".
Another bizarre rule is the "serial-verb" construction, which uses two connected-verbs, as in "this movie I look-no-understand", which expresses "I can't understand this movie (even though I watched it.)".
Idioms
The following is a list of Chinese idioms which will be useful to prove you no more are a learner and at the same time to show all of your knowledge and preparation.During your stay in China, be careful never to become a "Hu Ja Hu Wei", which describes those who are weak themselves but hide behind a powerful source to harm others. The equivalent English expression could be "Fake fox, Fearsome tiger"
The following two should be your Bible at work. One is "Chen Feng Po Lon", which literally means "Ride the wind and Break the waves" and that can be translated with "Great Rewards usually require a great degree of risk". The second is "Bu Ru Hu Xue, Yan De Hu Ze" (literally: How can (we) retrieve the baby tiger without going into the tiger's nest?) and is used to describe an ambitious hard-worker...And the last is what is strongly recommended if you want to become rich and famous: it sounds like "Ku Kou Pou Shin" (literaly "Bitter Mouth, Old lady's heart") and is used to describe those who tries VERY hard to persuade others.