Firstly, it’s very important to learn the Chinese spelling. There are twenty-three initials (e.g. a, o, e, I, u) and twenty-five finals (e.g. b, p, m, f), they’re similar to the English characters but most of them have different pronunciations. However, some of them are similar to English, for example, f (Chinese) pronounces “first”, n (Chinese) pronounces “name”.
Secondly, it’s also very important to learn Chinese tones. There are four tones in Chinese “－”, “∕”, “∨” and “﹨”, which don’t exist in English. As a result, in the beginning some foreigner students always use the first tone when they speak Chinese.
Thirdly, it’s essential for beginners to learn Chinese grammar which is very different from that of English. For example, “I marry you”, some students may translate it to “我结婚你”, which is improper because “结婚” is an intransitive verb in Chinese but “marry” is a transitive verb in English.
Last but not least, we need to know the culture differences between Chinese and English, contrastive analysis is very helpful. In China, there are many idioms, proverbs and dialects, you can understand some sentences and articles better if you know their meaning. For instance, “I like to eat vinegar” is translated into “我爱吃醋”, but the Chinese people may feel ridiculous when hearing that, because “我爱吃醋” means very different in Chinese.
Moreover, we can use some special ways to remember, read and write Chinese characters. For example, “昌”, ”娼”, “猖” and “閶” pronounce “chang”; “羊”, “洋”, “徉” and “佯” pronounce “yang”; “月”, ”玥”, ”枂” and “刖” pronounce “yue”. There are also similar examples, through a portion of Chinese characters we can recognize many other similar words. Besides, “河”, “溪”, “江”, “湖” and “海” have relationship with water (水); “说”, “话”, “语” and “谈” are related to speaking (言); “虾”, “蝉”, “蝶” and “蛇” are related to worm (虫). There are also some overlapping Chinese characters such as “木”, “林”, “森”,“ 口”, “吕”, “品”,“日”, “昌”, “晶”,“ 人”, “从”, “众”, “火”, “炎”, “焱”.
Therefore, the Chinese language is not hard to learn, if we master some methods and continue to improve and practice every day.