word-order

Learn how to count. Luckily, the Mandarin numerical system is fairly straightforward & logical, & once they have learned the first ten numbers they will be able to count to 99. It is said that it is only necessary to learn 2,111 characters to be able to understand 95% of all newspaper articles & books. An average educated person masters about 3,511 to 5,111 characters & can function properly in daily life & work.

Below they will find the numbers one to ten, written in simplified Chinese characters, followed by the Hanyu pinyin translation & the correct pronunciation. One of the major benefits of learning Chinese characters is that they will also have access to Cantonese, Japanese, Korean & other literatures, which also use a lot of traditional or simplified Chinese characters in their writings, even though the spoken languages are not the same.

Make sure to practice saying each number using the correct tone.
Once they have mastered numbers one to ten, they can continue counting in double digits by saying the number in the tens' position, then the word shi, followed by the number in the one's position. For example: There are a lot of Chinese workbooks they can buy which will guide they in the correct formation of characters. These are usually intended for schoolchildren, but are useful to anyone attempting to learn Chinese characters.

However, despite the differences, Chinese does use the same word order as English mostly, i.e. subject - verb - object, making it easier to translate word for word. For example, the English phrase "he likes cats" is translated directly as "tā (he) xǐ huan (likes) māo (cats). Learn how to use Pinyin. Pinyin is a system used for writing Chinese Mandarin using the Roman alphabet. Hanyu pinyin is the most common form of such Romanization, & is used in a lot of textbooks & teaching materials.

While the total number of characters is overwhelming, a lot of of them have overlapping meanings or are variants of other characters. For practical purpose, one only needs to have a small repertoire to be able to read & write adequately.