Sentence structure in Chinese Mandarin is slightly different from ours in English. If you use our grammar to speak Chinese I am sure you will be understood, but why sound strange when you don't have to? Essentially the Chinese tend to put the "time" factor at the beginning of the sentence. They also like to put the people at the beginning. The easiest way to explain this is through example.

I am going to school tomorrow with my dad.

Or we might also say

I am going to school with my dad tomorrow

The sentence above has a time element "tomorrow" and two people "I" and "my dad". See below how a Chinese person would say the above sentence:

Tomorrow I with my dad am going to school.

So you can see above the first word is "tomorrow". This is very common in Chinese. Before speaking, think about what you are going to say and if what you want to say includes a time element like "tomorrow" "yesterday" "next year" or even "at 12 o'clock" make sure you say that first. Then think about the people "I" "you" "he" "she" etc and make sure those are towards the beginning of the sentence. Everything else can fall into place after that. If you follow those 2 basic rules you've done most of the work in saying something grammatically correct in Chinese.

Now if you want to ask questions in Chinese it could be easier. Using English again as an example:

She is beautiful

Is She beautiful?

Notice in English we just reverse the order of the pronoun and the verb. Not too difficult really, but Chinese is even easier. They just make a statement and say "ma" at the end. Kind of like a verbalised question mark, or at least that's how I like to think of it. So this Chinese would be:

She is beautiful "ma"?

Or another alternative way to ask the same question in Chinese would be:

She is beautiful not beautiful?

This is also a common way to ask questions in Chinese. However when using actual questions words like who, what, where, when, why or how we don't need to use "ma" because the use of a question word makes it obvious that we are asking a question.

Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin is the official language in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore. The Mandarin dialect is used in most Chinese schools, colleges, and universities, and in most TV programs, movies, and radio stations throughout the country. Mandarin is one of the five official languages of the UN.

Chinese (Mandarin), Conversational

• Sixteen 30-minute lessons of spoken Mandarin Chinese language instruction. These sixteen lessons are the same as the first sixteen lesson of Pimsleur's 30-Unit Comprehensive Program.
• Each lesson includes an introductory conversation, and new vocabulary and structures and includes practice for vocabulary introduced in previous lessons.
• Essential grammar and vocabulary. Topics include: greetings, numbers, meals, shopping, telling time, scheduling activities, and asking and giving directions.
• No mindless repetition! Converse with native speakers in natural (and useful!) conversations.
• Easy, fast, fun and effective language acquisition.
• Completely Audio - anytime, anywhere. No computer necessary! Unlike expensive software programs which tie learners to a computer, Pimsleur courses are available in CD or mp3 format to meet your needs.
• Receive an instant credit of $150 to trade up from the Conversational to the full Level 1 Comprehensive.

Pimsleur® equals success. Just one 30-minute lesson a day gets you speaking and understanding like no other program.

Review"Pimsleur programs provide plenty of positive reinforcement that will keep learners on track, and we found that Pimsleur gave us more proficiency and confidence in speaking the new language than any of the other language programs we reviewed." -- AudioFile Magazine

"EXTREMELY ACCESSIBLE...each section within the lessons is short enough to hold our attention, and there is enough repetition to teach even those who consider themselves slow learners...Pimsleur [programs] are extremely thorough and easy to use -- quite lively!" -- Boston Herald

"Learn French while commuting, German while jogging, Spanish (or Russian, Italian, and Japanese) while cooking all with NO WRITTEN MATERIALS!" -- New York Daily News

"Designed for the ear and not the eye...the lessons provide PERFECT 30-minute bites of work." -- St Louis Post-Dispatch

"Learn to habla español or parlez français before your next trip aboard. The interactive LESSONS CHALLENGE STUDENTS to use new words in conversation instead of memorize them." -- American Way (American Airlines inflight magazine)

"I tried other language programs with little success...This is the best by far!" -- Pamela A. Mitchell, Pilot, International Society of Women Airline Pilots

About the AuthorDr. Paul Pimsleur devoted his life to language teaching and testing and was one of the world’s leading experts in applied linguistics. After years of experience and research, Dr. Pimsleur developed The Pimsleur Method based on two key principles:  the Principle of Anticipation and a scientific principle of memory training that he called “Graduated Interval Recall.”  This Method has been applied to the many levels and languages of the Pimsleur Programs.

Mandarin Chinese Picture

Mandarin Chinese Image

Mandarin Chinese Pic

Mandarin Chinese Picture

Most helpful customer reviews

99 of 99 people found the following review helpful.
A great starter
By Colin McLarty
Obviously the course you chose should depend on what you want as well as how you learn. This Pimsleur course offers conversational Mandarin, not reading or writing. In fact that is what I want right now. It proceeds almost entirely by immersion with very little discussion of grammar or pronunciation. That is not perfect for me, though it might be for you. I will come back to it. This Pimsleur course is entirely audio and so is very well suited to learning as you drive or walk or whatever.

40 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
Good starter
By Daniel Scallon
Pimsleur is good for getting your feet wet but it's also lacking in that it only teaches you a few conversation topics. It stresses pronounciation of words and making your tones match the speakers on the disc, but tells you nothing about the four tones of Chinese (found that out the hard way). It also does not go much into sentence construction, only forming a pre-meditated sentence.
I give it 4 stars because as a beginner with no prior experience in Mandarin, it let me get a grasp of what I would be studying in more in-depth lessons. So if you know absolutely --nothing-- about Mandarin then I recommend Pimsleur.
P.S. Don't get the four disc version. The eight disc-er has the first four and nothing's different.

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Too Little Vocabulary/I Prefer Behind the Wheel Chinese
By Shannon
The problem with the Pimsleur approach is that they teach far too little vocabulary. You go on and on learning just a few words, and worse. You have to tolerate the 'gradual intervail recall system' which means you have to listen to entire half hour to follow their rigid program and if you don't, your memory technique is wasted.
This means that if you have, say, ten minutes in which to commute to work, you will listen to the same ten minutes teaching the same ten words over and over.
Your other alternative is to keep your finger glued to the fast forward button. There are no
'multiple track' opitons.
I greatly prefer the Behind the Wheel Chinese/Mandarin course.
The amount of vocabulary taught here far exceeds that of Pimsleur. Furthermore,
each CD has a sentence building section (8 CDs in all) that teach you basic sentence formation to accompany the vocabulary. There are two native Mandarin speakers on the CDs.
Even better, Behind the Wheel Chinese has multiple tracks which makes sailing through a review a piece of cake.
I gave Pimsleur four stars just because I'm sure it could work for some people.
I have tried other Pimsleur and Behind the Wheel courses and I always reach the same conclusion.
No contest in any language.
Behind the Wheel Chinese is way ahead in all categories.

See all 36 customer reviews...

Mandarin
官話/官话 Guānhuà
Guānhuà (Mandarin) written in Chinese characters
Spoken in	Most of northern and southwestern China (see also Standard Chinese)
Native speakers	845 million[1] Overall: 1,365,053,177[2]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Mandarin
Dialects	Northeastern Beijing Ji-Lu Jiao-Liao Lower Yangtze Central Plains Lan-Yin Southwestern Jin (disputed)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cmn
Linguasphere	79-AAA-b
Mandarin area, with disputed Jin group in light green
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

In Chinese linguistics, Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話; pinyin: Guānhuà; literally "speech of officials") refers to a group of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. Because most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is also referred to as the "northern dialect(s)" (simplified Chinese: 北方话; traditional Chinese: 北方 話; pinyin: Běifānghuà). A northeastern-dialect speaker and a southwestern-dialect speaker can hardly communicate except through the standard language, mainly because of the differences in tone. Nonetheless, the variation within Mandarin does not compare with the much greater variation found within several other varieties of Chinese, and this is thought to be due to a relatively recent spread of Mandarin across China, combined with a greater ease of travel and communication compared to the more mountainous south of China.

When the Mandarin group is taken as one language, as is often done in academic literature, it has more native speakers (nearly a billion) than does any other language. For most of Chinese history, the capital has been within the Mandarin area, making these dialects very influential. Mandarin dialects, particularly the Beijing dialect, form the basis of Standard Chinese, which is also known as "Mandarin".