Description

Mandarin is the official language of the People’s Republic of China. It is the dialect
spoken in the capital Beijing. It is taught in all schools and is used for television and
broadcast. Almost the entire population understands Mandarin. The language taught in
Pre-Service Training (PST) is Mandarin.

Chinese is a language with a large number of words with the same pronunciation but a
different meaning; what distinguishes these ‘homophones’ is their ‘tonal’ quality – the
raising and lowering of pitch on certain syllables. Mandarin has four tones – high, rising,
falling-rising and falling, plus a fifth ‘neutral’ tone. To illustrate, look at the word ma
which has four different meanings according to tone: