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FIRST MISSION!!

          Nice to meet you all, this is the first mission you have to pass if you want to be a permanent member of the Asian’s Mafia Learning Squad. This mission is about learning the secret code we use to communicate with each other in the gang. We have divided it in 3 different sections.

 

First section:

 

          Here, in the Chinese gang, we create words by connecting an initial (sound you pronounce first) with a final (so you pronounce after, it’s easy, isn’t it?). To represent these sounds we have two different codes: one called Pinyin, used by our agents in China, and another one called Zhuyin, used by the ones in Taiwan.

          There are some differences between them, let me explain you:

 

  • Pinyin: As you can see in the image above this kind of code uses the same letters as the Romanic alphabet, so you will just have to learn the different pronunciation some of them have. The main problem here is that some of you will mistake the different pronunciations between your own language and the Chinese one.

  • Zhuyin: this one will use a whole new alphabet based on the Chinese characters. The point of this is to be able to write the way every character is pronounced beside it, that way you won’t have to look away from the character to know how it is written or pronounced.

 

Once we get to this point, the first part of the mission we’ll be memorizing the code you’ve chosen. When you are done, please, go ahead to the second section.

 

Second section:

 

          I guess, some of you will already know that Chinese is a tonal language. For the ones who doesn’t, let me explain myself first: Chinese people sing-like talk when they speak (Don’t ask me why, I really think they just want to have a difficult language for foreigner students and one day someone said Hey! Why don’t we sing while talking? and everybody thought it was good idea, aren’t they weird?). This leads to the use of 4 tones to tell apart different words with the same syllable as we romanize it. Therefore, if we pronounce anything in the wrong tone they probably won’t be able to understand you, and that my friend, is not what we want.

          In the image above you have a graphic description of how every tone sounds like, but again, I’ll explain it for those who seem to be a bit muddle-headed:

 

  • The first one sounds like a train passing fast in front of you.

  • The second one feels like you are asking something every time you pronounce it. I mean, when you ask someone How old are you? the way you pronounce the last word is the same that we’ll use to pronounce this tone (HAVE IN MIND that you are not always asking things with this tone, it is just the way it is, don’t blame me).

  • The third one is literally going from the top to the bottom and going back to the top with your voice.

  • The fourth one is like spitting someone, cursing-like.

I also have to mention that they have something called the 5th tone and something that I call the tone in no tone, because it is exactly with it is.

 

Once you control the sound of the tones (more or less, don’t try to get used like it was easy, your ear and your tongue need a bit of time) go on to the last part of the mission.

 

Third section:

 

          This one is the more difficult segment of the mission all we have explained before had this one as an objective: Writing characters.

 

          The best technique to have a secret way to communicate is using these Chinese characters. At the beginning you’ll think that this is useless once we know pinyin or zhuyin, but the truth is that everyone who’ll talk to you inside of the mafia we’ll use them and the alphabets you learn in the first section of the mission are just the tools we gift you to learn them easier and to know how to properly pronounce.

 

Your job in the last section will be to learn the proper succession of strokes we use to write chinese characters, this way you’ll be able to write faster and your enemies won’t have time to catch you writing. A trick to memorize them is to think that you always start writing from the left side of the top and you always end of the right side on the bottom as it is explained on the image above.

 

           Good luck with your mission and welcome to the Chinese Gang of Asia’s Mafia Learning Squad.

Your Boss,

Don Aurelio.

Content from Adam Gault in Soundcloud.

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