Some interest has been expressed in Chinese (Mandarin), so I thought I'd try some basic teaching for y'all. This might be a bit awkward, since I haven't really taught Chinese before, but here goes.
First, a brief overview. Mandarin can probably be considered the preeminent member of the Sino-Tibetan family today, which consists of various Sinitic varieties (Cantonese, Min, Wu, Hakka, etc), Tibetan languages, and a couple Southeast Asian languages such as Burmese. Mandarin specifically is a Chinese language originating from Northeastern (Beijing) region of China, and has the distinction of being the official language in the PRC, ROC (Taiwan), and Singapore, with over 1,000,000,000 speakers.
Phonology
Mandarin phonology is most easily described as syllables consisting of initials, medials, and finals, as well as one of four obligatory contour tones associated with each syllable. It is romanized using a system called pinyin (漢語拼音/汉语拼音, hànyǔ pīnyīn), which will be used here. I'll introduce basic characters later.
Initials
Mandarin has a two-way distinction between aspirated and unaspirated plosives and affricates.
Labials /p pʰ m f/ <b p m f>
Alveolars /t tʰ n l/ <d t n l>
Velars /k kʰ x/ <g k h>
Alveopalatals /tɕ tɕʰ ɕ/ <j q x>
Retroflex /tʂ tʂʰ ʂ ʐ/ <zh(i) ch(i) sh(i) r(i)>
Alveolar Affricates /ts tsʰ s/ <z(i) c(i) s(i)>
Medials
The medials consist of three vowel/semivowel glides, which take on consonantal properties in the absence of an initial consonant. The first letter represents the pinyin spelling when the medial begins a syllable, while the second is used everywhere else.
/i, j/ <y-, -i->
/u, w/ <w-, -u->
/y, ɥ/ <yu-, -ü-/-u-*>
*The rounded front vowel is spelled <u> in pinyin when following <j q x>. So, /ly/ would be <lü>, but /tɕy/ would be <ju>.
Finals
Pure vowels: /a o ə e/ <a o e e> (Yes, /ə e/ are both <e>, but is predictable in that the /e/ pronunciation is always found following the medial /i/)
Diphthongs: /aɪ eɪ aʊ oʊ/ <ai ei ao ou>
Nasal final: /an ən aŋ əŋ/ <an en ang eng>
Rhotic: /əɹ (also realized as syllabic /ɹ/)/ <er>
There is technically another vowel /ɨ/ <i> which is only found after <zh ch sh r z c s>. This essentially makes the consonant syllabic, so /ts(ɨ)/ <zi>. The <i> is obligatory if there is no other final following the aforementioned initial consonants.
The following orthographic rules should be noted as well. These deal with reducing the number of vowels written after an initial consonant.
ie=i+e /e/
iu=i+ou
in=i+en
ing=i+eng
ui=u+ei
un=u+en
ong=u+eng
ue=ü+ê
un=ü+en
iong=ü+eng
Exercise 0a:
Now that you have a basic grasp on some basic pinyin (minus tones), try romanizing the following words.
真 'real' /tʂən/
夢 'dream' /məŋ/
龜 'turtle' /kueɪ/
六 'six' /lioʊ/
詞 'phrase' /tsʰɨ/
區 'neighborhood' /tɕʰy/
雲 'cloud' /yn/
Tones
On to the bane of the Chinese learning student's existence. Mandarin has four contour tones, one of which is applied to each syllable. This means that not only is there a relative pitch associated with each word, but the pitch also changes along the course of the word. All tones have a corresponding pinyin diacritic, and will be described in terms of a five level pitch notation.
Tone 1: high flat (55), macron /a˥/ <ā>
Tone 2: mid rising (35), acute accent /a˧˥/ <á>
Tone 3: low falling then rising (214), hacek /a˨˩˦/ <ǎ>
Tone 4: high falling (51), grave accent /a˥˩/ <à>
All tone diacritic markings are placed above the first vowel character in a syllable that is not a medial vowel. The diacritic mark is only placed above a medial vowel if it is the only vowel present in the syllable.
Although these diacritics are technically obligatory, they are frequently omitted for convenience or replaced by their corresponding tone number. So /xa˥/ <hā> is often written <ha1>.
It's difficult for me to teach you how to pronounce these through text, but I think this video provides a pretty good overview of things.
Exercise 0b:
Transcribe the following:
水 'water' /ʂueɪ˨˩˦/
佛 'Buddha' /fo˧˥/
電 'electricity' /tian˥˩/ [tiɛn˥˩]
窗戶 'window/tʂʰuaŋ˥xu˥˩/
Greetings and Such
I will be introducing some characters here, so if you would like to follow along it might be useful to install an IME capable of inputting Chinese characters. Another alternative is using the pinyin input on Google translate. Currently, most Chinese input methods use pinyin as the preferred method of input. Basically, enter the pinyin for a word/phrase/sentence, and the IME will try to predict the appropriate characters based on context. If you have the wrong character, you will be able to select from a list of homophonous characters (of which there potentially are many) before proceeding.
I grew up learning Traditional characters, so there is a bit of prejudice on my part against simplified characters. However, in these examples, I will provide both, Traditional first and Simplified second, for those who would like to learn the latter. This course is not necessarily intended to teach characters, since they would require quite a bit of practice and rote memorization on your own time.
Anyways, some greetings. (Trad/Simp/pinyin)
:roc: 你好 :zho: 你好 nǐhǎo
Hello, Good day
:roc: 早安 :zho: 早安 zǎo ān
Good morning
:roc: 午安 :zho: 午安 wǔ ān
Good day (actually midday, or noon)
:roc: 晚安 :zho: 晚安 wǎn ān
Good evening/night
:roc: 再見 :zho: 再见 zàijiàn
Goodbye