KONG TEACH

Hello everyone.  It’s my great honor to teach you Chinese.

大家好。有机会教你中文是我莫大的荣幸。

 

My name is Stephen Kong, 孔令凯 (KONG, Lingkai), a Shanghainese, graduated from Shanghai International Studies University.  In China, my family name Kong is quite special.  You may not know the Chinese character 孔, chances are you may have heard of my great ancestor – Confucius, founder of Confucianism, who is seen by Chinese people as the Greatest Teacher.  So teaching is very special to me, I’ll try my best on it.

我叫孔令凯（Stephen），上海人，毕业于上海外国语大学。在中国，孔姓比较特别。你可能不知道孔这个字，但很有可能你听说过我的祖先孔子，儒教的奠基人，中国人视其为至圣先师。所以教学于我而言有特殊意义，我会尽我所能。

 

You may know that one fifth of the planet speaks Chinese, and "China craze" become a hot trend as a rising global fascination. As a disseminator of Chinese Mandarin, I warmly welcome you friends to study Chinese. Here, you study not only the language, but also Chinese culture.

你可能知道地球上有五分之一的人说汉语，“中国风”已成为全球的一个趋势。作为汉语的传播者，我诚邀你来学中文。这里，你不仅仅学习汉语，同时你也会学到中华文化。

 

Chinese is one of the great languages in the world.  The study of the Chinese language opens the way to different important fields such as Chinese politics, economy, history or archaeology.  But to study Chinese finally means to study a culture, a people.  At the heart of Chinese civilization is its rich heritage of novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and more recently, film.  They reflect the values, the struggles, the sensibility, the joys and the sorrows of this great people and often offer insights even into the most intimate feelings of people in the past or into high-level Beijing politics at the present that cannot be found anywhere else.  These works help you understand what is behind the language, what makes it powerful, and how it actually functions in Chinese society.  

中文是全世界最伟大的语言之一。学习中文将为你开辟全新领域，比如中国政治、经济、历史和考古。不过，学习中文最终意味着学习中国文化，认识理解中国人。中华文明的核心是自古传承的各类文学典籍。它们映射的是中华文明博大内涵。通过学习文化，才能深入理解中国人所表达的特有情感以及北京政府所传达的特有政治含义。因为文化才是藏在语言背后真正具有力量并统治中国社会的所在。

 

Fortunately, Chinese has a relatively uncomplicated grammar.  Unlike French, German or English, Chinese has no verb conjugation (no need to memorize verb tenses!) and no noun declension (e.g., gender and number distinctions).  For example, while someone learning English has to learn different verb forms like “see/saw/seen,” all you need to do in Chinese is just to remember one word: 看 (kan).  While in English you have to distinguish between “cat" and “cats,” in Chinese there is only one form: 猫 (mao). (Chinese conveys these distinctions of tense and number in other ways, of course.)

幸运的是，中文并没有复杂的语法；不像法语、德语和英语，中文没有动词词性变化（无需记忆动词时态），也没有名词词性。比如，学习英语就得记住动词的不同形式，但在中文里只需记住一个字就行了。学习英语还得区分单复数，中文里也没有（通过量词来 区分）。

 

You are entering a different culture, but the content of many of the modern key concepts is familiar.

你正在进入一个全新的文化，但当代世界所分享的许多核心概念还是相近的。

 

No matter what purpose you held, I will be grateful to start a cultural journey with you!

无论你抱有何种目的学习中文，我都将满怀荣幸地陪伴你开启这趟行程！

 

 

 

 

Stephen Kong