Is Mandarin a Funny or Difficult Language?

Chinese speak Mandarin. Mandarin consists of more than 50,000 characters. To read a newspaper you need to know 2000 characters, and an educated person is supposed to know atleast 4000 characters.

In ancient times one character represented one word. But these days two or more characters are combined to denote a word. Mandarin is an open-language as anyone can add a new character. For instance, brands can create new characters when none of the existing ones match the intended meaning. Often such inventions are excluded from official character sets.

Although Mandarin has numerous characters, the sounds are limited to four distinct tones. So, Mandarin language has a lot of Homonyms - distinguishable only by their tones. Mai can mean either 'buy' or 'sell' depending on the tone; Nar meant 'there' in the fourth tone and 'where' in the third. So the potential for confusion is infinite.

White Horse Temple - Buddhism from India To China

In A.D 64, Mingdi, a Chinese emperor had a dream of a flying deity over his palace. The dream disturbed the emperor and his trusted dream interpreters told him that it was Buddha flying over his palace.

Mingdi, immediately sent 18 people to India to explore Buddhism. When his ambassadors returned from India, they brought with them a forty-two-chapter-long sutra, two Buddhist monks, and an image of Gauthama Buddha on white horses.

Subsequently, in AD 68, Baimisi or the White Horse Temple was built in Henan's Louyang city. The two Indian monks Dharmaraksa and Kasyapa Matanga translated the Buddhist sutras into Chinese language.

The Baimisi, the first Buddhist temple in China, was one of the forerunners of Sino-Indian ties and Chindia. When the then Prime Minister Vajpayee visited Baimisi in 2003, he overstayed his 30 minute schedule and spent two hours in the temple.

- Smoke and Mirrors, An experience of China, by Pallavi Aiyar