The purpose of the Module on Customs Surrounding Marriage, Birth and Death is to furnish you with the linguistic skills and cultural background information you need to take part in conversations about changing attitudes and practices with regard to courtship, marriage, birth, divorce, death and funerals in China, and to conduct yourself in a culturally appropriate manner when you come in contact with Chinese people at the time of one of these significant events in their lives.
Before starting the MBD module, you should have at least completed the arranging a Meeting Module. You may, of course, use this module at any later point in the course.
Specifics You Will Learn
When you have finished this module on
FSI Chinese course for Customs Surrounding Marriage, Birth and Death you should be able to:
1) Ask about the age when most people get married.
2)Ask about how a wedding is celebrated and what differences there are in marriage practices between the city and the country.
3) Ask about the current local customs regarding gifts for weddings, births, and funerals.
4) Ask about the frequency of divorce.
5) Talk about the functions and statuses of the people who play a role in arranging a present-day traditional marriage.
6) Ask questions about the bride, the groom, and the Ceremony in a modern-day wedding.
7) Ask about population control efforts, changes in population control policy, restrictions on young people having children, what factors are taken into consideration in family planning, and how old most couples are when they have children.
8) Congratulate a new mother. Ask about a new-born infant's health, appetite, and weight, and describe the baby In terms of traditional values.
9) Talk about the traditional beliefs and practices with regard to the mother's health before and after giving birth.
10) Present condolences to someone whose relative has died, comfort and express concern for that person.
11) Ask, after deciding if appropriate, about the circumstances of the death and the funeral.
12) Apologize for not being able to attend a funeral.
13) Ask what attire and behavior is appropriate when attending a funeral.
You can find the other volumes of the FSI optional modules here:
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FSI Chinese - Optional Module - Part 1
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FSI Chinese - Optional Module - Part 2
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FSI Chinese - Optional Module - Part 4
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FSI Chinese - Optional Module - Part 5
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FSI Chinese - Optional Module - Part 6
Chinese is a group of related but in many cases mutually unintelligible language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many other ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people (around 16% of the world's population) speak some form of Chinese as their first language.
The varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, but may be even more varied. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 960 million), followed by Wu (80 million), Yue (70 million) and Min (70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. All varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic.
Chinese Mandarin is spoken in: China
Chinese Mandarin is also called: Beifang Fangyan, Guanhua, Guoyu, Hanyu, Hoton, Huayu, Hui, Hui-Zu, Hytad, Kuoyu, Mandarin, Northern Chinese, Putonghua, Qotong, Standard Chinese, Xui
