I'm looking for input from guys who already have taken this route and can shed some light on the hurdles involved, the best approach for learning quickly and effectively and what to expect after 6-12 months or so of grinding. I believe I'm gifted for languages as I never had any problem learning them, know a few and generally have fun while progressing too, however Chinese looks like a helluva more work compared to the languages (french and spanish) I know and I hope I'm not overestimating my abilities as I'll have little time for this and will have to squeeze it in my uni schedule.
Learning Chinese
I have no experience with Chinese, but I have been extensively learning Russian for about a year now after coming from a native English/college Spanish background.
Russian is like Chinese in that there is absolutely ZERO connection to English except for some similar words (of which there are probably virtually none in Chinese) and that it uses a different script (and Chinese seems a million times more extensive than Russian).
After learning on my own and faring decently as I also have a gift for learning languages, I decided to get a tutor. The tutor was the best thing I ever did for learning Russian. She gave me opportunity to converse with someone, as well as learn proper pronunciation and speech patterns, and colloquial expressions which are used much more frequently than a lot of "book" expressions. I am now able to speak relatively well, and have been talking to her friends/family via Skype in Russian.
I suggest doing some groundwork on your own to get a feel for the language, and then getting a tutor to help you reach a level where if you wanted to learn on your own, you could do it confidently.
Russian is like Chinese in that there is absolutely ZERO connection to English except for some similar words (of which there are probably virtually none in Chinese) and that it uses a different script (and Chinese seems a million times more extensive than Russian).
After learning on my own and faring decently as I also have a gift for learning languages, I decided to get a tutor. The tutor was the best thing I ever did for learning Russian. She gave me opportunity to converse with someone, as well as learn proper pronunciation and speech patterns, and colloquial expressions which are used much more frequently than a lot of "book" expressions. I am now able to speak relatively well, and have been talking to her friends/family via Skype in Russian.
I suggest doing some groundwork on your own to get a feel for the language, and then getting a tutor to help you reach a level where if you wanted to learn on your own, you could do it confidently.
The toughest part about learning Mandarin is the writing. In order to even be able to read a newspaper, you gotta know at least 2000 characters. Really, the only way to get thru that is to immerse yourself for years with Chinese culture or else I'd forget. Plus the whole Simplified (Mainland, Singapore) vs Traditional (HK, Macau, Taiwan). It wasn't worth it for me even trying to learn how to write for me so I just stick with spoken Mandarin & Pinyin and am OK with that.
Dealing with the tones, it took a month for me to get used to the Mandarin tones (This is coming from a guy that speaks Vietnamese as a second language and it has 6 tones). I have to say, you should get a tutor to get used to the tones since tones is a very foreign concept to English speakers.
The grammer structure was EASY to learn for me. Yes, it's a complete 180 from English but after several months of studying it, it's gonna feel like you can see the matrix. No conjugation bullshit and sentence functions can be changed by particles. I liked that and I was able to go ahead and study independently after 2 months of being tutored. It's been a year for me learning Mandarin and I'm able to make fun conversation and crack jokes here and there. (My native language is English, Business Level Vietnamese)
There's a lot of hype surrounding Pimsleur but I've never used it before. Worth looking into and I'm thinking about trying it out.
http://www.pimsleur.com/Learn-Mandarin-Chinese
Dealing with the tones, it took a month for me to get used to the Mandarin tones (This is coming from a guy that speaks Vietnamese as a second language and it has 6 tones). I have to say, you should get a tutor to get used to the tones since tones is a very foreign concept to English speakers.
The grammer structure was EASY to learn for me. Yes, it's a complete 180 from English but after several months of studying it, it's gonna feel like you can see the matrix. No conjugation bullshit and sentence functions can be changed by particles. I liked that and I was able to go ahead and study independently after 2 months of being tutored. It's been a year for me learning Mandarin and I'm able to make fun conversation and crack jokes here and there. (My native language is English, Business Level Vietnamese)
There's a lot of hype surrounding Pimsleur but I've never used it before. Worth looking into and I'm thinking about trying it out.
http://www.pimsleur.com/Learn-Mandarin-Chinese
There is a torrent called 'Ultimate Chinese Learning Pack.' It is twenty gigs and more than you'll ever need in terms of readers, children's books etc.
Go to tower of babelfish (I think.) It is a blog, the guy who writes it is an opera singer who has learned a load of languages. The method is simple:
1) Learn International Phonetic Pronunciation.
2) Get a core vocab down.
3) Start reading/thinking/communicating in the language.
4) Go to lang-8 and start writing it.
I've found the combination of above plus an audio course has allowed me to move quite quickly. I'm only just starting chinese, but I've done this with a couple of other languages beforehand and I'm reasonable.
The only other thing I'd recommend is getting a chinese friend who can talk to you about it. I have a couple of friends who are post-grads from china and they love helping out anyone who wants to learn mandarin. You can substitue out most other elements of learning above if you have a few good hours a week training.
EDIT: About pimsleur. It is reasonably good; the way it is structured (remember for 1 second, then 2, then 5, then 30, then a minute and so on) is really good for retaining stuff. The problem with pimsleur is that you don't actually cover that much material/learn any real vocab ovver the 30-90 days worth of lessons. You can move a lot quicker than that. Get a solid base in memory techniques and you can get tens if not hundreds of words of vocab in far shorter a time. Pimsleur also doesn't help with reading or writing in any capacity, and with a new alphabet getting that down is a big part of early success; because you can't look things up in a dictionary or thesaurus until you have a basic grasp of how the characters work, thus making vocab expansion a lot more difficult.
Go to tower of babelfish (I think.) It is a blog, the guy who writes it is an opera singer who has learned a load of languages. The method is simple:
1) Learn International Phonetic Pronunciation.
2) Get a core vocab down.
3) Start reading/thinking/communicating in the language.
4) Go to lang-8 and start writing it.
I've found the combination of above plus an audio course has allowed me to move quite quickly. I'm only just starting chinese, but I've done this with a couple of other languages beforehand and I'm reasonable.
The only other thing I'd recommend is getting a chinese friend who can talk to you about it. I have a couple of friends who are post-grads from china and they love helping out anyone who wants to learn mandarin. You can substitue out most other elements of learning above if you have a few good hours a week training.
EDIT: About pimsleur. It is reasonably good; the way it is structured (remember for 1 second, then 2, then 5, then 30, then a minute and so on) is really good for retaining stuff. The problem with pimsleur is that you don't actually cover that much material/learn any real vocab ovver the 30-90 days worth of lessons. You can move a lot quicker than that. Get a solid base in memory techniques and you can get tens if not hundreds of words of vocab in far shorter a time. Pimsleur also doesn't help with reading or writing in any capacity, and with a new alphabet getting that down is a big part of early success; because you can't look things up in a dictionary or thesaurus until you have a basic grasp of how the characters work, thus making vocab expansion a lot more difficult.
Been learning aprox. 1 year and 1 month and I am slightly fluid and can hold conversations, speak fast and listen to fast speaking. I can also write everything I know how to say.
Here's my advice:
- Every word you learn how to say, write it 20 times until you can write it from muscle memory. Note that I say word and not character, because words can have more than 1 character.
- Practice tones and understand them. This might be hard if you are studying by yourself (like I did for my first 8 months), if you can't nail any tone nobody is going to understand you. There are a few tone combinations that mistakes are not fatal and can still be understood, you will notice them as you learn more.
- Try to learn at least 3 new words every day, following the 1st advice I gave you.
- I started with this website when I had ZERO knowledge of Chinese: http://www.rocketlanguages.com/chinese/premium/ I bought the 1st package, it was totally worth it.
- Don't bother with words that are not commonly used, its only going to add more unnecessary things to your memory. Worry about whats important now.
- My native language is Spanish, but when studying Chinese I feel its best to choose English for translations and grammatical comparisons best. This is because I feel using English makes you understand Chinese easier, because it helps you see better whats similar about it and whats not. This might be different for you.
Here's my advice:
- Every word you learn how to say, write it 20 times until you can write it from muscle memory. Note that I say word and not character, because words can have more than 1 character.
- Practice tones and understand them. This might be hard if you are studying by yourself (like I did for my first 8 months), if you can't nail any tone nobody is going to understand you. There are a few tone combinations that mistakes are not fatal and can still be understood, you will notice them as you learn more.
- Try to learn at least 3 new words every day, following the 1st advice I gave you.
- I started with this website when I had ZERO knowledge of Chinese: http://www.rocketlanguages.com/chinese/premium/ I bought the 1st package, it was totally worth it.
- Don't bother with words that are not commonly used, its only going to add more unnecessary things to your memory. Worry about whats important now.
- My native language is Spanish, but when studying Chinese I feel its best to choose English for translations and grammatical comparisons best. This is because I feel using English makes you understand Chinese easier, because it helps you see better whats similar about it and whats not. This might be different for you.
I don't speak Chinese and am not learning it. I'm learning Korean. However, I've investigated materials and methods for learning Chinese for after I'm satisfied with my Korean.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that your method does not matter as much as your motivation. By motivation I actually mean determination, but many people hold a view of determination in their minds which equates it with torture. Remember your motivation and be consistent, and it won't matter that much what method you choose unless it is totally retarded. My grandma started English in her early 20's and speaks it very well with little accent (she's old now but her ability hasn't changed at all in the last few decades) and she did it mainly from watching TV all day (immersion).
Along with consistency is time applied. Watching hours of soaps on tv every day meant a lot of exposure to English for my grandma, no matter how unconcentrated that exposure was. You can immerse yourself in any country, and you can begin immersion right now, so it's all up to you. Wipe your mp3 player and put on ChinesePod podcasts, Chinese songs, etc, as an example. Count your reps at the gym in Chinese. Host Chinese and Taiwanese Couchsurfers. Be Chinese.
As far as specifics, I recommend James Heisigs book Remembering the Hanzi. I haven't used that particular book, but I used his other ones for some Japanese and they allowed me to memorize characters easily. Combine it with the use of spaced repetition software like Anki. As others mentioned, Pimsleur is good both because of the spaced repetition and because you should expose yourself to as much of the sounds of a language as possible early on. As someone mentioned about word frequency, you might benefit from using a word frequency list, but try to learn the words integrated into native-created sentences rather than isolated on their own.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that your method does not matter as much as your motivation. By motivation I actually mean determination, but many people hold a view of determination in their minds which equates it with torture. Remember your motivation and be consistent, and it won't matter that much what method you choose unless it is totally retarded. My grandma started English in her early 20's and speaks it very well with little accent (she's old now but her ability hasn't changed at all in the last few decades) and she did it mainly from watching TV all day (immersion).
Along with consistency is time applied. Watching hours of soaps on tv every day meant a lot of exposure to English for my grandma, no matter how unconcentrated that exposure was. You can immerse yourself in any country, and you can begin immersion right now, so it's all up to you. Wipe your mp3 player and put on ChinesePod podcasts, Chinese songs, etc, as an example. Count your reps at the gym in Chinese. Host Chinese and Taiwanese Couchsurfers. Be Chinese.
As far as specifics, I recommend James Heisigs book Remembering the Hanzi. I haven't used that particular book, but I used his other ones for some Japanese and they allowed me to memorize characters easily. Combine it with the use of spaced repetition software like Anki. As others mentioned, Pimsleur is good both because of the spaced repetition and because you should expose yourself to as much of the sounds of a language as possible early on. As someone mentioned about word frequency, you might benefit from using a word frequency list, but try to learn the words integrated into native-created sentences rather than isolated on their own.
If you're a relatively non serious learner, forget the reading and writing part.
I learned from a site called chineselearnonline.com. The key that makes it work is that the repeat the words in future lessons, so that it reduces your need for memorization/study. You can also repeat the words and pronunciation endlessly by just pressing the button.
Don't over worry about the tones. Learn the tones right and start studying. Over time, you'll hear, notice and understand the difference.
Even English has tones and accents. For example, in the word "burger", the stress is on the first syllable. It would sound weird if you stressed the second syllable and yes some retards at Burger King may not even understand you.
It took me about 7 weeks of very intense study and about 5 weeks into a trip in Mainland China before i was speaking decently, but i'm a fast learner. My trip was 2 months and the following year, i spent 2 weeks in Taiwan and about 6 days in Singapore.
I still can't read and write, although i know a few hundred characters.
I learned from a site called chineselearnonline.com. The key that makes it work is that the repeat the words in future lessons, so that it reduces your need for memorization/study. You can also repeat the words and pronunciation endlessly by just pressing the button.
Don't over worry about the tones. Learn the tones right and start studying. Over time, you'll hear, notice and understand the difference.
Even English has tones and accents. For example, in the word "burger", the stress is on the first syllable. It would sound weird if you stressed the second syllable and yes some retards at Burger King may not even understand you.
It took me about 7 weeks of very intense study and about 5 weeks into a trip in Mainland China before i was speaking decently, but i'm a fast learner. My trip was 2 months and the following year, i spent 2 weeks in Taiwan and about 6 days in Singapore.
I still can't read and write, although i know a few hundred characters.
Thanks a lot guys the amount of positive information is overwhelmingly good. As soon as I'll get on my laptop I'll check out Kitsune's and FretDancer's sites as they seem the best suited for me. I hope I'll be joining the ranks of non native chinese speakers too
Your end goal will affect your approach: passing, fluency, or mastery?
the highest I can attain the better, obviously, however acquiring fluency seems like a realistic goal right now and it is what I'm aiming for
As far as your goals, Benny over at fluentin3months.com tried to learn chinese to fluency in 3 months. I'd say he did reasonably well. If you check out his blogs he has some videos and thoughts on his experience.
Doable in a year if you bust your ass (3+ hours a day of studying, more of living in China). If you have any questions, feel free to send me a PM
Split up the speaking and the writing. I had to take Mandarin as a second language since I was young until my mid teens. As I was immersed in a predominantly Chinese culture, speaking has never been a problem.
On the other hand, I am fairly rusty since it has been years that I have had to write a Chinese essay. It would be easier for you to learn to speak it then learn how to write it. There are no past, future or present tenses in Mandarin, so the characters ultimately boils down to memorization.
On the other hand, I am fairly rusty since it has been years that I have had to write a Chinese essay. It would be easier for you to learn to speak it then learn how to write it. There are no past, future or present tenses in Mandarin, so the characters ultimately boils down to memorization.
lived in china 3 years... can't string a sentence together to save my life.
Not necessary to meet a girl. They all speak english here anyway... More people in China speak English than there are people in Canada and the US combined.
Not necessary to meet a girl. They all speak english here anyway... More people in China speak English than there are people in Canada and the US combined.
Quote: (09-01-2012 10:59 AM)BadWolf Wrote:
lived in china 3 years... can't string a sentence together to save my life.
Not necessary to meet a girl. They all speak english here anyway... More people in China speak English than there are people in Canada and the US combined.
I was somewhat buzzed last night when I replied. But if you speak the language, it really helps to bridge the "us or them" gap. That is particularly useful, if your goal is for networking. That being said, if you are trying to game Chinese girls, stick to using English. It's a huge DHV. Use Mandarin intermittently as the concept of foreigners speaking Mandarin is still a huge novelty in Asia.
Chinese girls are nuts for foreign guys anyway. All you have to do is show up.
Any RVF Mandarin speakers who want to practice via Skype? Both spoken and written.
speaking it definitely helps, on the initial pick up, I play dumb like I don't speak it, it makes it easier because then it's no big deal if all you do is dance, plus its a great starter conversation to have her draw characters for you while you say "oooohhh." But I can't imagine regularly banging a girl who I can't understand.
Quote: (09-01-2012 10:59 AM)BadWolf Wrote:
lived in china 3 years... can't string a sentence together to save my life.
Not necessary to meet a girl. They all speak english here anyway... More people in China speak English than there are people in Canada and the US combined.
that's sort of misleading. they qualify english speaker by passing the english tests in high school. The english tests which are put together by chinese people . . .
Quote: (08-29-2012 02:32 PM)FretDancer Wrote:
- Every word you learn how to say, write it 20 times until you can write it from muscle memory. Note that I say word and not character, because words can have more than 1 character.
I've been doing something similar up until now with just tracking characters that I don't know from my readings, and then writing them 5-10 times depending on complexity, but I think I'll adopt your method, thanks.
My character acquisition has hit a plateau, plus the whole words give more context which of course makes it a better bet for it to stick in my mind.
I study Chinese for real and live in a smaller city where no one speaks English.
This is real tips:
- Writing characters is not worth the trouble. It takes insane amount of work to learn how to WRITE them. In the modern day there is no need to write anything because the mobile/computer softwares change pinyin into chinese characters automatically. However, learning how to read is a very useful skill but it is significantly easier to learn how to read than write. Get WeChat software and only type Chinese.
- Study 25%, speak with locals 75%. Get a Chinese girlfriend who doesn't speak English. This is insanely fast way to learn Chinese.
- Studying is almost worthless without the real world experience because no matter how good you are, the knowledge doesn't transfer well to real life.
I have been in China exact one month so far and Chinese people are continuously impressed how good I have become in such a little time. I had studied for one course before arriving in China but when I arrived here, I noticed that I didn't know anything.
Real life examples:
- Went to clubbing, found a chinese girl, got her WeChat(similar to whatsapp) and then chatted with her through subcommunication and wechat. Been chatting with her ever since in nothing but Chinese.
- Met group of girls outside the club and spent over one 1 hour just talking Chinese with them(they were only capable of speaking single English words). Got WeChat from 4 of them.
- Got a train the next day, spent the way talking with a Chinese woman and her 12 year old son. In Chinese.
If you really want to learn, then stop messing around. Nobody wants to learn a language - not really - they just say they do. Nobody takes the sufficient action. Here are tons of students learning Chinese but everyone is just messing around. I have met people who have studied Chinese for 3+ years or have lived here for 3-9 years and can't speak Chinese so well. What the fuck is this shit?
You can become pretty good in 6 months, great in 12 months and insanely good in 1+ years.
It takes just super focus, NOT THAT MUCH EFFORT. Why? Studying is STRENUOUS, speaking with chinese is not. Yet, speaking with the locals is the fastest way for improvement. It just takes guts... balls... do you have them?
This is real tips:
- Writing characters is not worth the trouble. It takes insane amount of work to learn how to WRITE them. In the modern day there is no need to write anything because the mobile/computer softwares change pinyin into chinese characters automatically. However, learning how to read is a very useful skill but it is significantly easier to learn how to read than write. Get WeChat software and only type Chinese.
- Study 25%, speak with locals 75%. Get a Chinese girlfriend who doesn't speak English. This is insanely fast way to learn Chinese.
- Studying is almost worthless without the real world experience because no matter how good you are, the knowledge doesn't transfer well to real life.
I have been in China exact one month so far and Chinese people are continuously impressed how good I have become in such a little time. I had studied for one course before arriving in China but when I arrived here, I noticed that I didn't know anything.
Real life examples:
- Went to clubbing, found a chinese girl, got her WeChat(similar to whatsapp) and then chatted with her through subcommunication and wechat. Been chatting with her ever since in nothing but Chinese.
- Met group of girls outside the club and spent over one 1 hour just talking Chinese with them(they were only capable of speaking single English words). Got WeChat from 4 of them.
- Got a train the next day, spent the way talking with a Chinese woman and her 12 year old son. In Chinese.
If you really want to learn, then stop messing around. Nobody wants to learn a language - not really - they just say they do. Nobody takes the sufficient action. Here are tons of students learning Chinese but everyone is just messing around. I have met people who have studied Chinese for 3+ years or have lived here for 3-9 years and can't speak Chinese so well. What the fuck is this shit?
You can become pretty good in 6 months, great in 12 months and insanely good in 1+ years.
It takes just super focus, NOT THAT MUCH EFFORT. Why? Studying is STRENUOUS, speaking with chinese is not. Yet, speaking with the locals is the fastest way for improvement. It just takes guts... balls... do you have them?
I'm starting to learn Mandarin again. I'm not exactly fluent but I can speak Mandarin on a conversational level. Mandarin is sort of like a third language for me since I've learned it when I was about kindergarten age but stopped going for Chinese lessons by the time I was in middle school. People do notice that I have an eastern Chinese accent, which can get thicker whenever I feel nervous or flustered. I can write Chinese with no problems but reading is an issue because there's a lot about the grammar and vocabulary that I'm unfamiliar with.
I think a sure way to learn it is through constant immersion and using the language frequently. Maybe watch nothing but Chinese dramas all day since I can understand the subtitles to an extent.
I think a sure way to learn it is through constant immersion and using the language frequently. Maybe watch nothing but Chinese dramas all day since I can understand the subtitles to an extent.
Quote: (10-05-2014 08:00 PM)strengthstudent Wrote:
I have been in China exact one month so far and Chinese people are continuously impressed how good I have become in such a little time. I had studied for one course before arriving in China but when I arrived here, I noticed that I didn't know anything.
Real life examples:
- Went to clubbing, found a chinese girl, got her WeChat(similar to whatsapp) and then chatted with her through subcommunication and wechat. Been chatting with her ever since in nothing but Chinese.
- Met group of girls outside the club and spent over one 1 hour just talking Chinese with them(they were only capable of speaking single English words). Got WeChat from 4 of them.
- Got a train the next day, spent the way talking with a Chinese woman and her 12 year old son. In Chinese.
You can become pretty good in 6 months, great in 12 months and insanely good in 1+ years.
I think language is mostly about effort. Trying hard goes a long way. On the other hand, I've lived in China for 10 years and speak at a near native level, read the newspaper, 600 page novels, etc... I want to temper people's idea of sucess. No one is going to have "great" Chinese in 12 months unless they go native, never speak their first language, demand perfection from themselves. To get decent at Chinese takes a few years unless you are a full-time student and give it 100% all day, every day.
It took my about 3-5 years before I would say I was really good, living a mostly Chinese life, studying 5 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Again, I agree its mostly hard work. Chinese is not Spanish. Or even Russian. Its a slow going effort.
About Pimsleur, people hate on it for various faults, but I love it.
It is not perfect or complete, and it is not meant to be. You must supplement it with indepndent study, literacy study, real life conversations, etc.
But for 30 minutes of pencil free studying, nothing beats it. You can do it on your commute, while showering, while washing dishes or preparing dinner. Its a fantastic way to learn quickly and learn immediately useful phrases for the begining learner.
Try it in combination with other study methods, like taking a class, and tell me it isnt worth 30 minutes a day.
It is not perfect or complete, and it is not meant to be. You must supplement it with indepndent study, literacy study, real life conversations, etc.
But for 30 minutes of pencil free studying, nothing beats it. You can do it on your commute, while showering, while washing dishes or preparing dinner. Its a fantastic way to learn quickly and learn immediately useful phrases for the begining learner.
Try it in combination with other study methods, like taking a class, and tell me it isnt worth 30 minutes a day.
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