Hello. To begin with, I do not know whether it is proper subforum for this topic (there's travel and culture but there are also subforums for interests and science but I guess this one is the most suitable.
Has anyone of you attempted to learn Chinese? Are here any native Chinese speakers? I am planning to move to China within few years so I guess this is right time to learn at least a tiny bit of the language. For now, I am doing memrise quizes and it works pretty well (basics) but there are plenty of other ways. Have you tried to learn one of the most difficult languages? Do you have any tips for other learners?
Let's discuss it here (if it's the correct place ofc ;p).
Chinese language uses characters, so we have to learn how to identify the characters and its meanings. E.g "kou" = mouth and its character may look like a square mouth
Good luck with that, i've got a headache just thinking about learning Chinese.
I've been wanting to start studying chinese again myself. I grew up in China and Taiwan, as an American expatriate. It's an incredibly complex language, especially once you consider characters, tones, and regional dialects. Most educated people will speak mandarin but china is a huge country, and one that has "assimilated" many cultures, so dialects will vary from somewhat similar to not the same at all. But like I said you will be able to communicate with virtually anyone in a major metropolitan center in mandarin.
I moved back to the states when I was 15 and regret immensely not learning more of the language while I was immersed in it. In cities like shanghai and taibei it is easy to surround yourself with only English speakers (or whatever your native language is). I didn't really appreciate the opportunity and experience I was getting, but in fact hated living abroad and wanted to live like a normal American. Grass is always greener sort of situation.
I still speak enough " to get by" which is easy to pick up by just living there and having to tell cab drivers where to go, go shopping or going out to eat, and you can usually mangle the language pretty good and still have people understand you especially in big cities with lots of expatriates. But if you really want to learn the absolute correct pronunciation and corresponding characters, it's a real discipline. Very few to no foreigners ever truly become fluent like this, not without growing up there. I knew a few kids who's parents had been missionaries and they grew up in the countryside, and they spoke mandarin practically perfectly.
Enough for reminiscing. Good luck, and PM me in pinyin if you want to practice.
I have always been good at learning languages but I struggled with Chinese. I'm assuming you're studying Mandarin, as I did.
I think the key is to find the right teaching style.
My first teacher used "immersive learning" and would not speak a word of English for the first half of the class. He would only speak English in the second half when we did grammar.
I found it almost impossible to figure out what was going on, although the rest of my class said he was the best teacher they ever had. A lot of people also liked the fact that he was English, so he could explain the grammar points from the point of view of a native English speaker.
I moved to a more traditional class taken by a Chinese lady where we did exercises from a textbook, listened to CDs etc and I found this a lot easier to pick up. However one guy in my class complained that she didn't speak enough Chinese to us, so I referred him to my first tutor!
Once you have found the right teaching style you should find it better to learn. I also used to supplement my classes by going to Mandarin conversation groups that I found on Meetup. It was a good opportunity to speak to people who were learning the language at different levels and great to hear stories from those who had lived out there teaching English.
I've been studying Chinese for about a year now. I attend a weekly brush painting lesson followed by a language lesson. In class we are working our way through a textbook (I believe we're soon starting on the 2nd book), as well as watching short videos or readings from other sources. Each week we typically try and have some sort of conversation usually as review of the previous week's lesson. Our teacher has recently been asking us a few times a month to write about our week or some other topic as a way for us to practice both our writing skills and then our speaking skills as we share it with the class.
I've also dabbled some with online course. I have used Yoyo Chinese (it now has a character course in addition to the beginner and intermediate or crash course options). I've also used memrise, hellotalk and several other apps on my phone (I'm a fan of Pleco and some of the other paid features such as the flash cards and quizzes).
My other huge guilty pleasure has become watching an insane amount of Taiwanese Dramas (you could easily watch Chinese dramas as well, I picked Taiwanese ones for personal reasons). I started watching on sites that had English subtitles, but I'm finding I'm at a point now where I can watch them in their original state and through both listening and reading the characters, I'm able to understand the majority of what is going on.
I still struggle with speaking. It's not so much the tones of pronounciations, but just nerves that tends to trip me up, or I worry about not knowing what to do when I am trying to express something I perhaps haven't fully learned and may not know every word.
It takes time to learn any language, but it can be really rewarding in the long run!
å æ²¹ï¼ JiÄyoú! Fighting!
I learned how to say "I don't speak Mandarin" and "I don't speak Cantonese" in Mandarin and Cantonese. For some reason, people tend to speak to me in a lot of languages I don't speak. For now, I think that's the most useful phrase I could learn.
Mandarin seems like a language that would be really difficult to learn, but I would like to learn it in the future (considering the majority of the world's population speaks it). It would probably come in handy. So, I'd love to hear what works for you!
Hey!
Although this post is pretty much dead I thought I might contribute a bit of my experience.
I have been studying Mandarin Chinese in school for four years now under several teachers as well as doing separate study at home. My best advice is to start with learning specific characters and sentence structures that you can use a lot, then start using them. Practice writing with a weekly journal or some other form of regular writing and practice speaking whenever you can. It'll help you recognize characters yo should learn and prevent you from forgetting those you know. If you travel to china or meet someone who is a native speaker, don't be afraid to try to talk to them or ask them to practice with you. They are the best practice you can get and you should try to jump at the opportunity.
Above anything else if you are trying to learn Chinese without a teacher listen to as many recordings as possible. It is usually quite hard for English speakers to master the identification and use of tones in conversation, however this is vital if you want to be understood or understand anything. Regular practice the the only real way to learn a language so good luck!
Tones have tripped me up far less than the other person I'm studying with, likely due to some past experience with other languages where tones are important. I would say my weakest areas currently are writing (learning both sets of characters is likely hindering some - long story on that) and having the confidence to actually respond vs shy away from conversation. Reading and overall comprehension are by far my stronger skills.
Having a teacher has helped me a lot as it is nice to have feedback on progress where there tends to be less feedback when you're learning totally on your own or following an online program.
I've dabbled some with trying to keep a written journal of some form, but find I struggle to come up with topics that aren't me just reporting on the weather or my standard daily routine. Did your teachers assign topics, or how did you progress out of perhaps a writing lull?