A few tips from a student of Chinese - Learn Mandarin Chinese

A few tips from a student of Chinese

Posted January 27th, 2012 - 9:02 pm from Strangnas, Sweden

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Posted February 22nd, 2012 - 11:56 pm by

from Chicago, United States (Permalink)

Excellent! Thank you for the advice and extra tips. I am currently attempting to just understand mandarin via spoken and listening, but am daunted by the enormity of Chinese characters. Your link is a great start for me! Thanks so much!!

Posted February 23rd, 2012 - 5:01 am by

from Xian, China (Permalink)

Hi,Katkathy!I'm happy to recieve your message.I'm a chinese student.Can i ask you why you want to learn chinese?en,if you have some problems,I will gald to help you. 快乐的学习中文，enjoy!

Posted February 25th, 2012 - 10:35 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

Thank you Kathy! Always good to know someone has use for it.

There are indeed a lot of characters. But then don't forget the beauty of them. When I first decided I should learn some mandarin I wasn't even sure I wanted to learn the characters. I'm happy I did, even though I'm still wondering what the best way to go is. Maybe learning to speak it first is after all the best way. It would mean you could understand what you read as fast as you start picking up characters, instead of, like I, being able to read a bit without knowing what the characters mean in the context their in. On the other hand you might find a lot of logic you would miss by learning to speak without knowing the characters. The speaking and the writing system are so interconnected with each other.

Do you have any tips or tricks of your own? Would be interesting to read.

Posted February 26th, 2012 - 11:03 am by

from Chicago, United States (Permalink)

I totally agree. Before I came upon your post, my goal was to just learn by listening and speaking (via skype); then seeing your link actually helped me make sense that I could learn while re-learning how to write it again. Since I was a kid, I remember learning Chinese/Mandarin from singing the alphabets during Saturdays and throughout my childhood. I even took the Beginner's course of Mandarin in college, but Mandarin still never stuck on me til now where my desire to learn is much more apt.

One thing that has helped me pick up my listening/speaking mandarin is listening to podcasts, I highly recommend popupchinese.com; there are free downloads via itunes. Pimsleur Mandarin is okay, it moves a little slow sometimes but it helps when you are multi-tasking.

Cheers on to continued Chinese/Mandarin learning!

Posted February 27th, 2012 - 7:34 am by

from Chicago, United States (Permalink)

Here's a good place to get you started or practice intermediate Mandarin Audio lessons:

http://www.openculture.com/free_mandarin_chinese_lessons

Posted March 1st, 2012 - 5:14 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

Thank's for your tips Katy!

Actually the first mandarin I learned was with pimsleur. It was good, but when I came to China to study I was still at zero. Maybe it would be a good idea to try now, when I know a bit more, but right now I'm pretty focused on learning to read more, and then practice speaking the next time I go to China. I'll definitely check out your other tips.

And by the way. Have you checked out yellow bridge? http://www.yellowbridge.com
They have a lot of useful stuff. And I just found two frequency lists of bigrams (two character words) there, one based on fiction and one based on news. http://www.yellowbridge.com/general/invoke.php?u=http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/
It doesn't have a translation of the bigrams though, so I have been making my own list on excel with translations. Only problem is that I have to use google translate.

Having heard a lot of Chinese as a kid must be a big advantage. Even if you never learned it as a kid one would expect you could recognize many words?

Posted March 2nd, 2012 - 3:11 pm by

from Chicago, United States (Permalink)

Hmm, I am going through Pimsleur right now. So, you are saying you went through the whole program and it still didn't work for you?
=( That's a bit disappointing for me! Those lessons run a bit slow but I want to learn more.

Posted March 2nd, 2012 - 6:21 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

Oh god now! I just used like five half hour courses or something. And I think they are good, especially because they focus on the normal day life language you especially need for travelling. It's just that at the speed you learned when studying in China made me pass the little I learned before pretty fast.

I really haven't tried them much enough to know much about it. I take it you recommend them? I maybe should try them a bit more.

Keep learning, and thanks for your tips!

//马舟

Posted March 3rd, 2012 - 7:59 am by

from Xian, China (Permalink)

Hi,Joel.I'm sorry that i am not Katy,my name is Margo.But,I'm happy that you study chinese very hard,come on. Best wishes for you.

Posted March 22nd, 2013 - 2:24 pm by

from Hefei, China (Permalink)

Fair point~~Have you meet deficits when listening to CCTV?

Posted March 4th, 2012 - 8:26 am by

from Taipei, Taiwan (Permalink)

Just happened to read this interesting thread.

Joel is correct, regarding the characters, there are six methods of Chinese characters, and we all have to learn it in school. I don't know if it works for non-native speaker, but for me, if I have a basic understanding on how and why to make this character, it would be easier for me to remember and won't forget how to write it.

I skim through a book before ( but I read in Chinese version :P), and it is about the story behind Chinese characters which is quite interesting. The book title is "China: Empire of Living Symbols" which is written by a Swedish professor. it will introduce where this character comes from, ( or you can find some of the examples on YouTube by searching " the story of Chinese character") and I think it is quite suitable for a beginner. : )

Posted March 4th, 2012 - 5:25 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

Ahh! I have have that very same book in my bookshelf! But in Swedish, and it's indeed a fantastic illustration of the history of Chinese characters. I read a lot of it before I went to China and it was probably the best foreknowledge I had when I came to China. Even if the number of characters I learned threw it was just a few, it makes the characters a lot more exciting. Now when studying characters I many times don't have a clue about the history of them or the parts of them. Some times it's obvious, but most of the time I just accept them as they look and learn them. Maybe that's a mistake.

Really surprised someone knows about it. I thought the book was only available in Swedish, so if you Kathy, or anyone ells can get a hold of it I also warmly recommend it.

//Joel

Posted October 25th, 2012 - 10:50 am from Pantin, France

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Posted October 26th, 2012 - 6:32 am from Dongguan, China

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Posted October 26th, 2012 - 6:39 am from Dongguan, China

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Posted October 26th, 2012 - 11:40 pm by

from Granada, Spain (Permalink)

Hi Joel,

Thank u very much for your advise. I just started to learn 3 weeks ago and your tips are very useful.

What I'd like as well, is to have someone to make a language interchage. So, if any of u want to learn or improve your english, spanish or italian, jusn send me a message, please.

Thank u!

Posted October 29th, 2012 - 6:14 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

Good to see this thread is waking up to life again, and thank you Tony for all the tips.

I have thought many times about what is the better way to learn Chinese Characters, by learning the historical and logical reasons for why they look like they do or to just practice the characters one after the other. Maybe, you are right, Tony. Maybe it's better to learn them all threw their history and logic. I think you are right when you say that it makes you remember them better, at the same time it takes longer time to learn them that way.

Before, I guess I took the easier way, just learning them as they appear. One still figures out parts of the reason they look like they do when it's obvious, but other times I'm sure I miss a lot.

This is why I yesterday went back to the basics, starting to learn the radicals, (hopefully all the 227, or at least the first 100 or so), their meanings and their radical numbers. It's pretty interesting to learn because one can understand things one previously didn't.

And like you said， “兴趣是最好的老师”, yes, interest is probably the best teacher.

:)

Posted October 29th, 2012 - 6:22 pm from Pantin, France

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Posted October 31st, 2012 - 2:23 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

Just had a look earlier and I must say I'm amazed. Doesn't seem to have many characters yet but if it expands it's certainly something. Great concept, and probably the best way to remember!

//Joel

Posted October 30th, 2012 - 3:06 am from Dongguan, China

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Posted October 31st, 2012 - 3:28 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

Thanks for your tips, Tony!

You have a lot of interesting thoughts about learning Chinese. And yes there is a big difference between Chinese and Indo-European languages, and the reason is the way we build our syllables. A Chinese Syllable never have more than one consonant-sound, and it never end with a consonant, sure it is of course many times phonetically written with an "n" or an "ng" in the end, but if I compare it with Swedish one doesn't really pronounce it like a consonant in Chinese, it's more like a change of the vowel a little bit. This is the reason why one can fit all Chinese syllables on one sheet of paper. In total there is just a bit more than 200 syllables in Chinese (not counting the tones) and if we add the tones, well, some syllables are not even pronounced in all tones, but lets say it's about 800. Now if we instead look at English or Swedish a syllable may starts with two consonants and end with two consonants too. For instance "blades" (pronounced without the "e", so it's a one syllable word). With the Chinese system this wouldn't be possible to pronounce. It would have to be converted to something like "bi-lei-de-si" In other words one syllable becomes four. Now as one can clearly see this ads up for the possibility to create far more one-syllable words in a language like English. This is probably part of the reason why many westerners think Chinese sounds like it's all the same words over and over again, there is quite simply fewer syllables.

So just like you said, Tony, in Chinese one combines the same short one-syllable words which creates innumerable opportunities of new words. And yes, there is logics to why one word consists of the two, or sometimes three, syllable it consists of. In English a two syllable word like "water" no one knows why the "wa" and the "ter" are combined to this specific word. Sometimes we do, like in "helpless", we all know why "help" and "less" makes the word "helpless". In the word "water", I'm sure a linguist could explain why the "er" sometime in history was added to the wa, but it's nothing which would be much good for us, because "wa" and "ter" doesn't mean anything, or if it does it probably doesn't have anything to do with water.

I personally believe this is what makes Chinese so beautiful. There is so much logic and, so much history of why words appear like they appear. This is probably also why Chinese is said to be hardest in the beginning, before one can figure things out by using ones logical thinking. At the same time it is to be said that this logic is probably also the cause for why one, in Chinese, can say the same thing in so many different ways. There are many things that means similar things. If one start combining characters to make two syllable words, there are so many different combinations which are possible to make. I'm sure you, Tony, could come up with several examples of this. It means there are probably quite a bit more words in Chinese than in English after all, but in Chinese they make sense, which isn't always the case with English.

Let me say it like Winston Churchill... I was going to write a short letter [post (in this case)] but I didn't have the time so I wrote a long one instead.

Posted November 2nd, 2012 - 3:53 am from Dongguan, China

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Posted January 10th, 2013 - 7:02 am by

from Quanzhou, China (Permalink)

Hi there,

I've been putting a lot of time in my Chinese character studies and think that any student has to start with these two books: they'll teach you the system behind the characters and after that you will find it's much easier to learn:

the most common Chinese radicals
rapid Chinese literacy

Both by Zhang Peng Peng
张朋朋
Quite easy to find these books and cheap too. It takes a bit of work and it's a bit boring but it for sure pays off in the end!

By the way, I have a lot of books on Chinese characters and these were really the most useful in my humble opinion.

Posted January 10th, 2013 - 8:58 am by

from Tabriz, Iran (Permalink)

but it is hard to have that book if you live outside china i think

Posted April 12th, 2013 - 5:03 am by

from Wuxi, China (Permalink)

If you want to buy books from Chinese shops from outside china, such as Raid Literacy in Chinese, as mentioned, you could try Taobao.com. Many will post outside of china, and those books really are good. There's also a Chinese amazon if you want to try that.
Actually Taobao can take some mastering, but I'd you use chrome browser it will translate websites for you automatically.

A big tip I'll give is take advantage of smart phones. Train Chinese and Pleco are excellent tools, as well as the amazing google translate - and all free! A tip for gtranslate is to translate Chinese to Chinese first, as it will give you the pinyin. If you still can't work it out, then translate to English or your language.

Good to find this group here :-)

Oh, and for characters, I'm finding learning radicals is helping me progress quicker... Though the way I've improved fastest is by installing weixin/ we chat and momo, and just trying. Chinese people love it, and are amazed with, foreigners learning 中文！

As always, have fun learning and it's much easier >_~

Posted April 12th, 2013 - 5:42 pm by

from Strangnas, Sweden (Permalink)

If your looking for books you might find interest in not downloading the torrent "Chinese Language Learning Pack". It's about 20 gig of pdf files, mp3 stuff etc., it appears. I would of course not know. This however I do not encourage anyone to do. I'm just stating the fact.

I guess the best way to study is really to do a bit of everything. Constantly trying new ways of learning is a great way of keeping the curiosity for learning.

And yes, Pleco is really a dream. No dictionary out there like Pleco. I have also been practising a lot with an app called "TS Chinese talk game" It's an extremely good way of practising your Chinese grammar. One should pick words in the right order to build sentences, on time. Unfortunately it has some serious technical errors, which can be a bit annoying, and you ad to know about 4-500 characters at least, I would say.

Keep up the good work!