Learning Mandarin - Have you started or done it? Advice for self study? Class study?

[tabris]

So we're going to be taking Mandarin classes starting in 2 weeks - 2 nights a week for probably the next year. I want to get a head start on it as I got some travel with long flights next week which would be a perfect time to start reading up before our beginner class. Here's the language school we signed up for as it's relatively close:

http://keylanguagetraining.com

So first question - have you started or completed learning Mandarin? What are your thoughts? Any advice for self study? What classes did you attend and how long? What materials did you buy?

Now I may have a bit of an easier time with traditional Chinese writing which comes later on as I did learn a bit of Japanese Kanji. 私はちょっと日本語を話します. And perhaps learning a bit of Japanese may have helped me with the pronunciation - but I know tone is everything and that is quite different. Anyone else have experience with this?

Also what are your general thoughts on picking Mandarin as a language to learn?

For context I live in Vancouver - one of the highest concentration of Chinese outside of Asia, have a decent amount of mainland Chinese-born friends or acquaintances, and spent a bit of time in China. A lot more time in Hong Kong though where I picked up just a little bit of Cantonese but not much really as everyone spoke english except mainland Chinese tourists.

 

[Gugi40]

I am trying to learn Mandarin through Rosetta Stone and so far it is awesome, I recommend getting the Rosetta stone App and use the free trial to start practicing the tone and pronunciation because I did Japanese too and trust me the inflections are trickier and it is easy to change a word entirely as you probably already know.

Because you spent time in China, and you have the ability to practice with your Mandarin speaking friends (I assume) you will likely have the easier time of any of the other students.

Mandarin is a good language to learn, I want to be fluent in it but don't have the time for schooling.

 

[tabris]

I am trying to learn Mandarin through Rosetta Stone and so far it is awesome, I recommend getting the Rosetta stone App and use the free trial to start practicing the tone and pronunciation because I did Japanese too and trust me the inflections are trickier and it is easy to change a word entirely as you probably already know.

Because you spent time in China, and you have the ability to practice with your Mandarin speaking friends (I assume) you will likely have the easier time of any of the other students.

Mandarin is a good language to learn, I want to be fluent in it but don't have the time for schooling.

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Isn't there newer and better services / technologies then Rosetta Stone? I don't know either way - I just heard Rosetta Stone is quite old.

And yeah I'll be able to practice my Mandarin with friends - though I found it hard as a beginner to practice Japanese with the people I knew that spoke Japanese natively or when I was living in Tokyo until about the 3rd month - just because it was too quick for me to hear and then understand. Hell I'll be able to practice my Mandarin just in my elevator greeting people as it's mainly mainland Chinese-born who live in my building.

 

[Lumination]

Native speaker.

1) You mentioned this, but tone is everything. I've met so many Americans that know the vocab and grammar but speak worse than 2nd graders because their tones are SO SO off. It will feel unnatural. Words that end with an upward intonation feel like questions. Questions feel like statements. Power through it. Really make sure you get those tones down.

2) Writing will be hard. Forget the whole "characters look like the thing they're describing" shlock. Certain radicals like the water radical can be signals that the character is water-related, but every rule has its exceptions. You're in for a lot of hard memorization. It helps to learn the fundamental strokes (horizonal lines, verticals, dashes, etc.) and stroke order. That way, rather than trying to decipher a 10-stroke character as a whole shape, you are able to break it down into 10 distinct steps.

Good luck.

 

[tabris]

2) Writing will be hard. Forget the whole "characters look like the thing they're describing" shlock. Certain radicals like the water radical can be signals that the character is water-related, but every rule has its exceptions. You're in for a lot of hard memorization.

Good luck.

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Yeah but I've had a bit of experience with this challenge with learning Japanese Kanji (I only learned about 100-150). I just kept writing it down in a notebook (Japanese schools are super old school about needing notebooks and writing things down instead of technology) until I memorized that character. The one difference though between Chinese and Japanese for this learning strategy - is I would write-out the Hiragana (alphabet-esque) first before using the Kanji character to create the connection in my head from the english of the word to Japanese pronunciation of the word via Hiragana to the Kanji character of the word.

Can you explain the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese? What do I learn?

 

[Lumination]

Yeah but I've had a bit of experience with this challenge with learning Japanese Kanji (I only learned about 100-150). I just kept writing it down in a notebook (Japanese schools are super old school about needing notebooks and writing things down instead of technology) until I memorized that character.

Can you explain the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese? What do I learn?

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Traditional is the original script we used to write. Simplified is what most of mainland China uses (I think mandated by the govt?). Only HK and Taiwan and a few other places really still use traditional. There is a lot of crossover between the two, but as a whole, traditional characters are harder to write. For practical use, learn simplified.

Simplified character for country -> traditional:
国 -> 國

I also edited one more thing into my previous post.

 

[KillLaCam]

Can you explain the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese? What do I learn?

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Simplifed is usually used in China, Singapore and Malaysia. Traditional is in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Japanese Kanji also uses traditional characters.

You should see more simplified Chinese in Vancouver and they're easier to learn. So I'd say go with simplified.

 

[Gugi40]

Isn't there newer and better services / technologies then Rosetta Stone? I don't know either way - I just heard Rosetta Stone is quite old.

And yeah I'll be able to practice my Mandarin with friends - though I found it hard as a beginner to practice Japanese with the people I knew that spoke Japanese natively or when I was living in Tokyo until about the 3rd month - just because it was too quick for me to hear and then understand. Hell I'll be able to practice my Mandarin just in my elevator greeting people as it's mainly mainland Chinese-born who live in my building.

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I don't know about it being old since the app seems to be very updated with design and method, it is definitely the easiest way to get it down since you speak into the phone and it picks up on if you jacked up the tone or not.
Yeah that's the beauty of living in the lower mainland is that it is pretty easy to find a fluent Mandarin speaker, also going in to Richmond will likely be easy to learn the words in writing since even the stop signs are in Chinese.

*Edit: Also the App is free to start.

 

[tabris]

Traditional is the original script we used to write. Simplified is what most of mainland China uses (I think mandated by the govt?). Only HK and Taiwan and a few other places really still use traditional. There is a lot of crossover between the two, but as a whole, traditional characters are harder to write. For practical use, learn simplified.

Simplified character for country -> traditional:
国 -> 國

Click to shrink...

Simplifed is usually used in China, Singapore and Malaysia. Traditional is in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Japanese Kanji also uses traditional characters.

You should see more simplified Chinese in Vancouver and they're easier to learn. So I'd say go with simplified.

Click to shrink...

I don't know about it being old since the app seems to be very updated with design and method, it is definitely the easiest way to get it down since you speak into the phone and it picks up on if you jacked up the tone or not.
Yeah that's the beauty of living in the lower mainland is that it is pretty easy to find a fluent Mandarin speaker, also going in to Richmond will likely be easy to learn the words in writing since even the stop signs are in Chinese.

*Edit: Also the App is free to start.

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This is extremely helpful. Our course doesn't touch writing for a while so maybe I'll start memorization exercises early.

Any other app or book recommendations?

 

[SNES Jr]

Along these lines, I've been studying Mandarin for a few months now but I need to work on my vocab, are there any good apps or anything with audio you guys recommend?

 

[ZackieChan]

Read Fluent Forever and check out his step by step approach to learning Mandarin on the blog.

 

[KillLaCam]

I use an app called Memrise for vocab. I've used it for both Mandarin Chinese and Korean.

There's a section for "Chinese words by spoken frequency". It'll show you the characters, pronunciation and definition of the most common 1000 words in Chinese. You can choose how many you want to learn per "chapter" , I usually do 15. Then you'll play some matching games or have to write the definition in English from that lesson. After that you'll get a review quiz on those words. Then you move on to the next 15 words do the same thing but the review quiz will also include things from the last lesson.

It tracks which words you know and which ones you mess up on. If you usually mess up on a word they'll bring it up more in the review quizzes.

You can choose the times that you want to be reminded to get on the app each day and it'll remind you.

 

[Lumination]

This is extremely helpful. Our course doesn't touch writing for a while so maybe I'll start memorization exercises early.

Any other app or book recommendations?

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I don't have any specific recommendations, but you should decide if you want to learn to read AND write or just read. There will be some overlap, but imo if you want to write, you should start with the very basic characters, like numbers and such. Basically the typical elementary school learning order. If you want to fast-track to reading, doing something like memorizing the top 1000 most common characters may do it for you?

In either case, I would strongly recommend a tutor for this. The fundamentals for the language (basic writing, recognition, pronunciation) are much harder than something like Japanese where every sound is pretty much a consonant mashed with a vowel to produce a sound that exists in English anyway. Don't half ass it!

Edit: Yeah I reread the OP again because I did think you already signed up for a class. Just use the materials they recommend. If you plan on staying with the language, I wouldn't recommend going solo for 6mo-1yr.

 

[Kieli]

Most Japanese kanji have the same meaning as the Chinese characters, but they use archaic styles that resemble traditional Chinese more than the simplified Chinese that is used by mainlanders.

One thing I really disliked about kanji is how context and pairing of kanji can transform how you pronounce the word.

 

[Putosaure]

I'm trying to learn by myself too because of the girlfriend, but I really have a hard time with pronunciation. I cannot seem to be able to replicate the sounds. I guess only class would help, but finding one after work is not that easy. Is the Rosetta Stone recognition speech thingy good ? I'm using HelloChinese which taught me a lot of things but the speech recognition seems hit or miss.

 

[CaptainK]

And perhaps learning a bit of Japanese may have helped me with the pronunciation

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Nah

My family is Cantonese-speaking, so my attempts to learn Mandarin are constantly thwarted by me reverting to Cantonese tones. I actually found that learning the pinyin system helped alot, so basically I use English as a base when trying to pronounce Mandarin. It's weird, but it kinda works? I still suck pretty bad.

 

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

If you are diligent, imo it is not really that hard to learn. The biggest problems that foreigners have is pronounciation. I know people who have HSK5, but Chinese dont understand them, because their pronounciation is bad. Meanwhile I only have HSK3, but whenever I am on the phone or talk with Chinese who dont see me (Douyin, KTV-apps), they think I am a native or close to it.

Personally I think its important to learn with a native at your side, but its not always possible. The stuff I learnt at the language course at my university was totally different when you compare it to how people speak nowadays. A lot of words which are not used by most people nowadays or in "everyday" speech.

Along these lines, I've been studying Mandarin for a few months now but I need to work on my vocab, are there any good apps or anything with audio you guys recommend?

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Anki has some sets with audio.

 

[Vuze]

Bumping this thread because I also wanna start learning. Any more recommendations for software? Ideally for iPad / iOS and no multiple hundred dollar entry fee to get going.
I intend to visit a real course at some point when I got the time and money but for now, the above approach would be ideal.