I’ve been trying for about a month now to learn Chinese at home.
I’ve got a few books, tapes and two computer programs. They all promise fast, fun and easy but either I’m an idiot (and I do not deny this) or this is nearly impossible. Nothing sticks. All the words sound the same. The more words I learn the more they all blend together into a stew of yens and yahngs and ee-yows.
I can say a few things (no doubt toned incorrectly) but can’t imagine being able to comprehend anything said back to me. Am I in over my head here? Does this require classroom study?
I am also in love with the langauge, and have spent a lot of money on books and tapes.
It is not fast. It is not fun. It is not easy.
I think what you (and I) really need is a native speaker to pal around with.
>It is not fast. It is not fun. It is not easy.
I think this is one of the biggest lies going. “Learn a foreign language effortlessly like a baby. With our proven method you’ll be speaking like a native in no time at all.” I’d rather hear the truth. It’s very hard and it’ll take X # of months/years/decades before you can say anything. I’d be less frustrated if they were honest about it.
>I think what you (and I) really need is a native speaker to pal
>around with.
Yes, I think that would help.
I studied Chinese for two and a half years at a well-regarded liberal arts college. My classes never had more than six students in them, and lasted at least an hour for three to five days a week.
And after that, I barely had any grip on the language at all.
It took moving to China for anything to sink in. It made the difference between theoretically knowing how to say something, and actually having command of what you’ve learned.
I can’t see how books and tapes could possibly help anyone beyond learning a handful of set phrases (ie, where is the bathroom), and even those would probably not be too useful because the proper use of tones hadn’t been drilled into one’s skull.
>I studied Chinese for two and a half years at a well-regarded >liberal arts college. My classes never had more than six
>students in them, and lasted at least an hour for three to five
>days a week.
>
>And after that, I barely had any grip on the language at all.
Okay. I don’t feel so stupid now.
>It took moving to China for anything to sink in.
Alas, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment yet.
>the proper use of tones hadn’t been drilled into one’s skull.
Don’t even get me started with those tones. I just can’t detect the differences. Maybe a single word said slowly. But each word in a sentence said at full speed? Not a prayer.
>I can’t see how books and tapes could possibly help anyone >beyond learning a handful of set phrases (ie, where is the >bathroom),
That’s about where I’m at. And I real mangle the word for bathroom too. tsuswaw?
But I can count from 1 to 10 like nobody’s business.
Chinese really requires discipline. I’ve only met one person that picked up a decent amount from tapes/books/self study, and he lived in Hong Kong at the time. (he picked up cantonese and not mandarin)
I tried learning Cantonese through tapes. One problem I found was picking up the accents of the speakers. Had a minor set back when my parents told me I was speaking like a girl. :eek: [Stupid tapes…] Moving to a tonal based language does seem to make it a bit of a ‘sing song’, but you’ll pick it up.
Also, find some Chinese movies and TV shows to get some fun practice in. My sister was downloading Sailor Moon shows to help keep up her Japanese and she swears by it.
Unfortunately I never stuck with it and forgot it when I went to uni. Mildly useful for restaurants though.
I am learning so that my daughters can grow up bi-lingual. The tones are a problem, even after you can hear them your English tonal habits are so ingrained that you do English tones with Chinese syllables. Sheesh.
I took a year at the university to get my tones and consonants semi-decent, and have been studying on my own since then. It’s slow, but I use it every day, speaking to my daughter, and that makes a big difference.
A month ain’t nuthin’. When I started out–more than 2 years ago–I couldn’t hear the difference between ‘ji’ and ‘qi’ and ‘chi’–and tones? Feggitabboutit. I still have difficulty hearing the difference between 2nd and 3rd tones.
Have patience, stick to it, use the words you know every day–no matter how badly. Advertise for a tutor to get your tones right.
Oh, and “learn the natural way, like a child” is only true if you’re under the age of 12 (maybe 10). After that your brain isn’t capable of doing that stuff any more. My daughter, who is 2, learns more language in a week than I learn in a month, and she’s learning both English and Mandarin.
I also took two years in small classes. I have two fluencies under my belt and can babble in a few others (no asian). If I worked hard, I might be able (with nothing but books and tapes) to read chinese after a year or so of work. To make any progress, I have to move to China.
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR LIVING IN AN IMMERSION ENVIRONMENT.
If you wish to learn Chinese, you have to USE it, when you feel like it, when you don’t feel like it, when you are tired, etc. And you have to stay away from expats, cause you’ll get lazy and slip into English.
What I learned about Chinese was that it was not a language, but a group of languages. Therefore, you’d have to pick which one you want to learn.
My wife is Taiwanese and her sister lives with us. They speak Mandarin all the time. However when all they do is laugh at how I mangle all the tones it doesn’t seem to help much.
I’ve tried books and tapes and took classes for a few months which were useless. I still know next to nothing and can never correctly pronounce the words I do know. I think the only way to really learn a language is to live in a country where it’s the native tongue and the younger you are, the easier to learn.
You can learn SOMETHING from books and tapes. But to get pretty decent at Chinese (Mandarin, I assume) you probably need at least 3-5 years of study, and a good chunk of that in an immersion environment- and I’m talking early stages of competency. You also have to not just plain suck at it in the first place, which is just what a fair number of even the people who have the guts to give it a try do. 2/3 of the Caucasian students in my US classes were totally hopeless.
But you can at least feel better if you’re not doing Cantonese, which makes Mandarin look like a total cake-walk.
Also, if you find reading too intimidating and are just concentrating on speaking, you might want to reconsider that. If you can read you can see just how simple much of Chinese really is- yes, seriously. It’s also something you can practice yourself, perfect for introverts like me.
The best thing to do is to move to the country wh+ere the language is spoken, and while you are there, try to take some classes.
I have known people fluent in Putonghua (the name of the Chinese language) but it took them at least two to three years.
Actually, Chinese is not that bad of a language to learn. What throws a lot of people off is the complex written language. However, you will find many of them to be common ones, used over and over again. That is tricky about Chinese are the four tones. up, down, sideways and up and down. Buy a book where there is pinyin, the alphabet version of the language. Buy children’s books here in China.
Lastly, if you want to live in China and wish to learn the Putonghua language, it is good to live in Northern China, Beijing, Tianjin, Xian, Harbin etc. People who live in the southern regions speak their own dialect, so what you hear on the street may not be what you want to know.
I don’t think it matters that much where you are; the uneducated masses are largely incomprehensible for quite a while, especially from people who’ve moved from the country to the city. I’ve heard butcherings worse than mine in Cantonese and Mandarin alike. They only difference between north and south is the WAY in which they make their language totally unlike anything your college teachers and friends speak.
Thank you all for the information. I’ve been studying mainly out of curiosity since I overhear Chinese often from other co-workers but have no idea what they are saying. I think I’m in over my head. This doesn’t seem like a language you can dabble with. It’s going to require moving to China which would be a terrible commute for me each day.
I’m trying to learn Mandarin. I’m not trying to learn to read the Chinese characters, just the pinyin equivalent translations. I’m having much better luck reading the pinyin that speaking or understanding what is said. I’ve said a phrase or two of Chinese and the response is usually “You speak Chinese! You speak very well!” which I know is a total lie but they do seem pleased that I’m trying.
Ditto on the response from native speakers. Many have said my accent, especially tones, is good, but then they can’t understand the next thing I say. Where can one find somebody who will tell you what you really sound like?
Listening, reading, writing and speaking are all quite different skills. Listening to tapes might actually help you understand what your co-workers are saying without you learning to say anything intelligible. (This from a native English speaker who can’t spell “intelligible.”)
>Ditto on the response from native speakers.
>Many have said my accent, especially tones
Yup. I think they understand what I’m saying because it’s a standard pleasantry. Pronounce ‘Shie Shie’ as ‘Shay Shay’ or ‘Shyeh Sheh’ after they help with something and they can figure it out. That’s not going to work with something novel,
“My house is on fire, call for help!” That ain’t going to come out right.
Is it easier for Chinese speakers to adjust to English with many more syllables/no tones than for an English speaker to adjust to Chinese with far fewer syllables/4+ tones or is it the same difficult adjustment? I’m a real fan of extra syllables.
Most Chinese “words” use extra syllables to make things clear. “xiang” means elephant and also “resemble” so you use “da xiang” for elephant and “hen xiang” for resemble.
The Chinese native speakers I know have just as much trouble with English as I do with Chinese. There is no “R” in Chinese, and very few final consonants, so there’re your pronounciation difficulties, there are many words in English that are pronounced the same but mean different things–try to explain why this is a “board” for instance–and English doesn’t follow the “rules” (such as they are) of English nearly as much as Chinese follows the rules of Chinese.
NoCoolUserName, next time you can realy impress people by di-syllabisize (sp?), that is making one syllable word into two syllables.
exvex, I would suggest two things as it sounds like you just want to hang with your co-workers a bit. First, you might want to enlist the aid of your co-workers to learn some very basic dialogues. “hi, how are you”, “gee, sure is cold today”, “are you hungry.” also maybe focus on food if you go out to eat with them. Learn the different meats and veggies, then maybe some dish names. My point is that you could learn some useful Chinese you could use on a daily basis with some of your co-workers. You won’t get fluent but even a couple of hundred words might end up being a lot of fun.
Second, a black haired dictionary works wonders.