That’s something I try to do. For example, I realistically know almost zero Spanish, maybe around 50 words, if I really tried. But I like to think I have a reasonable understanding of how pronunciation works in Spanish, so I could go to Spain and read out of a phrase book, even if I knew none of the words. I did the same with Swedish when I was there, but it was only for a few days, and everyone spoke English automatically anyway.
My brother learned to speak numbers… so he could order from the menu in chinese 
You might learn enough to understand do polite greatings. Counts for a lot in some countries?
Chinese characters are more difficult to learn than English reading (even with English spelling). But you have the advantage here: you can read the meanings in English script!
And the numbers? Well, the first thing my brother learned to read was chinese menus :~) He can read newspapers now. He’s a good studier, but he didn’t have to put his life on hold to learn.
China had very low literacy rate partly because learning to read took so much effort. On the other hand *you can read chinese characters in any language. * And they do: a literate Chinese person can read and write in any part of China. The Government can govern all of China. The rich (who had the money to train their kids) could govern any part of China. Reading and Writing were a mark of education right across China, and allow communication right across China. Even when you can’t speak the language.
If you plan to traval to China, learn simplified script. Taiwan and some of the other outside communities still use traditional script. I would expect that your traditional china-town communities would be traditional script, but new migrants would be simplified script. In Aus it’s mostly simplified now: we were even more severe on our post-gold-rush chinese community than the USA was, and Melbourne was a seriously white place when I came here.
China has shifted to Arabic Numerals to a large extent. I don’t think they’ve shifted to Latin Script to any great degree: in fact I wonder if computers have enabled them to go back the other way, abandoning some uses of roman script that they only did because they were using typing and type-set printing?
and
Ah, such contrast!
The grammar is easy. The words are hard. As a native English speaker, I’ve never had to struggle so hard to learn a language.
I’m one of those weird learners who love to learn the rules, because once I know the rules I can make my own sentences instead of repeating only the crap that the most teachers try to teach you. And Chinese grammar is easy. So easy it’s hard. You don’t have to worry about how to say “I think I will have done.” These days, you don’t need that in English, either.
The words, man. Those are hard.
Like I said, I’m a native English speaker. I’ve studied German and lived in Germany (I’m rusty these days); I’ve studied French; I’ve studied Spanish and speak it fluently. These are all ridiculously easy languages to learn if you’re not afraid of learning some basic syntax and rules (admittedly, lots of people are afraid of basic syntax and rules). But the words, they’re all the same or similar or share roots. Not literally, of course, but their common heritage makes it easy to pick up a language once you know one. Yes, even German, if you can imagine old-timey English or Yoda.
But Chinese. Shi shi shi shi shi ad nauseum is the story of some many who found a lion statue. It all sounds the same. The tone is important. Are you talking about electricity or ordering food or a shop? I that your pencil or your, uh, female genitals that I’m looking at?
More than three years I’ve been trying to learn this damned language. I’m not an idiot. I can get by in three other languages, and survive in about 10 languages. But in China, no way.
At least, not with one hour per week.
It IS worth learning pronunciation in pinyin, if just to be able to get Chinese people’s names right. Makes a big difference. The system isn’t intuitive, but once you spend an hour or two with it you’ll know it for life. There are two or three sounds that are tough to get exactly right, but you can get “good enough” easily.
I would rethink not wanting to travel in China. IMHO it’s one of the best places for tourism- plenty to do and see, amazing history, excellent transportation, very affordable, and nearly crime-free.
I suspect that’s partly why I find German grammar so intuitive - it’s a bit like pretending to be from the Middle Ages.
I have a somewhat irrational paranoia of visiting places where the government could and would disappear me, if they felt so inclined. Yeah, I get that it’s especially unlikely to happen to a foreigner. Their humans rights are pretty poor, though, and treatment of animals seems appalling there. I feel like I’d be implicitly condoning things I’m very much against by spending my tourist money there.
As for crime-free - really? Presumably you’re not talking about fraud, corruption, counterfeiting, etc. But even with that aside (and to be somewhat facetious) there are thousands of executions per year in China. Presumably most of those executed did something wrong.
Yeah, I second this. It’s not really famous as a tourist destination, but it’s actually full of breathtaking scenary and landmarks. Yeah, a lot of the places are crowded but if you are fit and enjoy hiking it’s easy to leave the crowds behind.
Speaking out against the government? Terrorists from xinjiang? I don’t know.
All I can talk about is my experience of living here, and I have simply not seen a single crime against someone* in my year and a half. Not even a serious altercation. Girls can walk home alone at any time of night, wearing whatever, and not feel unsafe (granted, that’s perception of crime rather than crime but I’ve seen no reason to think that perception is unfounded).
When my chinese friends ask about travelling to Europe and whether it’s safe, I have to tell them: Pretty much wherever you go is going to be less safe than where you are now.
- I do have to say crime against someone because if we count crimes like dangerous driving where there is no intended victim, then yeah there’s lots of crime…
“Crime-free” wasn’t the right term- there is plenty of organized crime. But there is very little street crime, and almost none of it is aimed at tourists. For a tourist, this means no worries about getting lost because there are no “bad neighborhoods” to avoid, no need to hurry home at night, no worries about getting pickpocketed, and for women there is little harassment and few threats on the street. I once left my purse in a taxi, and the next day the taxi driver asked around until he found me to return it. And this isn’t primarily because it’s a police state-- the lack of street crime is just a part of the national character (not to mention a healthy respect for tourist dollars.)
Yeah, human rights are pretty bad. But that has little to do with the people of China. The young people are forward looking and eager to open their horizons (for the most part), and there is something kidn of amazing about seeing an older person who once faced outright starvation now watching music videos on an iPad. China has seem the largest reduction of poverty that the world has ever seen, and it’s shows-- lots of problems, but lots of progress and lots of hope. And most of your tourist dollars are going to that-- the young businessman who turned a hutong home into a boutique hotel that encourages the nascent movement to preserve the hutongs, the young woman who is turning the English she learned in her rural elementary school into a career as a tour guide, or the old woman who opened her restaurant when the economic controls were loosened and is now able to support her family comfortably. There is a lot more to China than a shitty government.
Anyway, your choice, but it’s an incredible place to visit and the people of China are well worth getting to know. And while you are at it, you might want to read up on human rights in French prisons.
China actually seems less crowded than the USA, because there is no sprawl. In China, urban areas are concentrated into small areas, with lightly populated countryside in between. My wife and I were primarily interested in birdwatching when we traveled through south China, and in every town we stopped at, it was easy to get out of the urbanity and into the countryside, where birdlife was plentiful and people were few, and very friendly and hospitable. That is much harder to do in the US, where suburbs and exurbs go on for many miles from every city, and locals are suspicious of anyone on foot.
I make a point of doing that, too, whenever I’m spending time in another country. And I always make a point of learning numbers. It’s amazing how much knowing the numbers can help. The first phrase I always learn in any language is this, which I will help you out in Swedish:
Jag talar inte svenska. 
Jiāng gǔgē fānyì yǒuxiào dì kāizhǎn gōngzuò zhīqián, nǐ chéngwéi yīgè zhuānjiā?
No doesn’t work. You cant cut/past english to chinese through a translator and then run it back again with the same result.
Regardless of which language you decide to learn, why are you only limited to an hour a week?
I am currently learning Irish, and the class is about an hour and 15 minutes long, once a week. However, I’m putting in at least an hour or two per day on my own, and more on the weekends, if possible. Last weekend, I was able to devote about 8-10 hours to it. Instead of watching TV at night, I try to get in 30 minutes of study.
I am scouring the Internet for any free Irish language resources. I found one site that had 28 podcasts, along with a PDF to download for each episode. It rained two days this week and I had to ride the bus to work. Bingo … with my tablet and a pair of earbuds, I was able to put in 3 hours of practice each day. I discovered that the Irish Radio and Television site also has several lessons. Those are much harder (faster speaking) than the ones I am currently doing, so I won’t do those until I have gone through the original 28 podcasts a few times. I have found several great sites that have a bunch of children’s games, in Irish. Many of the children’s games websites can be accessed on my smartphone, turning any non-working/non-driving time into learning time.
I’ve started listening to Irish radio, streamed over the Internet. I can’t catch 1 word in 50, but just hearing the announcers talking is helping to wire my brain and train my ear to hear how the language flows. Yesterday, I was able to listen for about two hours while I was working.
Week before last, I learned the vocabulary for colors, fruits and vegetables, and other food items while watching the KC Royals march towards the World Series. I was watching the game, but every commercial break and every time a coach walked out to the pitcher’s mound was another few minutes devoted to learning vocabulary.
I just searched for flash card apps in the Google Play Store, and stopped scrolling after the first 240 went by. Not all of those are for languages, but the point is, there are literally thousands of resources at your disposal. I downloaded one called “Anki”, and then searched for Irish decks which people have made. I’ve installed two of the decks and can review a few cards during any waiting situation.
Our county library has a free language program called “Mango Languages”. It isn’t Rosetta Stone, but it is similar (see/hear/say). It’s free for library patrons. I’ve reviewed the Mandarin module and seemed pretty good. (I was born in Taiwan and lived there for about 9 years. I’ve forgotten most of the Mandarin I learned as a kid, but the quick review through the module on Mango brought back a lot of the stuff I had forgotten.) Check at your library to see if they are subscribers to Mango or a similar resource.
My parents were missionaries in Taiwan, and they both spoke Mandarin well enough to teach and preach. My dad had a very high level of fluency, but he poured a lot of time and effort into it. He did it all with 3x5 cards. Shoe boxes completely stuffed with 3x5 flash cards that he had made for each character. On one side of the card was the Chinese character, and on the reverse was the English translation, any notes about the character, and also the correct way to write the character. (It is my understanding that the characters are supposed to be stroked in the correct order; I don’t know, I never learned to read and write Chinese.)
This was in the days before smartphones and PDAs, and my dad ran his life with 3x5 cards. He always had a half-inch stack of 3x5 cards in his shirt pocket with a rubber band around them. Top card was his daily To Do list, followed by anything he was working on, a few blank cards, and at least 10 Chinese character flash cards. Even after he no longer was learning new characters, he would pull 10 cards from the shoe boxes and review them, writing the date on the back of the card so he knew when he had last reviewed the character. Any time he was waiting for a government official or standing in line at the bank or post office, he was reviewing his vocabulary.
I’m sorry this is so long, but I’m kind of passionate about languages, and I had a really good example in my dad.
You aren’t going to learn squat nor diddly about any language in only one hour a week. But if you are passionate about learning a language, there are many ways to augment that one hour a week with your own study, and much of it is free.
Most importantly, make friends with someone who is a native speaker of that language and ask them if they would be willing to let you practice with them. Contact your local college or community college and talk to one of the French or Spanish or whatever teachers and ask them to connect you with a native speaker. In some cases, that native speaker may welcome the chance to practice their English, turning it into a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Good luck. Whatever language you choose, put some effort into it. Even if you never progress past an elementary-school level, the cultural experience alone will make it worth your while.
I know very very very few people who achieved any level of Chinese fluency without hours of study per day every day for years. My university Chinese professor always said (and was pretty spot on), that two years of University level Chinese was the minimum needed to go to a Chinese speaking country and be able to get by and learn on your own.
I saw a lot of classmates with one year go to a Chinese speaking country and it just wasn’t enough. I did the two years (5 hours of class per week and about 40 hours of study) of Chinese, went to Taiwan, and was able to converse and got a lot better that year. Really got listening comprehension up and conversation going at a decent but basic level. It was social but no where near business level at that stage.
An hour a week with some study will get you able to pronounce pinyin, memorize a lot of useful phrases, and be able to answer basic questions. You’ll probably be able to order “chicken” in a restaurant but not the dish or how you’d like it prepared. As in
waiter: what do you want?
you: beef
I’m not convinced that people ever ask to make changes to menu items. When I’m out with Chinese they ask a lot of questions – many of which I understand, now – but when it comes time to actually ordering, they still point to the picture on the menu.
Strangely I felt really good with a Nanjing colleague in Chengdu. She wasn’t able to understand the name of a dish in Sichuanguo or its description, which is like daily life for me. A lot of “shenme yisi” and she finally ordered it and it was quite tasty.
If I can put this in a comparative perspective based on my personal experience, Mandarin is one of seven languages that I have studied in a classroom environment with a face-to-face teacher, and I would say it is the one that I most quickly reached the point at which I had a sense that I was grasping the language. That doesn’t mean that you will have the same experience – each person has in own mental process of acquiring new language skills, and the quality of the instructor can also be a factor. But in my case, for me, Mandarin was the easiest to get started in.
Thanks again for all your replies.
I’ll certainly reconsider my opinion, should I get the chance to visit. For now, though, it’s the other side of the world, and I have a lot of other places I’d like to visit, so I don’t feel a lot of pressure to make up my mind quickly. Hopefully, one day, I’ll be a position to genuinely consider visiting.
I’m not forced to limit it to an hour a week, but that’s the actual time I’ll get in any kind of class. I very much doubt I’ll be motivated enough to go to much greater lengths, since I’m only considering Mandarin as a new experience I could try, rather than something I know I’ll like and be willing to commit hours per day to.
Your post was interesting, and I’ll probably take some advice from it, once I get started. I expect I’ll make some of my own flash cards. I just wish I had the dedication you obviously have!
Since I already have some experience of French, the opportunity to practice it, and a greater interest in the language, I expect an hour a week to be enough to improve my abilities beyond what they are right now, and I expect to be interested enough to do some extra studying on my own anyway.