By the way, congrats on picking the right language to learn! 
so, how’s it been so far? I recommend learning simplified characters. I think they are easier to learn and write, which was the point of the simplifications. once you’ve got a decent base and work at it a bit, then not too hard to read traditional characters. if you write on a pc, then you can just switch the fonts.
Good. The instructor focused more on speaking than on reading, which was a little tricky since I rely so much on written words to understand dialogue.
I’m just a little confused about the pronunciation of “r” depending on the letters that precede it. There’s got to be a pattern, but all I know is that it often sounds more like a soft “j” than an “r”. I understand L/R interchangeability in languages like Korean, but J/R?
I asked her about it after class and she couldn’t really answer me, I guess because as a native Mandarin speaker, it sounds natural to her. She said our text would explain it, but I’m still waiting for it in the mail.
Otherwise, it was fun. I was both surprised and relieved that, at this level, word order in Mandarin is quite similar to that of English. Yay!
Mandarin.
R as an initial is basically a sound halfway between R and J, as you say (or maybe, better yet, between R and the French J as in ‘Jean’, found in the English ‘usually’). It’s a voiced retroflex fricative; “retroflex” means that it’s made with the tip of the tongue turned back against the roof of the mouth, like in an English R, but fricative means that it’s made by restricting the airstream more than it’s restricted in an English R. Also, it’s made without rounding the lips, as is generally the case with English R.
R at the end of a syllable, in the syllable ER and in syllables with the ER suffix (which are particularly commonplace in Beijing but the general phenomenon is found in most or all northern varieties of Mandarin) sounds pretty much exactly like an American English R.
R and L are frequently confused by Japanese speakers, since that particular phonetic distinction simply doesn’t exist in Japanese. I’ve rarely heard Mandarin speakers mix the two up, though. Curiously, however, many foreign words with R sounds are borrowed with L sounds, so the city of Roma becomes Luo2ma3.
Learn Japanese and find out what they are really saying in those anime cartoons. :eek:
So I had my second class last night. It’s so fun and I’m finally getting the hang of the tones.
People were saying earlier that it is easier to reach a basic level of fluency in Japanese, and yet Mandarin still seems (deceptively?) easy so far. At which point am I going to feel really confused?
The writing system is so daunting. I wonder how long it’s going to take for me to remember a few hundred characters.
I’m so glad I went with simplified characters.
Silly me, I forgot my primary question.
Can you guys recommend a dictionary for me?
Check out zhongwen.com. They have their content online but you can also purchase it in book form if you like it.
I couldn’t tell you this; Mandarin grammar is very much different from English grammar, but it has the advantage of not featuring tons of morphology (verb conjugations, noun declensions, etc.) that you’ll find in some languages. For me, when I was studying it (geez it sucks feeling my language skills atrophy. I need to get my books out again.) understanding grammar was never my hold-up - learning and retaining vocabulary was a much bigger deal and it was the biggest obstacle for me in learning to speak and understand the language. Mandarin has fairly restrictive phonotactics, which results in a lot of words sounding sort of the same to me - not that it’s tough to hear or reproduce them properly once I learned how to pronounce the different sounds, but that it’s hard to dredge words up out of memory because to my ears the words seem so similar. So I suppose the difficulty happens when you know enough vocabulary that it starts sounding sort of similar. The treatment is, of course, to study vocabulary really hard and to supplement your education with as much exposure to natural-sounding Mandarin as possible.
I’m glad that you feel your classes are still easy. Your previous experience with Korean probably is giving you an edge over the typical completely-clueless-newbie.
Most people usually find the following daunting in Mandarin:
[ul]
[li]Pin Yin pronunciation, especially when it comes to differenciating between the s, sh, x, ch, q, ci, and z sounds.[/li][li]The four + neutral tones - Some people have no problems recognizing and producing tones, others equate tones to Latin declensions, i.e., torture. One thing I found helpful is to record my own voice to see if I can recognize which tones I’m producing. Or ask a friend to see if s/he can recognize which tone I’m producing.[/li][li]Tone shifts, also known as tone sandhi. The two classic textbook examples are:[/li]
Ni(2) hao(3) [How are you?] - as separate words, “ni” and “hao” are both in the 3rd tone. Put them together, however, and “ni” changes to 2nd tone. (I have no cite, but my professors claim that these changes are to enhance the aesthetics of the language … in other words, “It sounds better this way.”)
Bu(2) shi(4) [is not] - as a separate word, “bu” is in the 4th tone. However, when followed by another 4th tone word, “bu” changes to 2nd tone.
[li]Chinese Character writing - It’s a prescriptive process. Following proper stroke order is vital, as well as observing proper stroke sizes. There’s a big difference between 士 (scholar) and 土 (earth). Try to memorize and recognize radicals and see if you can determine their etymology and construction rationale (whether it’s fact or fiction is a minor point at this stage). For instance:[/li]
明 (bright) = 日(sun) + 月 (moon) [think of sunlight + moonlight]
好 (good) = 女 (woman) + 子 (child) [it’s good for a woman to have a child / it’s good for a woman to be fertile] (sorry for the chauvinistic undertone)
士 (scholar) = 一(one) + 十(ten) [someone who knows how to count from one to ten]
[/ul]
Excalibre makes an important point: vocabulary is essential. Chinese grammar is simple relative to, say, English. Morphology is akin to Lego brick building: you can add helper words to modify your verbs and nouns, but the verbs and nouns themselves rarely, if ever, change. Using some examples from this PDF , look at how simple it is to use modal auxiliary verbs (I’m ignoring tones):
Ta kaiche - He drives.
Ta hui kaiche - He can drive.
Ta xiang kaiche. - He would like to drive.
Ta xiwang kaiche - He hopes to drive.
Ta jianchi cizhi - He insists that he resign / He insists on resigning.
Ta yao cizhi - He wants to resign.
Ta keyi cizhi - He may resign.
Ta wubi cizhi - He must resign.
In any case, good luck on your studies!