My wife is from China, so I would like to learn Chinese. She is trying to teach me, but her teaching me random words isn’t really working. What I need is some sort of structured course to follow. Unfortunately, taking classes is not really an option because the Chinese language courses at the local university conflict with my work schedule, and none of the community colleges offer it. Can anyone recommend books, software, techniques, or other learning material that I could use at home? Or is there a way I can find out if there are other classes in my area? I would be willing to attend night or weekend courses if I could find one.
Learning Mandarin takes daily dedication (at least in my case). I can’t help you with the home study, but a buddy of mine married a Chinese woman and he did something interesting to learn the language.
Rather than try to learn Chinese, what he learned was restaurant Chinese. He learned dialogues and the individual words for what you would use in a restaurant, as well as the names of all his favorite veggies and dishes. They enjoyed eating out, and it was real good for my friend to be able to do one thing well in situational Chinese.
So, just an idea if there’s something you and your wife like to do. Then you could learn the situation Chinese around that as a base for your start in the language.
Well, you could probably find out if your neighborhood offers Chinese School on the weekends. You’ll probably be stuck in a class with a bunch of young Chinese kids who were forced to attend Chinese school by their parents. Not recommended. (It’s also not a great way to learn.)
China Guuy’s suggestion is interesting and could be fun. Food is such a huge part of being Chinese and in family interactions that phrases for the dinner table would be useful.
Even in a Chinese course they will still teach you phrases and words, mostly enough to get you by (stuff like “How are you”, “Have you eaten?” “Thanks” and etc.)
You need “learn in your car Chinese”
There is a publisher that makes Learn in your car… for every language… I bought the Japanese version for myself so I would be ahead of my college courses… It worked out great and it’s as easy as remembering your favorite song after a while… Listen to them everywhere and it will get to be second nature…
The package I bought was in cassette form… but if you have a cd player, they more than likely will have those as well.
The publisher is Penton Overseas, Inc.
http://www.pentonoverseas.com
I agree that “random words from an SO” is basically a bust. I study at home in some way for hours almost every day, but I’m at the level where I can pick stuff up myself in the course of doing things I enjoy, it’s tough to start from scratch. For starters you might go down the the campus book store and pick up the course books for the first term or two of a regular class. Do as much as you can on your own (she’s your wife, after all, not a professor) but have your wife check your pronunciation and help you with grammar and words you have trouble with.
The book I started with is the venerable (and seemingly universal) Practical Chinese Reader, which is pretty lame material, but not a bad start. You can probably burn through that pretty quick assuming you’re not worrying about writing. After that there are more choices for books, you can go with the school’s coursebooks or check into it on your own. After you get a decent grasp of vocab and grammar you can start using outside materials (if you’re going to learn to read at all) or your wife’s help in conversation. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind spreading around the second-language burden a little once you can handle it!
About reading, you may not see any use for it, but you should consider that it may help you with speaking. Some people are just really into flapping there gums all the time and can pick things up that way, but I can’t imagine learning Chinese without learning to read. Cantonese is often taught this way (for reasons I consider pretty poorly thought it) and I can see that most people who learn this way are worse off for it.
It’s so strange, I recently started learning Chinese, and now every day I see a new thread about it! Today there are two! Very helpful for me, actually. I also started because my partner is Chinese (actually a BBC - British Born Chinese - with parents from Hong Kong, so her English is perfect). I have learnt quite a few phrases from her, none of which would be useful in everyday life!
The problem with learning ‘restaurant Chinese’ is that the language spoken there will most probably be Cantonese, while it sounds like you want to learn Mandarin. The languages are as different as English and Dutch. However, there do seem to be more resources for learning Mandarin at home than there are for Chinese.
All learning is context-based; that is, if you learn something in a particular context, it is in that context that you will best remember what you have learnt. That’s why you can sometimes chat volubly in a foreign language class, and dry up on meeting a native speaker outside of class. So your best bet is to increase the number of contexts you learn in, and the number of media you learn from.
I’d suggest these resources:
[ul]
[li]A language course from a company like Linguaphone or Berlitz. These courses are far from perfect, but the tapes are useful, as is having the same dialogue on tape and in writing. Of course you can also listen to the tapes wherever you want to. The courses can be expensive to buy, but I rent mine from the local library for less than £5 for three months. [/li]
[li]Websites. There are more of these for Mandarin than for Cantonese. An excellent Cantonese website is http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/index.html [/li]
[li] Flashcards - printable online (from the site I just linked to, for example) or bought from many shops in Chinatown. I haven’t actually used these yet, but a few comments I’ve read lately, such as on this thread on learning Chinese, have convinced me that learning the written characters will help me see the underlying logic of the language. [/li]
[li]Television. I don’t have satellite TV, but my partner does, and there are two free Chinese-language stations on it. One (CCTV-9) even has a pretty good late-night Chinese language course. [/li]
[li] Movies and videos. Either movies in Cantonese/Mandarin with subtitles, or DVD’s with an option to watch in Chinese. [/li]
[li]Writing in the foreign language. Perhaps write a note to your partner in Chinese, (ngor oy ne is one of the first phrases I learnt ;)) or, as someone else suggested on the other thread, keep a journal. [/li]
[li]Conversation. Well, at this level that just means learning to say '‘nee-dee soong sup fun ho sik!’ (‘this food is very good’ - bit stilted, admittedly). [/ul][/li]
And of course, it seems that the Straight Dope is a pretty good learning resource in itself!
SSS, I definitely think you should take up characters. I don’t know how long you’ve been working at Cantonese, (you said “recently,” so you may be in “initial rush of enthusiasm” mode) but besides being hard it carries some of its own cultural frustrations as well, and you may end up needing reading progress to sustain your efforts and convince yourself that you’re getting anywhere or that learning Cantonese will be useful for anything. Because “my partner’s parents speak Cantonese,” I’m sorry to have to say, doesn’t usually get many people far.
What can you tell me about Linguaphone? I always see their ads and am somewhat skeptical about their claims.
Thanks for the suggestions, there are some good ideas. I should have specified I want to learn Mandarin because that’s all my wife speaks, she doesn’t know any other regional dialects (the city she’s from is about an hour’s drive from Beijing, so Mandarin is the local dialect). I’d like to learn to read, but that’s a lower priority than speaking.
Language tapes are doable, as I have about an hour drive to work and plenty of time to listen to tapes. I can also find out what textbook the university uses, my wife is a graduate student there so she can find out easily. They have some flash cards in the university bookstore that may be useful, too.
You lucked out, since Beijing Mandarin is pretty much the taught standard, and at least nominally the mainland Chinese standard. Don’t see why you need to send your wife to find out about the books, you should be able to just go to the appropriate section and pick up those books applied to the lowest course-numbers. Shouldn’t be a problem with your not being a student, though I guess policies probably vary from school to school.
Oh, however, some books come in both simplified or traditional character editions, although reading may not be your priority I would go with traditional if I were you since that’s what you’ll see most outside of China.
Anyway, good luck. Chinese is a tough path, but rewarding.
By the way, if anyone could recommend any popular mainland and/or Taiwan-based message boards I would appreciate it. I learn tons of stuff reading boards, but by reading only Hong Kong based boards I worry that I’m going to lose touch with Mandarin grammar and general methods of expression.
I learned “restaurant Mandarin” when I had a half-Chinese SO. (About all I can remember is how to ask for chopsticks or more tea, but those are both pretty useful). Even though many Chinese restaurants operate in Cantonese, the workers frequently speak a fair amount of Mandarin, since it is taught in school on the mainland. It really is nice to have some “situational competence” in at least one area, and it also gives you a place to practice on someone other than your wife. You may find that your in-laws are happy to help you practice with this, too. My SO’s mother, and the parents of my other Chinese friends, all found it just adorable when I would pick up the pot and ask if they wanted more tea, and then would help me with pronunciation and learning new words. (My acupuncturist never let me get through a session without teaching me a new phrase, either). And proclaiming “hao chi” after you take the first bite of your mother-in-law’s cooking is practically required if you want to fit into the family. 
Jet, hope your wife teaches you standardized mandarin as opposed to to local dialect in use in Beijing. almost 2 seperate languages. I’m sure she will, but beware when she gets together with her homeslice buddies as it may be incomprehensible.
Major bookstores probably have some survival or conversational Chinese books. Most university level books are not real practical. Eg, they don’t teach survival Chinese. I suggest you check out a big bookstore and see what is available. Just look at the English parts and see if it seems useful. Sorry I don’t have a specific suggestion for you.
Drive time tapes might work. Make sure you talk at loud in the car although if you car pool your ride buddies might not enjoy this part.
Sorry Space Vampire, I didn’t mean to imply that it would be difficult to get the textbooks from the school bookstore, I just meant that my wife could easily stop by between classes and pick up something.
There are a couple Chinese message boards that my wife really likes that are based in the mainland, I’ll ask her and find out their URL’s for you.
China Guy, my wife is from Tianjin and she tells me the local dialect is basically standard Mandarin, albeit with an accent. She sometimes wishes she grew up somewhere else where she would have learned another dialect in addition to Mandarin. 
Finding the right tapes may be a problem. I’ve looked at them in the past but they mostly seem to be phrases for the business traveler. But parroting some phrase I heard from a tape isn’t going to really be useful unless I can understand the reply, which the tapes don’t teach. They may be better for me later on, but right now I think I need to find something that focuses more on basic vocabulary. The survival-type language books tend to have the same problem.
Well, I also recently got married to a woman who happens to be from Tianjin. I have tried to learn various phrases from her, but I’m having a real hard time with the pronunciation (I simply cannot distinguish between the four “tones” that are used for the various vowel sounds).
We’ve gotten to the point where she can understand me, simply because she recognized how I pronounce the words (basically, she’s learning a new language called "Barry’s attempts at Chinese). Unfortunately, none of my other Chinese friends can understand me, and I certainly can’t understand them.
sigh
It’s a darn good thing she speaks English fluently…
Barry
Gonna give this a bump as a reminder about those URLS…
Hey JJ, I just thought of something else…my first-year teacher used some sheets he made up himself to explain grammar points in addition to the meager grammar taught in the textbooks, I’ll bet if you dropped an e-mail to whoever teaches the first-year classes at the unversity he or she would be happy to provide materials like that for the price of copying them if you explain that your schedule doesn’t work out to take the class.
If you want a really useful home learning course, get Teach Youirself Chinese from Amazon. The “Teach Yourself” series mixes grammar with practical sentence patterns and conversation from the gitgo, so you’ll be able to make useful, albeit simple, sentences in Chinese from the start. The book comes with a tape set, you’ll be able to listen to a standard Mandarin speaker to get the accent. Using your wife as a “pillow dictionary” can be an enormous help as well.
The most important tip I can give on language learning is to use it everyday. Make dinner with your wife your time to speak Chinese. If your cable system carries Chinese-language programming, watch some every day. You won’t understand it, but just hearing the sounds and picking the odd bit of vocab will be helpful.
I also urge you to begin study of written Chinese at the same time you begin your studies in conversation. The sooner you can wean yourself from Pinyin romanization the better. The key is to learn the 189 root characters so that you can use them to look words up in the dictionary (I use my handy Oxford University Press Concise English-Chinese, Chinese-English Dictionary).
Your ultimate goal is to be able to think in Chinese instead of having to mentally translate back and forth between English and Chinese. If you hear the word bi(2)jiu(3), you should think of cold, frosty suds and not "Hmm, bijiu means “beer”).
Hao(3) Yun(4)qi(4)!
Oh, and th enumbers next to the Chinese syllables refer to the tones. Gettign your tones right is very important, obviously, but don’t let it paralyze you. Even if you screw up the tones, the Chinese speaker hearing you will likely figure out your meaning from context.
Practice, practice, practice!