Can’t help you with Chinese, but I’ve learned Spanish, Russian, and some French. The hardest part of becoming comfortable in speaking for me was definitely getting over the anxiety about making mistakes. A couple of beers might help some people, but I find I actually speak better if I’m really, really tired; it ceases to be important how many mistakes I make.
(My favorite technique for gaining fluency, though, is always to fall head over heels for someone who doesn’t speak English. You could always try that one!)
Seriously, doing the translation thing is a catch-22 or like training wheels on a bicycle. I’m betting that you hear a sentence and translate it to English, think of a response in English, and then translate back into Chinese. Is that correct? If yes, then you challenge is to have the ability to translate when needed as well as to skip that whole English part of the process.
Having a black haired dictionary is great (Chinese boyfriend in your case). Language exchange. Also, there are good movies out there. I found it really good to watch a movie 1-2 twice, and then cover up the subtitles and watch it a few more times. With the visual action and plot knowledge, you’ll find you understand a fair amount.
What helped me in learning english was singing. I sang along Beatles records, or anything else I could get printed lyrics for, that helped with the reading comprehension, listening, and speaking. And because I did not read/translate, there’s no time when you’re singing, I think in english when I’m speaking english, most of the time.
LOL That is so funny! I learned Italian originally while loaded on grappa. When we originally got to Italy we stayed in a pensione with only a partial kitchen. There was a smal restaurant next door and the proprietor spoke no English but sort of took my family under his wing and every evening we sat at dinner with his family. At first it was very awkward because we knew none of the language and the wait-staff had to translate everything but after a couple of weeks I found that I was picking up more and more words and it was ALWAYS easier later in the night after the wine and grappa. I remember the revalation one night when I was pretty well sloshed that I had spent 20 minutes or so conversing with them I hadn’t needed any translation! But it only seemed to work with the wine!
I second xejkh’s advice. I was a German major and found reading aloud to be very helpful. It helped me lose my American accent when speaking, improved my pronunciations, and helped me understand spoken German much better.
Don’t give up! I’ll always be glad for the time I spent learning another language (even if I don’t use it now), it made my English skills improve dramatically.
Wo hui shuo zhong-hua, yidiar. Wo xuexi zi Guofang Yuyen Xueyuan. Near San Fan Shi. or Jiu Jin Shan, if you like.
The not translating in your head trick is it, in my opinion. Its hard to stop yourself for a while, but you have to try to learn to think in Chinese. And practice is important.
I speak Chinese very poorly now. I would love to find people in KC to practice with.
I’ve taken french, I’m fairly good at picking up languages quickly, but I’m rusty now (I used to have a friend from Canada who also spoke some french and we’d speak it while at work [no, not rudly in front of others, just to practice], we got pretty good at it, but she moved back home, and now I don’t have anyone to speak with and I’m way rusty).
When I’m taking the classes I listen to the tapes set on a low volume as I’m falling asleep.
so…
i’m just messing around, trying out a free message board thing.
if you want to practice chinese, or just chat in pinyin,
come on over to ni shi manguo ma?
i don’t know if it will have scary banner advertising and stuff, but it might be fun for a bit. i’ll see if any of my classmates or friends in taiwan want to come chat too. native speakers welcome too!
How about if I call you by your first name. would that be easier ? I thought you made a funny doper joke in pinyin and admired you for it.
Although I haven’t used my Chinese in about 20 years, I learned my first Chinese phrases from a Nung mercenary on the outskirts of Nha Trang in 1971.
Wo hen gaoxing yinwei zher you hen duo shuo hanyu de ren! Nimen zhen you bangzhu de. Wo zhen bu zhidao zenme ganxie ni cai hao.
(I cheated with that last sentence.)
“Wo yinggai gaosu nimen, wo shi nu de ren.”
Xiexie. :smack:
Haha! Hen hao, xiexie. Ni ne?
Wo xihuan na ge dianying de zhuyi.
Well, I stand corrected as obviously you started earlier and with a more interesting teacher than probably any of us on the boards have had. Actually I would be real interested in a Nung mercenary thread…
