Learning Chinese - tips?

[fbrdphreak]

So I work for a company with a huge presence in China, have colleagues I work with in China, may eventually go over there, etc - so it would be a good step for me to learn Chinese.

I've always been good at learning languages, as has my gf and she wants to learn with me. Between her two Chinese friends and my colleagues, we will have access to native speakers which is good.

Has anyone learned Chinese on their own? Any suggestions on courses/materials?

Anyone heard anything about the Rosetta Stone program advertised on TV all the time?

TIA

 

[nakedfrog]

I think the easiest way to learn Chinese is to be born in China to Chinese parents.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
I think the easiest way to learn Chinese is to be born in China to Chinese parents.

Congratulations, you have earned the Captain Obvious award of the day. Click here for your reward

 

[Epic Fail]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
I think the easiest way to learn Chinese is to be born in China to Chinese parents.

Congratulations, you have earned the Captain Obvious award of the day. Click here for your reward

BAN THIS SHIT!

 

[Terabyte]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
I think the easiest way to learn Chinese is to be born in China to Chinese parents.

Congratulations, you have earned the Captain Obvious award of the day. Click here for your reward

lol you jerk.

 

[darkxshade]

My first suggestion is to find out which part of China you're going to and what dialect they speak.

 

[Nitemare]

mandarin or cantonese?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Very good points darkxshade & Nitemare - that would be step 1 for sure, as I don't know.

What about learning techniques in general? Rosetta stone? Another at-home course type thing? It would have to be at my own pace, schedules are too crazy to fit a class in.

 

[0roo0roo]

think the chinese government funds some websitesand stuff on learning the language... heard it on npr a while back

 

[Calculator83]

Learning another language is a dry and daunting task, unless you're HIGHLY motivated. Consider your time allowance first, then your goals. Only then do you need tips for the actual task.

Chinese is especially repetitive a learning experience because of its obvious differences. The language only really requires a normal person to know 2000/3000 characters (symbols) whereas in English most people need 10k+ words. The problem emphasized here is that going from English (Germanic) to "CHINESE" specifically "Does not include japanese/korean" is the lack of straightforwardness in the structure. People in china will speak in circles. They're not lying, because it's assumed that you'd know what they?re inferring, but it?s dame close. Chinese is a language where the characters are connected by circles in terms of definition. The characters "Combo" together to form complex expressions that is at times arbitrary.

An example would be a zip file. Instead of copying the file straight, they compress it with Chinese where 2 characters have the same meaning as a sentence in English. That does not mean one is excused from knowing the meaning prior to decoding "duh".

To use Chinese EFFECTIVELY, there is this wide border that requires hard memorization of historical/modern cultural references. ?At the end of a ?Li Ke? (science oriented) high school Chinese education, the graduate is equivalent to a US sophomore college student in many academic areas.? This is not to brag that all of the things these crammers have painfully memorized are useful; it just demonstrates the level of smug that you may encounter.

Effectively here means at/above high school level. Most people will have trouble passing 5/6th grade level, just due to the representative differences.

Then again, if you're only after business Chinese, most times it's a direct translation of Econ books and just as strung out. Speaking like that won't impress a Chinese literate, but will be sufficient as long as you don't stutter to recall the next word.

Rosetta stone does work better than all other language learning software I've tried. One of my friends is getting pretty good at Russian with it.

Good Luck. I?ve heard that having a native speaker girlfriend of the language you are trying to learn helps tremendously.

 

[LongCoolMother]

Some of my thoughts:

First, the phonetic sounds in Mandarin Chinese are very different from in English. Your mouth/tongue might not readily be able to produce the tones and sounds to enough accuracy to be understood. A big difference (and Chinese speakers will know this) is that the meaning of words and phrases in Chinese depend on the TONE in which you speak it. It's different in English. If you say, "hello," you mean to say "hello" no matter how you construe the tone of the word. Changing the tone might indicate whether you meant "hello" as a question, or a remark, or an exclamation, but the word is the same in any case. Not so in Chinese. Many very different words have the same sound, but different tones, that non-speakers will have an extremely hard time distinguishing (they can't hear the difference, much less be able to reproduce it). Imagine a non-native English speaker speaking. Sure, it might be hard to understand the sentence if he is emphasizing the wrong syllables and phrasing the sentence strangely, but you can still determine what WORDS he says. In Chinese, this would be near impossible, as the tone is as important as the sound in determining what the word spoken is.

On the other hand, the grammar of Chinese is very simple and easy to learn. Spanish has really complicated syntax and grammar. English is a little bit simpler. But Chinese is far easier than all of them. You don't have special forms of words for past tense, present tense, masculine or feminine objects, etc.

Writing is VERY hard.

 

[summit]

listen to jin tha mc's "learn chinese"

 

[Calculator83]

Originally posted by: LongCoolMother
Some of my thoughts:

First, the phonetic sounds in Mandarin Chinese are very different from in English. Your mouth/tongue might not readily be able to produce the tones and sounds to enough accuracy to be understood. A big difference (and Chinese speakers will know this) is that the meaning of words and phrases in Chinese depend on the TONE in which you speak it. It's different in English. If you say, "hello," you mean to say "hello" no matter how you construe the tone of the word. Changing the tone might indicate whether you meant "hello" as a question, or a remark, or an exclamation, but the word is the same in any case. Not so in Chinese. Many very different words have the same sound, but different tones, that non-speakers will have an extremely hard time distinguishing (they can't hear the difference, much less be able to reproduce it). Imagine a non-native English speaker speaking. Sure, it might be hard to understand the sentence if he is emphasizing the wrong syllables and phrasing the sentence strangely, but you can still determine what WORDS he says. In Chinese, this would be near impossible, as the tone is as important as the sound in determining what the word spoken is.

On the other hand, the grammar of Chinese is very simple and easy to learn. Spanish has really complicated syntax and grammar. English is a little bit simpler. But Chinese is far easier than all of them. You don't have special forms of words for past tense, present tense, masculine or feminine objects, etc.

Writing is VERY hard.

Fun is part we no got particles. The language is also POV. Technically the highest level of Chinese is excused of any grammatical rules.

 

[Praxis1452]

If your only going to speak it's really not that complicated. If you have some interaction with a chinese speaking person you can learn tone decently quickly. Mandarin being the official language has 4 tones, some dialects have more. Words can be spelled the same way(pinyin) and have the same tone with different meanings depending on the context of the sentence. Also character combo's seem arbitrary to me atleast but must be memorized.

If your goal is to learn how to speak, your best bet in my opinion is to try to find someone who speaks it.

If your going to write... well, it's just brute memorization to me.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Thanks for all the input everyone - it is greatly appreciated!