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Learning Chinese?

CarpeDeo-I say learning from a Chinese person personally would be the best way to go in this case. Since you're just trying to learn enough so that you can speak... might as well go the extra distance and get a friend or somebody to help you w/ a few phrases...

Besides, learning online can be really dangerous when you apply it to real life.. w/o a personal instructor, things might just get really weird when you try to practice in the real world.

"Hi, I am really hungry, where is the restroom?"

><GG>
 
i agree with gg on this, learning with humans is best. especially for pronounciations purposes, which is the largest problem westerners have imho.
 
If you insist on getting an introduction online - then these sites should help you plenty.

Phonetic Symbols

Introductory Forums

Another thought just came to mind... you can take an introduction to Mandarin course at a community college... it's a cheap alternative.. and you will have professional help and practice.

Good luck

><GG>
 
For Chinese Mandarin, at the very least, you must have someone take you through the pronunciation of HanYu PinYin. What is written in english letters is nothing like how it sounds....Q comes to mind as the biggest one.
 


<< For Chinese Mandarin, at the very least, you must have someone take you through the pronunciation of HanYu PinYin. What is written in english letters is nothing like how it sounds....Q comes to mind as the biggest one. >>



This is the toughest part of all. It's like a tongue twister in some sense. 🙂

Another way to learn is listen to Mandarin songs and go with the lyrics. That is after you understand what the word means. If you're new to Chinese, have a friend who's chinese and follow him around with his friends. You'll tend to learn in a while. 😛
 
Wow- thx guys. I just got back from Taiwan <I'm Korean> with a team from my church group, and I'm thinking of going back there because of the awesome experience that we had. If I go back, I'd like to be able to take back a bit more Chinese than I came in with. I wish I could take beginning Chinese here at school, but my schedule is already packed full.
 
Go to UCI

you'll learn all chinese dialects in:

15 minutes near the school of Engineering
20 minutes near the Bio Sciences
23 weeks near Social Sciences
 
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