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Learning Mandarin Chinese in 7 Weeks

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patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4524 days ago
1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 9 of 66
06 July 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged 
AlexTG wrote:
If you do 8 hours a day every day it works out at 8x7x7=392 hours.

When I did French at university we had about 4 contact hours a week=52 hours in a 13 week semester=104
hours in a year. I think we can safely say that some students were only working as much out of class as in
class, so let's double it for the total hours and we get 208.

Therefore, if this "intermediate" class is a second year college course, I guess maybe your plan could work.


But your math ignores that it takes about four times longer to accomplish mastery in Chinese than French for a native English speaker. So in your example university students would need >800 hours study.
2 persons have voted this message useful



AlexTG
Diglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 4629 days ago
178 posts - 354 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 10 of 66
06 July 2014 at 11:33am | IP Logged 
Zilan's a native Thai speaker ; ).

But now I'm wondering, do universities make the students of harder languages work harder, or do they not
take them to the same level as easy languages?
1 person has voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4524 days ago
1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 11 of 66
06 July 2014 at 11:48am | IP Logged 
AlexTG wrote:
Zilan's a native Thai speaker ; ).


Not sure how much of a discount Thai gives for Chinese. I assume it's better than English, but it might not be so much. I'd be curious if it is closer/further-away than Russian-English.


2 persons have voted this message useful



drygramul
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 4459 days ago
165 posts - 269 votes 
Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2
Studies: French, Polish

 
 Message 12 of 66
06 July 2014 at 1:36pm | IP Logged 
zilan2367 wrote:

I don't know if I should post this here but I will be making my first YouTube video in a couple of days to show how far I am in Mandarin now. And a few more videos on how my Mandarin is improving in the coming days. I will post the link to it in this thread when I'm finished with it.

I'm looking forward to see your video with your results, so please post it here, I find the challenge interesting.
3 persons have voted this message useful



shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4435 days ago
747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 13 of 66
06 July 2014 at 2:33pm | IP Logged 
Anybody wants to know how close / far apart Thai is to Chinese, the person to ask is Stuart Jay Raj. He
has his own web-link: www.stujay.com. SJ Raj is a polyglot who
mastered tonal languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese & Indonesian.

I know someone who is a native Cantonese-speaker. He took Mandarin classes for 6 months and
eventually gave up. He basically got as far as saying 你好 (nǐhǎo) & 谢谢 (xièxie). Part of the problem is
that the Chinese were brought up to learn by memorization that it would take a lot more effort to get
words & phrases into your head. Chinese people tend to socialize within their own circle of friends and
associates so they don't get to practice foreign languages very much. The other problem is that he had
no interest listening to songs, TV & radio programs in Mandarin so the outcome is obvious.

Compared to European languages Chinese grammar is surprisingly easy to master since it does not
require subject-verb conjugation. Take a language like French for instance if you want to say a person
goes to the movies you'd start learning by going through the pronoun list: I, you, he, she, we, you (m pl
& f pl):
Je vais au cinéma
Tu vas au cinéma
Il/elle va au cinéma
nous allons au cinéma
etc.
In Chinese you just have:
我/你/妳/他/她/你们/他们/她们去看电影。You simply substitute the pronoun (我/你/妳/他, etc.) and the
rest 去看电影 is the same for for each pronoun. The verb 去看 (going to see) stays the same instead of
varies with each pronoun.

The numbering system is much simpler than in English or French. You start with your basic: 一二三四五
六七八九十 for 1 to 10. For the next set 10-19 you add 十 in front of the numbers 1-9 so you have 十一,
十二, 十三, 十四, etc. The next set 20-29 you have 二十 for twenty and add it in front of 1-9 you have 二
十一, 二十二, 二十三, 二十四, etc. It's like in French you start with basic 1-10: un, deux, trois, quatre,
cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix. The next set you'd have dix-un for 11, dix-deux for 12, dix-trois for 13
but instead you have onze, douze, treize. If we do it the Chinese way for English we'd have ten-one for
11, ten-two for 12 and ten-three for 13 but instead we have eleven, twelve and thirteen.

Once again the problem isn't the grammar, vocabulary or even pronunciation but writing the characters.
A lot of Chinese-Americans can speak fluent Mandarin with their parents but cannot write anything
besides their given name which is understandable. What I find is that a lot of foreigners tend to be more
accurate when pronouncing words & phrases in Mandarin than Cantonese. Compared to Cantonese,
Mandarin is much simpler with 4 tones instead of 9.

Edited by shk00design on 06 July 2014 at 2:37pm
1 person has voted this message useful



zilan2367
Newbie
United States
Joined 3790 days ago
27 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: English
Studies: Thai*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 14 of 66
06 July 2014 at 5:34pm | IP Logged 
shk00design wrote:
When it comes to TV programs in Mandarin for children, these 2 are available on YouTube:

1. 大耳朵图图 (Tutu with big ears). The cartoon series on CCTV deals with mature (adult) subjects seen
through the eye of a 5 year-old kid. A lot of dialog is very funny. You follow links on the selection menu
to get to other children programs.

2. 搞笑行动 (gao xiao xing dong): a comedy from Singapore featured a single-mother (played by a male
actor) with 2 kids. The dialog is straightforward and easy to understand although the uploaded episodes
does not have captions / subtitles. Some episodes are listed under 梁細妹 (liang xi mei). The later series
梁婆婆 (liang po po) featured the male actor who played the part of the mother as a grandmother.

Thanks for the recommendations of the shows. Right now, I stopped watching the Chinese drama and I'm watching Chinese Sesame Street. After I finish Chinese Sesame Street, I will watch the shows you listed.
1 person has voted this message useful



zilan2367
Newbie
United States
Joined 3790 days ago
27 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: English
Studies: Thai*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 15 of 66
06 July 2014 at 5:38pm | IP Logged 
AlexTG wrote:
If you do 8 hours a day every day it works out at 8x7x7=392 hours.

When I did French at university we had about 4 contact hours a week=52 hours in a 13 week semester=104
hours in a year. I think we can safely say that some students were only working as much out of class as in
class, so let's double it for the total hours and we get 208.

Therefore, if this "intermediate" class is a second year college course, I guess maybe your plan could work.

I'm not sure which is a worse way to learn a language, the university student approach, or your's. They are
both truly horrible ways to learn a language. You will be so depleted of energy that there's no way you could
be efficient on a per hour basis, and obviously it's not going to be fun.

8 hours a day seems attainable. I found a good app on the App Store to track my time learning Mandarin. I'll update on here to tell you how it's going.
1 person has voted this message useful



zilan2367
Newbie
United States
Joined 3790 days ago
27 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: English
Studies: Thai*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 16 of 66
06 July 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
shk00design wrote:
Anybody wants to know how close / far apart Thai is to Chinese, the person to ask is Stuart Jay Raj. He
has his own web-link: www.stujay.com. SJ Raj is a polyglot who
mastered tonal languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese & Indonesian.

I know someone who is a native Cantonese-speaker. He took Mandarin classes for 6 months and
eventually gave up. He basically got as far as saying 你好 (nǐhǎo) & 谢谢 (xièxie). Part of the problem is
that the Chinese were brought up to learn by memorization that it would take a lot more effort to get
words & phrases into your head. Chinese people tend to socialize within their own circle of friends and
associates so they don't get to practice foreign languages very much. The other problem is that he had
no interest listening to songs, TV & radio programs in Mandarin so the outcome is obvious.

Compared to European languages Chinese grammar is surprisingly easy to master since it does not
require subject-verb conjugation. Take a language like French for instance if you want to say a person
goes to the movies you'd start learning by going through the pronoun list: I, you, he, she, we, you (m pl
& f pl):
Je vais au cinéma
Tu vas au cinéma
Il/elle va au cinéma
nous allons au cinéma
etc.
In Chinese you just have:
我/你/妳/他/她/你们/他们/她们去看电影。You simply substitute the pronoun (我/你/妳/他, etc.) and the
rest 去看电影 is the same for for each pronoun. The verb 去看 (going to see) stays the same instead of
varies with each pronoun.

The numbering system is much simpler than in English or French. You start with your basic: 一二三四五
六七八九十 for 1 to 10. For the next set 10-19 you add 十 in front of the numbers 1-9 so you have 十一,
十二, 十三, 十四, etc. The next set 20-29 you have 二十 for twenty and add it in front of 1-9 you have 二
十一, 二十二, 二十三, 二十四, etc. It's like in French you start with basic 1-10: un, deux, trois, quatre,
cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix. The next set you'd have dix-un for 11, dix-deux for 12, dix-trois for 13
but instead you have onze, douze, treize. If we do it the Chinese way for English we'd have ten-one for
11, ten-two for 12 and ten-three for 13 but instead we have eleven, twelve and thirteen.

Once again the problem isn't the grammar, vocabulary or even pronunciation but writing the characters.
A lot of Chinese-Americans can speak fluent Mandarin with their parents but cannot write anything
besides their given name which is understandable. What I find is that a lot of foreigners tend to be more
accurate when pronouncing words & phrases in Mandarin than Cantonese. Compared to Cantonese,
Mandarin is much simpler with 4 tones instead of 9.

I looked up Stuart Jay Raj and his Thai is pretty good. I just finished the FSI lesson on numbers from 0-10 and I'm working on 11-99 now. I agree that the writing is more difficult. Do you know any good websites that have lessons on writing Standard Chinese?
Currently I'm using a website called "Chinese Learner" but I'm still working on the individual strokes and not the characters yet.


1 person has voted this message useful



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