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Trying to tackle Mandarin as a beginner

  Tags: Beginner | Mandarin
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center Post Reply
9 messages over 2 pages: 1
Ari
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 6573 days ago

2314 posts - 5695 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
Studies: Czech, Latin, German

 
 Message 9 of 9
30 March 2014 at 8:37pm | IP Logged 
This thread looks a bit old, but since it seems to have been raised from the dead, I'll give my two cents: If one is unfamiliar with language learning, the first few months of learning a language with an unfamiliar sound system is HARD. It's terribly difficult for the brain to remember a bunch of sounds which are totally unfamiliar. There are no categories, no places to put these words, and they don't stick. After a while, this gets easier. Once you've got a few hundred words down, your brain starts to get familiar with the sounds and can relate them to each other. So "zhou" sounds like "xiu" but with the initial from "zhe", sort of. You remember things through relations and associations, and jumping into something that sounds as foreign as Mandarin, there's nothing to relate to. But be tenacious, keep drilling those basic words and phrases over and over even though you keep forgetting them, and eventually you get a foothold, and then it's all downhill from there (was that a mixed metaphor? I can't tell myself). Until you start learning characters, at least, because you'll have the same problem there.


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