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How to learn Chinese | ||
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| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4434 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 9 of 9 11 October 2014 at 1:23pm | IP Logged |
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Based on what you wrote that you can read Chinese characters better than you can speak the language. The
best idea would be to watch Chinese movies. Many of them have captions in standard Mandarin. I don't think you have trouble understanding a newspaper but your main issue is listening and conversation. You basically watch the movie while reading the text. You try to imitate what was said while the movie is played. Once you learn enough characters, you can read a Chinese newspaper you wouldn't know how to pronounce the words & phrases because the language isn't an alphabet. You can rewrite some Chinese text in phonetics such as a paragraph from a newspaper and try to read it as if you are reading in English. You'd look up the Pinyin with an online dictionary. Most computer dictionaries have audio buttons you can listen to how each character is pronounced. There are not many tones in Mandarin (just 5 including neutral). I normally think of them like French accents over the vowels: è é ê ë. I don't normally think of Chinese tones as something complete foreign to European ears. I think of them as accents over vowels: a (no accent), ā, á, ǎ, à. The 2 dots over the letter ü is for a soft u. The trouble I have in the beginning is getting around several odd Pinyin letters: Q, X & Z. Here is a set of Pinyin rules I normally go by when reading Chinese in phonetics: Q=CH sound. When used before “i”, Qi has a long “e” sound. The “i” in Chi has a short “i” sound. When used before “u”, Qu has a short “u” sound. The “u” in Chu has a long “u” sound. Q is always used in front of an “in”, “ing” but not Ch. With the old Romanization you would see "Ching" Dynasty 清朝. With Pinyin you'd use "Qing”. X=S sound S is always used before "a", "e" and "h" X is always used with "ia", "ie", “in”, “ing”, "iu”. When used in front of "i", Xi has a long "e" sound while Si has a short "i" sound. When used in front of "u", Xu has a short "u" sound while Su has a long "u" sound. Z=J sound but J is always used before "ia", "ie", "iu". When used in front of "i", Zi has a short "i" sound while Ji has a long "e" sound. When used in front of "u", Zu has a long "u" sound while Ju has a short "u" sound. Ü for short u sound commonly found after l & n such as “lǚ” in 旅行 lǚxíng and 女 “nǚ”. When entering the “ü” on a computer or portable devices, some software allow you to enter “u” while others require you to enter “v”. For practice you can try to say these words related to members of the family. They are similar that the second repeated Chinese character has a neutral tone. Try to read them as if they are French accents over vowels. bàba (father) māma (mother) gēge (older brother) dìdi (younger brother) mèimei (younger sister) bóbo (uncle - father's side) jiùjiu (uncle - mother's side) tàitai (wife) For common place names, try to think about how these are normally pronounced in English and how they should be pronounced with the proper Chinese accents over the vowels: Beijing - Běijīng Shanghai - Shànghǎi Guangzhou - Guǎngzhōu Taiwan - Táiwān Taizhong - Táizhōng Tainan - Táinán Try to distinguish these ones with similar phonetics. Again the only difference between the pair are the accents over the vowels: shānghài (to harm) - Shànghǎi (city in China) shíjiān (time) - shìjiàn (event or incident) bèijǐng (background) - Běijīng (city in China) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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