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Learning Mandarin Chinese in 7 Weeks | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| zilan2367 Newbie United States Joined 3789 days ago 27 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English Studies: Thai* Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 66 06 July 2014 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I think it's the fact that both languages are tonal and that makes Mandarin and Thai more related to one another. The tones aren't the problem for me. I think the main problem is remembering how to write the Standard Chinese characters and recalling the meaning of each character. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4899 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 18 of 66 06 July 2014 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Patrick, you really should read the first post and look at the op's profile by their name before joining in and giving advice. Besides the fact that he's not a native English speaker, he's not talking about "mastery", he just wants to get into intermediate Chinese at his community college. Zilan, you said that you signed up for "Intermediate Chinese". Does this mean the second class offered, e.g. "Chinese 2" or something? How many semesters would students at that college normally study before joining this class? If it is an average "Chinese 2" course at college, I think Alex is quite right. You could do it if you work really hard. Depending on how many semesters you're skipping, I imagine you would be up to speed if you finish perhaps half of FSI, and that is certainly possible in your time-frame. Maybe not advisable or fun, but possible. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4434 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 19 of 66 07 July 2014 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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When it comes to Mandarin Chinese you have to decide whether to write in Traditional or Simplified
characters. Learning to enter characters phonetically is basically for typing documents, Email or texting on computer. Most people including myself prefer to use Pinyin 拼音 used in China and throughout S-E Asia instead of 注音 (BPMF) used in Taiwan. Basically Pinyin uses the 26 letters of the alphabet and easier to input characters. Historically there is a lot of politics behind using Traditional / Simplified characters. Simplified characters were introduced after the communist revolution on the Mainland in 1949 to reduce illiteracy because the original characters had too many lines and too difficult to write. The government in Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek insisted that changing the old characters means you destroy Chinese traditions. The differences in writing styles also prevented both sides (the Mainland & Taiwan) from sending messages (propaganda) back and forth since 1 side cannot read the writing of the other. There is a program uploaded on Youtube by NTDTV under: Learning Chinese is fun - Episode 1 “Learning Chinese is Fun”. The actors includes a father, mother and 2 kids. The level starts from beginner to the intermediate level. Try a few episodes to see how you like the videos. Another program on Youtube is from Singapore under: "Say It 好好说! 慢慢讲!” The 2 hosts from Channel 8 in Singapore included a lady who wanted to improve her English and a man who wanted to improve his Chinese. What I like about this learning series than any other is that you have captions & subtitles simultaneously in both languages. And the dialog doesn't sound repetitious like 2 people are having a conversation. 1 person would say something in English and the other would reply back in Chinese... so there isn't the "word-by-word" or "phrase-by-phrase" translation that can slow you down. For example: instead of saying "How are you?" followed by 你好吗? "I am fine, thank you" followed by 我 还好, 谢谢. You have this instead: "How are you?" 我还好, 谢谢... with no translating back and forth in the dialog except in the caption / subtitle. ============= For writing Chinese characters I found a video on YouTube: Chinese character stroke order rules uploaded by theforeverastudent. You can find a whole set of videos with examples on various characters. You basically start with top to bottom, left to right. In a classroom the teacher would tell you there is a specific sequence which line comes before which. Each character is made up of a radical (the part that is use for grouping characters together). Like in a dictionary you have all the words that begins with the letter “A” listed 1 after the other. In Chinese you have characters with the same radical such as “釒” 1 after the other by the # strokes. Counting strokes: each line across, down and curve is counted as 1 stroke. If you go to the online dictionary www.mdbg.net on the left menu you look under 笔划 Radical / strokes you will find the all radicals listed from 1 stroke up to 17. And if you click on a radical, you will find a number of characters with that radical. If you get the stroke order slightly wrong is a character written “incorrectly”? Personally I use computers and portable devices even for recording notes so I rarely write characters on paper but use Pinyin frequently. From a practical point of view, recognizing characters is more important than getting every single stroke in the “exact” order as long as all the strokes are included. Edited by shk00design on 07 July 2014 at 5:41am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 20 of 66 07 July 2014 at 9:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Thanks for the advice. Always appreciated! Perhaps you should follow it: S/he wants to *be* intermediate in Chinese within seven weeks. Anyway can you answer the question of how much of an advantage of knowing Thai natively gives for learning Chinese? Geographic proximity doesn't necessarily help with languages. Germans find English much easier to learn, than Polish, even when they grow up near the border; and growing up in Australia did nothing for my Chinese. Edited by patrickwilken on 07 July 2014 at 9:59am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Fenn Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4881 days ago 51 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 21 of 66 07 July 2014 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/43939-indepen dent-chinese-study-rev iew/
(remove the space in 'independent' and 'review') This might be interesting to you, this guy did 80+ hours a week while in Taiwan for 4 month, and gives a really great breakdown of what he did and where is he is now. Edited by Fenn on 07 July 2014 at 2:12pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4134 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 22 of 66 07 July 2014 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Just making Fenn's link clickable:
independent chinese study review edited to add: It's a fascinating link, by the way. I have absolutely no intention of learning Chinese, but I still read every word of that guy's post! Edited by Stelle on 07 July 2014 at 1:01pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4899 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 23 of 66 07 July 2014 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
To help you out, I'll quote what Zilan wrote:
Now that's quite vague. But the next quote explains more precisely what he wants:
So what he needs is to be able to make it in an intermediate class (but we still don't know what that class consists of).
Of course I can't. But fortunately, Zilan also explains what he means by this:
People might disagree about whether there is any advantage. I'm just saying what he wrote. In another post he clarified it, saying:
It sounds like my response to you bothered you a bit. I didn't really mean to hurt your feelings. But AlexTG gave a relevant answer, which you shot down because you hadn't really read the OP. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4899 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 24 of 66 07 July 2014 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Absolutely fascinating post you've shared with us Fenn! And thank you Stelle for fixing the link. Like Stelle, I have no intention to study any kind of Chinese, but his experience is very helpful when I think about my own programs of study. Obviously the OP, Zilan, should have a look over it. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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