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Mandarin: Number of hours | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bradley Groupie United States Joined 7226 days ago 55 posts - 56 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 34 11 April 2005 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cthulhu- Thanks for the advice. Replying to learning Mandarin in Beijing, over other cities, I am just repeating what the numerous Chinese professors at my university have instructed me to do. All three of these professors are from a different city than Beijing, and just recommend that I would hear the most Mandarin spoken outside of academia here, compared to the various dialects often spoken.
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| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7226 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 10 of 34 11 April 2005 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
Oh, you'll hear plenty of Mandarin in Beijing alright. It's just that the Mandarin you hear on the streets of Beijing is very...Unique. Let me break it down. If you go anywhere in China, anywhere at all, you can study Mandarin. If you're in a city in an area where Mandarin is not the standard dialect, you'll still be able to practice Mandarin and speak it with students, educated people, and probably a few people on the street. Pretty much everyone will understand you, even if their response might as well be Greek. The situation is pretty much identical in Bejing, even though they do actually speak a dialect of Mandarin there. You can talk to a lot of people and practice your Mandarin with them, like the educated people and the students, but most people will be speaking in a way so vastly different from what you learn in books that you'll be lost. Then there are cities like Tianjin, Kunming, and probably a bunch of others, where quite clear, standard Mandarin is what even the man on the street speaks. You can study Mandarin there, and when you're strolling through the mall or hanging out at the park, the people around you will *actually* be speaking a recognizable form of Mandarin. To me this seems like the optimal learning environment, I don't know, I suppose other people have different views on the matter. Edited by Cthulhu on 11 April 2005 at 6:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7321 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 34 11 April 2005 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I must admit that I have only been to Northern China for a few visits - I do not know the region well. But what Cthulhu said is true - the dialect spoken in Beijing is particular. One dialectal feature in the North is to add -r ending to many characters, as well as using many colloquial idiomatic expressions. Edited by victor on 16 April 2005 at 8:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7318 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 12 of 34 16 April 2005 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cthulhu: If you don't mind me asking, how many characters have you learned? I'm asking because you probably have a better idea of how many characters are required than native speakers of Chinese, who tend to give ridiculously low estimates like 1500 characters to read a book. Do you have any advice for someone such as myself who can handle basic conversation but has a weak vocabulary?
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| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7226 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 13 of 34 17 April 2005 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Malcolm: Near as I can tell through self-testing, I can recognize ~5000 characters and recreate 3000-4000 from memory...not including variants.
As to how many characters are required, that's really pretty hard to say. It depends on what you require them for. Recognizing 1500 characters might be enough to read a few books for children, the Chinese equivalent of "Curious George" or something of the sort, but that probably isn't your goal. 2500 should be enough to read most modern writings without looking up a new character every sentence or two, and by 3500 or so new characters in anything written since 1919 will be a note-worthy occurance. To read the great "vernacular" novels 4000 is a necessity, and by 4500 should be reasonably comfortable. 6000 and you should be able to pick up anything from Confucius to the Renmin Ribao and read it leisurely. I'm not to this point yet obviously. As for advice, I really don't know what to say. When I was at an earlier stage and wanted to increase my less than impressive vocabulary I turned to glossed readers that were a bit above my level of comprehension, but not so far above that the vocabulary wasn't of use to me. At the time I was still learning vocabulary and characters seperately, so I made flashcards of each. That was fine for the vocabulary, but I still had a lot of trouble with the characters until I started approaching them from a more structurally based approach rather than a frequency based one. I really don't know if this was the best way to go about things, but I can vouch that it worked for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7318 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 14 of 34 17 April 2005 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cthulhu: Thanks for answering. I think your estimate sounds much more accurate than the numbers that Chinese people seem to be pulling out of their hats. I'm really amazed that you can read and recreate so many characters. Right now I'm working on finishing up "Reading and Writing Chinese", which teaches 2000 characters. I also have a book that teaches 3200 characters, and I remember thinking to myself "Man, when I finish this book I'll be unstoppable!", but I'm beginning to realize now that this isn't true.
I have a more difficult question: how many words (separate vocabulary items, not characters) do you know? I think I know less than 3,000 words, but more than 2,500. I can understand most of what I hear, but I frequently encounter words that I don't know. I'm working with a set of books right now that teaches 6,000 words. Do you think this would be enough to have fluent conversations with sympathetic native speakers? Edited by Malcolm on 17 April 2005 at 9:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 34 17 April 2005 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I am not a student of Chinese but we have several pages on this topic on this website and it is quite important to prospective learners. My information so far has been that Chinese students know 1800 characters when they finish high school. Does this mean they can not even read a regular novel? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7226 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 16 of 34 18 April 2005 at 11:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Adminstrator: I'm not sure where you got that information, but it does not seem to be accurate. The curriculum set up by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan requires students to be taught 2,756 characters by the end of grade 6 alone, while the PRC requires 2,500 (Data here although it is in Chinese). I don't know what the stats for high school are offhand, but obviously the number would have to be higher than 1,800.
Malcolm: Counting the number of words does present quite a difficulty. I mean, do I count the 12+ synonyms for "if" as one word or as a big pile of seperate words? Do I count the four-character set phrases? Even the ones that are effectively proverbs? What about all the really archaic words that no one ever uses in speach? I'm afraid I'm going to have to cop out and just say "lots." However many words it takes to write and defend a master's thesis I guess. edit: Is that "Reading & Writing Chinese" you're using the one by McNaughton and Li? One of the first books I started out with was a copy of that which I "borrowed" from a friend. Edited by Cthulhu on 18 April 2005 at 11:30am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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