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Starting Mandarin from scratch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4052 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 20 27 December 2013 at 12:19am | IP Logged |
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Hi guys!
In brief, I'm starting with Mandarin with no previous experience with Asian languages. In this moment I'm also starting Persian and hacking Dutch. I noticed that Mandarin is a totally different beast. I tried with a podcast for Mandarin absolute beginners, was ununderstandable to me because they supposed I'm already aware of how tones work. So I watched 3-4 different video on Youtube of teacher that explained how to use tones, and I have to say that it's quite clear even if I have difficulties in recognizing the second tone. Then, I procured myself Pimsleur. After 2 minute, I dropped it. The way the speaker talks doesn't allow me to understand perfectly all the tones, so to me it's completely useless and also dangerous. So, it is evident to me that I cannot start with a spoken resource. Nothing bad, different language, different methods :) But... it's plenty of resources, how can I choose? There are textbooks, there is Assimil, there is ChinesePod (monthly subscription), popup Chinese (free)... It's ok to pay for the resouces, but I don't have a clear idea of how to start and by using what. I ask you for advices... (again :) ) Thank you in advance (as usual) for your great (as usual) availability! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4668 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 2 of 20 27 December 2013 at 12:45am | IP Logged |
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I started this thread on Mandarin Chinese resources that might be helpful:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=37457&PN=1&TPN=1 Have you looked at the FSI Mandarin course? Edited by nj24 on 27 December 2013 at 12:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4052 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 3 of 20 27 December 2013 at 1:44am | IP Logged |
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Hi!
I actually read some days ago your thread. But I'm still confused :) I took a look for FSI course, it can be really useful for spoken part, but I noticed that it doesn't teach how to write and uses only pinyin. So I image it's only a part of the process. And also: it's recommended to use it since the very beginning? Which resources can teach me the basics of how characters work? As I understood, there is a lot of logic behind them. I understood that my primary focus has to be in learning and remembering words and not disjointed characters, but there is some "milestone" resource for this? Thank you :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4258 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 20 27 December 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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I did a little experiment thingie with writing some characters down. I wrote twenty most common characters a total of fifteen times by hand on a notebook and I can recognize the characters I've handwritten from almost any text. In order to be considered literate you have to have 2400 characters under your belt, so if you were to spend the time to write something like eight characters on a notebook ten times every day, except for one day of the week when you would revise the week's characters, it would take you exactly one year to become acquainted with that amount of characters via handwriting, and if you worked with grammar and reading and all I'm sure you could achieve great things.
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| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4052 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 5 of 20 28 December 2013 at 12:22am | IP Logged |
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Hi Henkkles!
Worst enemy is time. In order to fight this problem I have to organise myself really well. I think 8 characters per day is overambitious for me. 4 should be already a great achievement I guess, if I don't want to drop Dutch, Farsi and French (English is impossible to drop, it's now part of my life). Anyway, also if I can do it (it would be awesome), I need to know how to start, it's the scariest part for me :) Edited by tristano on 28 December 2013 at 12:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5430 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 20 28 December 2013 at 4:44am | IP Logged |
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Hi OP, just because I am very curious about Mandarin nowadays myself, would you mind
directing me to these YouTube videos you saw which you thought explained tones the best? I tried searching, but there are a ton of them... Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4052 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 7 of 20 28 December 2013 at 1:08pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Leurre,
well I didn't watch a lot of them, but there are two that I liked (surely there can be others better): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZB9-vZFesk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNowZLaQqAU My methods of choice were really random :P I watched the first one because the girl is very cute and the second one because the guy is really chinese :P But I found the two really clear. For sure you can find a lot of them and find really good explanations. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5733 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 8 of 20 28 December 2013 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
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There is a book by Heisig titled "Remembering simplified Hanzi" which is only about the characters. It doesn't teach the pronunciation. But in this book the characters are grouped from the simplest to more complicated, it's really cleverly done.
I've been flirting with the idea of learning Mandarin myself and I think this book looks really good. Also, Assimil course is always worth a try. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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