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Starting Mandarin from scratch | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4388 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 17 of 20 30 December 2013 at 9:01am | IP Logged |
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The best approach to learning? Some people suggested getting down to the characters the first day. I think this is
a big turn-off. You should start with a few common phrases first by using Pinyin. Adjust your intonation along the way. Once you get to a certain point, you can rely on a Chinese dictionary on computer / online and learn to recognize characters. For example: you would learn "Ni hao ma?" to mean "How are you?". The next step would be to fill in the intonation: "Nǐ hǎo ma" before you get to: "你好嗎" the written form. The first few months you won't feel comfortable listening to news broadcasts or watch TV shows. I just finished watching a drama series from Singapore: "96°C 咖啡" in 20 episodes. There was a phrase that was unfamiliar near the last episode which sounded like: "yisuoyuyan". Did a Google search and the Chinese came out: "伊索寓言" or Aesop Fables. These are good for learning since there is a story involving the same characters. Many of the same words and phrases repeat themselves in all sorts of context you would encounter in real life. Don't expect to master every character in the dictionary. Even an educated person would know enough to read a newspaper but not some of the less common ones. Personally having Cantonese as a mother-tongue is a mixed blessing. Spent 6 months learning to input characters on computer with Pinyin. People from my parents' generation in Hong Kong are fluent in Mandarin but relied on memorizing and repeating sounds in a class. They considered learning phonetically using Pinyin used by the Chinese communist or the Wade-Giles system invented by the British that came before as somehow being "politically incorrect". My parents would sometimes mispronounce words because they were thinking of the Cantonese way. Using Pinyin you see 耳 (ear) & 兒 (son) both grouped under as "er". If you think the Cantonese way 耳 would sound like "yi" the same as 以 with a totally different meaning. Edited by shk00design on 30 December 2013 at 4:27pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5672 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 18 of 20 30 December 2013 at 10:12am | IP Logged |
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I don't have any advice from my life yet but Luca has two interesting blog entries which might be of some help:
Tips on learning characters Tips on learning tones 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3991 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 19 of 20 31 December 2013 at 3:38pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, @pesahson, really awesome Luca's blog entries.
He also says that learn character + pinyin + pronunciation + use in a sentence all together is overwhelming and inefficient. I will continue with my experiment for some day and see if it's something I can manage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3991 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 20 of 20 31 December 2013 at 3:41pm | IP Logged |
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@shk00design, thank you for sharing your experience.
"Don't expect to master every character in the dictionary. Even an educated person would know enough to read a newspaper but not some of the less common ones." I know because I'm already been warned about this, but seems to be never repeated enough. My goal is to understand the logic and be able to recognise the possible meanings of a character by have a good knowledge of the primitives and character forming more than remember all the character (which is virtually impossible). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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