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Learning job-related Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| paisley Groupie United States Joined 5720 days ago 59 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 14 20 October 2009 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I would like to learn job related Mandarin, as in, just words and phrases that have to do with my job. I work in the line of cosmetics and many Chinese people come to us and want to buy our line. Most speak mandarin and often do not speak English, so i am thinking of learning our 50 products in Mandarin and about 100 words that have to do with the line, for example, skin, soft, protect, sun, fade, dry, oily, etc. And I will need other basic words, "when" "cost" price", about 50-80 of those.
Then about 30 phrases, "i only speak a little chinese, maybe i can help" "what product are you looking for" "how many do you want" "we also ship to"... The phrases I will have a friend help me with. But for the 100-200 words... What is the best way for me to go about this? Is there a site that i can just type in a word and it will give me the pin yin and the word in audio? I find just repeating the audio is best for me, when i start learning just by reading (pin yin, obviously, in this case, or the words without the audio i get confused and i prefer just imitation of the words, going by repetition. Any good websites for getting specific words spoken? Any good ways to find a partner for language exchange? or any advice you can give me on the most effective way to go about memorizing these words, must have audio i think, since the delivery of the words is so important. etc. As for why such a limited vocabulary I would prefer to learn the job words first, and may learn more Chinese later, but want to keep my job more secure and would probably be worth more to them if i can help the chinese clients, hence wanting to go for the job words first. Any help appreciated. Thank you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6917 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 14 20 October 2009 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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FSI Chinese will get you going, although the language may be a bit outdated. Start with the Resource Module (especially Numbers).
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| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7384 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 14 20 October 2009 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Paisley, this is a great self-improvement project! I would begin by drawing up a list of key technical terms and set phrases (in English), then find somebody who is both knowledgeable about cosmetics and speaks Mandarin natively to help you with it.
Beware of friendly native speakers who do not know the first thing about cosmetics as you will end up with bad vocabulary. The less people know about a technical field, the more fuzzy their vocabulary becomes. Try to locate some Chinese salesgirl in a cosmetic store, explain her what you want, then buy her coffee and record the whole discussion so that you can then repeat it as needed. Good luck! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6019 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 14 20 October 2009 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I always say that the best way to learn phrases is to learn a bit of the language first.
If you do a basic course, you'll learn about question words, word order, all that basic stuff, and it'll be soooooo much easier to remember phrases when you understand a bit about how to build them up. Ask yourself: which of these is easier to remember? 1) He groppled with the winkle til he stropped it to the brampy 2) Yip groplin dan ur winkly rop yip stropin ko wo ur brampo 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| janababe Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 102 posts - 115 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German | Message 5 of 14 21 October 2009 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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paisley, that's really cool. I'm gonna watch this topic ;)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5543 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 6 of 14 21 October 2009 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Several of the early Pimsleur lessons (around lessons 8-14 depending on the language; they seem to show up toward the later end of that range on the East Asian courses) cover topics such as price and counting money. As such, working your way through the Pimsleur Mandarin Conversational course (which contains Lessons 1-16 from the 30-lesson Comprehensive I course) should be a great base to work from. Afterward, you could add in the terminology that is specific to your needs / store to add to the existing base phrases you've learned.
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| janababe Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 102 posts - 115 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German | Message 7 of 14 21 October 2009 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Keep it clean, Cainntear ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| paisley Groupie United States Joined 5720 days ago 59 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 8 of 14 21 October 2009 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks. Adminstrator, thank you for that advice. So yesterday I
approached a Chinese girl who sells products for another line and asked her if I could hire her for some lessons. She said yes. We haven't had a lesson yet but just by asking around I now know: cleanser, tonic, serum, face cream and eye cream :-D. These are all the basic items so in our lesson I will continue like this. My phone doesn't have audio recording, any recommendations on an small electronic item that I can use for this? I went to Youtube and got lessons for how to say the numbers from 1-999, which is great, we have so many clients that want to know the prices. Jeff, I will check out that FSI. Caintear, my goal is to learn our product line and sales transaction word as soon as I can, I don't want to get bogged down as time for me is limited. I see what you are saying and I plan on definitely learning pin yin, and the sentence structure, but will generally pass on things like how to get around, food and mom and dad sort of thing, so it's imperative I keep it as focused as I can for now. Any sites you guys can recommend for audio and visual pinyin played at once? This is what I have found most useful through a few videos on Youtube. So far Chinese is fun, it is a lot of fun to speak. Now all the Spanish girls at my job are trying to do it to. Lol. Sh*t, there could go my being indispensable. Excuse my spelling all, I'm typing on my phone and it's hard to see what I've written. Edited for spelling, grammar and general clarity (I do realise poster was using phone). Edited by paisley on 30 October 2009 at 3:57am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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