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Beginner Mandarin Chinese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 9 of 17 29 August 2011 at 6:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I started learning Mandarin using the Pimsleur course. It was extremely difficult at first, and I had to repeat the lessons multiple times, but in retrospect, it was very effective, and I developed excellent pronunciation. I later tried out the Michel Thomas course, and it was extremely painful to complete (though I eventually did) because the pronunciation of the students was so jarringly awful. The native speaker of course had flawless pronunciation, but this made it even more annoying in the sense that the students seemed completely oblivious to her repeated corrections of their terrible pronunciation (and ever so patiently).
So, if you can ignore the mistakes of the students and just focus on the pronunciation as given by the native speaker, Michel Thomas could work for you. It does a decent job with respect to grammar and basic vocabulary, but I think Pimsleur, although it has a steeper learning curve, would ultimately be more useful. There are, of course, a bunch of (legally) free resources on the Internet (particularly YouTube). But you said you like courses that are available offline, so perhaps that wouldn't ideal for you... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elsinore13 Groupie United States Joined 4976 days ago 41 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 10 of 17 29 August 2011 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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I liked Pimsleur at first, but tired of it after about a month.I felt the lessons were starting to drag after a while.I started Assimil and actually like it more than I thought I would.While I didn't need to know the dialogues for needing a cigarette, I've noticed that I've retained a lot though the lessons.
I have used ChinesePod, but find it hard for me remember the small dialogues (go figure)- however their Beijing Standard Time series has definitely helped me with culture shock. Anki has helped me a lot in recognizing characters and I was surprised to remember as much as I have with it. However, if I was to do it all over again I might do it this way: Use Assimil daily with Pimsleur every other day. Anki everyday to learn more characters - though sometimes it can get tedious. ChinesePod as an occasional source. I find their (ChinesePod) explanation about the language and how it's used in everyday life interesting and concise. Hope that helped. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 11 of 17 29 August 2011 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Since podcasts are being mentioned, here's a list of the more commonly known ones. Most of these sites have freebie downloadable material or else offer a free trial period. I strongly suggest taking advantage of a podcasts' freebie material before deciding to subscribe to that service.
1) CLSPod 2) ChineseLearnOnline 3) PopUpChinese 4) iMandarinPod 5) ChineseClass101 6) ChinesePod Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6850 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 12 of 17 29 August 2011 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I meant to deal with this in my earlier post in this thread, but must have forgotten. I'm quite surprised whenever I hear about people who claim to have learned "excellent pronunciation" from Pimsleur Chinese. I'd be curious to know how 'nway' arrived at the conclusion that his/her pronunciation is excellent.
I did not finish the Pimsleur course, but I certainly did not learn good pronunciation from it, either. I'd be surprised if anyone who learned their pronunciation from Pimsleur could recognize or produce the difference between ch and q, zh and j, or sh and x, for example. Or for that matter, use pinyin at all, since Pimsleur is all audio. Michel Thomas is in the same boat here, by the way. Pimsleur also doesn't teach the four tones as "the four tones" (tones 1, 2, 3, and 4), but by description (high level, rising, falling rising, and falling) which is verbose and a bit confusing for the beginner. I can't speak about Michel Thomas on this subject, but I have read that the course uses hand motions to teach the tones, which I find a bit absurd. Anything that avoids using a book will necessarily make things more complicated than they should be, IMO. The benefits of the FSI Pronunciation and Romanization Module that I mentioned earlier are as follows. It drills the differences between the pairs I mentioned earlier, making it easy to both hear and produce them accurately. It tells you where your tongue should articulate in your mouth for the different consonants (retroflex, palatal, dental, fricatives vs. affricates, &c). It goes into detail about how the tones should be pronounced, and drills them extensively. And, quite importantly, it teaches you how to read pinyin. All for free. Like I said before, spend a few days on it and you'll be set. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 13 of 17 29 August 2011 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
So I presume Chinese children can't pronounce Mandarin until they learn it from a book...
Third-party informants, for lack of a less informal term. As long as one retains the possibility to emulate sounds he or she hers (which, if I'm not mistaken, is how children throughout the entirety of mankind have acquired spoken languages), I don't see how an audio program can be ineffective at transmitting pronunciation unless the speakers themselves have bad pronunciation (which is why I distinguished between the Pimsleur and Michel Thomas courses for this language). I presume you're not accusing the native Mandarin speakers in the Pimsleur course of having bad pronunciation. So are parents, too, bad transmitters of their spoken languages if they do not explain to their children the retroflex, palatal, dental, fricatives vs. affricates, and so on? Funny, because my parents never taught me any of that, and yet I'd say I have a fairly good grasp of English... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6850 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 14 of 17 29 August 2011 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Are you a child learning your first language? If not, then you will not learn like one. Native Chinese speakers learning their mother tongue have nothing to do with our discussion here, because we are talking about Native English speakers learning Chinese. However, even if they were relevant, your reasoning is flawed. Chinese-speaking babies have years of correction from their parents and then in school, just the same as English-speaking babies do. You don't just pick up pronunciation and grammar in your native language by being around it; you are taught the language by your parents and teachers. You may not learn all the technical terms, but you are taught nonetheless. For example, I had to take speech therapy when I was a kid because I had a lisp. This was not something I learned from my parents. I literally could not hear or produce the difference between 's' and 'th', nor did I even know there was a difference, until I was taught that. Same principle here.
Native English speakers need to be taught the difference between those sounds in Chinese because their ears do not pick up the difference naturally. You've not learned to distinguish any difference because your native language does not distinguish between the sounds, and as a result you will only be able to tell a difference after you've been taught how. This is also why many Japanese speakers have a hard time with L and R in English (and presumably other languages). The two consonants literally sound the same to them because Japanese does not distinguish between the sounds and so can't tell that the two sounds are different. The pronunciation on the Pimsleur Chinese recording could be the most flawless ever produced (it's not, but it's not bad), but it won't matter if your ears are unable to pick up the difference between pinyin 'ch' and 'q'. Maybe another example will help. I can hear things that many people can't. If you play a single note on a trombone, piano, or whatever, I can hear a whole range of overtones, undertones, &c. within that note. I could tell you which harmonics are more prominent (due to the acoustics of the room, the instrument, what have you). Same thing goes for things like car engines, coughs, echoes, etc. Now, it isn't because my ears work better than yours. They may, or they may not. I don't know. What I do know is that I took years of ear training as a music major, and I listened to tons of music with things like overtone singing and didgeridoos and such things that manipulate the harmonics found in every note. In other words, I was taught that all those other things exist, and I was taught how to listen for them. And indeed how to produce them myself, since I was taught some overtone singing. I was not born with innate knowledge of these things, nor did I learn it through absorption. I had to be taught. So with pronunciation. You can't just absorb good pronunciation, because your ears are not likely trained to hear the differences between certain sounds. After all those ear training courses, I still couldn't tell the difference between pinyin 'ch' and 'q' without being taught. And I'd be surprised if any native English speaker could pronounce everything in Chinese correctly without having been taught to hear and produce the differences. By the way, be wary of who you believe about your accent/pronunciation. Chinese people tend to be unfailingly kind and full of compliments for any foreign effort at speaking their language. That does not necessarily mean that you actually have good pronunciation. All it means for sure is that they are being kind. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 15 of 17 30 August 2011 at 4:31am | IP Logged | |||||
The discrepancy between our views of the immersion method is due to a difference in our assumed time frames of the learning process. All of what you've said is only true given the assumption that a learner must learn completely and utterly correct pronunciation immediately upon starting to learn the language. Needless to say, this isn't how Pimsleur works. Childhood pronunciation is flawed, but it isn't rectified through written materials. Most children don't have lisps, and frankly I don't recall ever being taught English phonetics. More fundamentally, when native speakers do try to explain the subtleties of phonetics through means of explanation, it is typically in vain and falls on unwittingly deaf ears. As a learner of Mandarin, surely you've experienced other native English speakers being told about the four tones, and yet still being unable to replicate it, even after it was "explained". Such perceptions will develop over time by an increased sensitivity to the variances of the language as one becomes more familiar with its sounds. After all, I do believe it was *you* who acknowledged the pointlessness of Pimsleur's own attempt to "explain" the high, rising, falling, and falling-rising tones. And if something that simple and straightforward is confusing, just imagine how delving into discussion of palatals and fricatives would turn off anyone who isn't a linguistics enthusiast (i.e., just about EVERYONE). Edited by nway on 30 August 2011 at 4:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6850 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 16 of 17 30 August 2011 at 5:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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You're entitled to your own opinion, of course. We'll just have to disagree on this.
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