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Mandarin Nightmare

  Tags: Mandarin
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
34 messages over 5 pages: 13 4 5  Next >>
orion
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian

 
 Message 9 of 34
03 December 2008 at 5:52pm | IP Logged 
吕明扬 wrote:
Mostly what sparked my outburst was, when I attempted to read Harry Potter. I spent about 10 minutes looking up these three characters that ended up just pronouncing Dursley.


You may be demanding too much from yourself. It would be difficult to read a novel in any new language with only eight months of experience, let alone in a language such as Mandarin. There are people that have studied Mandarin for years who still struggle to read a newspaper article.

Cut yourself some slack!
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lady_skywalker
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
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Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian

 
 Message 10 of 34
04 December 2008 at 6:06pm | IP Logged 
Hang in there....you're in for a LONG journey. Orion is quite right to say that even people who have been studying Mandarin for years struggle with newspaper articles. Reading a novel in Mandarin is a slow and frustrating process at times. I say this as someone who has been learning the language for almost ten years now and has worked as a translator. Even the Harry Potter books gave me headaches, especially the spell names and those things that only exist in the Potter universe (you're very unlikely to come across those words in other texts).

All I can say is don't give up and don't expect miracles overnight. Learning Mandarin is a lifelong adventure as the language is teeming with synonyms and rich metaphor. You're always going to come across a character you don't recognise or a word that you don't know but console yourself with the fact that even native speakers need to consult the dictionary on occasion. ;)


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吕明扬
Newbie
United States
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 11 of 34
04 December 2008 at 7:53pm | IP Logged 
I guess its just hard to find materials that challenge me enough to keep me learning but not gruesome enough that I struggle to get through one page of text. Well right now I got ahold of Beyond the Basics: Communicative Chinese for Intermediate and Advanced Learners. Its at right about my level. But I'm probaly gonna be finished with it by the 19th. Any recommendations for what I should do after it?
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skeeterses
Senior Member
United States
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302 posts - 356 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, Spanish

 
 Message 12 of 34
06 December 2008 at 8:31pm | IP Logged 
LuMingYang, one thing you could do is look for native level materials that are either written using pinyin or have
the pinyin accompanying the characters. I've heard people on this bulletin board say that there is audio to
accompany the Chinese Harry Potter book, so you should check that out when you're ready to tackle it.

I know I'll sound like a broken record here, but children stories and comic books are a good way to pick up
vocabulary without getting too overwhelmed with unknown characters.
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Poliglotta80
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ItalyRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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11 posts - 32 votes
Speaks: Italian*, SpanishC2, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Russian
Studies: Mandarin, Romanian
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 13 of 34
07 December 2008 at 7:41am | IP Logged 
I've been learning Mandarin for 3 months so far, and it is as difficult as people say it is. Thus, I share some thoughts about it looking a hellish linguistic adventure. That said, I also think that although it looks a discouraging study, the idea of being able to speak this beautitul tonal language one day encourages me to keep going with my study. We all have right to think that Mandarin Chinese is hard, but no language is impossible to learn. I've been learning most of my languages with ASSIMIL and it always worked, so I am confident it will work with this one too, although requiring a much bigger effort:D I don't demand that I speak fluent Chinese in a few months, it will probably take years before I get proficient in it, but a constant (even if very little) and daily work will bring anyone far in any language:D I once again take the liberty of saying that this forum is the best I've found so far:D Luca


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Gummieshk
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Newbie
Hong Kong
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7 posts - 10 votes
Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 15 of 34
11 February 2009 at 1:43pm | IP Logged 
I'd say learn it the Chinese way. hah. The way I learnt Chinese when I was small was basically memorizing vocabs and whole passages, and dictating them out. I would spend an hour every day after school reading out all the passages in my Chinese textbook (which were usually excerpts from famous Chin authors), copying all the vocabs that I didn't know, reading and rereading -- until I could memorize them by heart. Idk, this might be super tedious but I found it really useful during composition exams as I could "borrow" phrases from the passages I read.

Another way to learn it would be to immerse yourself completely in the language. I have friend at school and she's been learning Chinese for 3 years, but her Chinese is way past the Advanced Placement level (which takes 5 years to master). She's completely in love with Chinese songs and Taiwanese dramas and I see her checking out Chinese vids on youku/tudou all the time. Now she's like writing this 1000 character essay on the Cultural Revolution. Pretty intense.

Good luck w/ you all!

--Jen
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 16 of 34
11 February 2009 at 4:41pm | IP Logged 
I haven't seen recent statistics, but even with simplified characters, there is still a significant amount of illiteracy in China among native speakers. Having to learn to read thousands of individual ideographs rather than an alphabet must be difficult in itself.


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