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Living Language Ultimate Series | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| timinstl Triglot Groupie United States timsviajes.com Joined 6906 days ago 88 posts - 92 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Italian, Mandarin | Message 17 of 23 11 August 2005 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, you win. Lol. I understand what you mean about a native being able to have the characters to look at, I just don't think that the beginner should bother with learning characters.
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| randy310 Senior Member United States Joined 6854 days ago 117 posts - 117 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 23 12 August 2005 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Pimsleur is a good place to start especially with non roman scripts. This way you get to learn to speak with no writing system in front of you like when you are a child learning your native tongue. Afterwards start learning that non Roman script as you develope your speaking skills further. Edited by randy310 on 12 August 2005 at 12:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kyle Groupie United States Joined 6864 days ago 49 posts - 49 votes | Message 19 of 23 15 August 2005 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||
This is exactly what I mean. You COULD speak now and read later (using sometimes impractical roman script), OR you could learn both at the same time with no added effort. I agree that Pimsleur would be a good place to start if you wanted to begin by learning to speak the language. Then after one finishes Pimsleur they could begin learning Japanese script with textbooks. Romaji really should be avoided as much as possible because the more you read the native script, the easier and more natural it becomes. Most Japanese script is phonetic anyway, and often in learner's book, kanji are printed with furigana to help you pronounce them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6645 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 20 of 23 25 January 2007 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm bumping this topic instead of starting a new one, but I need a little help from someone with the Ultimate French: Beginner-Intermediate program (or at least the first CD of Set A *hint*). If anyone fits that description, send me a PM.
I love the Ultimate series. Plenty of content at a quick pace. I hope they will come out with more languages. I might even pick up the Arabic program because it's so highly regarded and I'm not even that interested in Arabic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| watson1981 Newbie China watson1981.blogRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6531 days ago 20 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English, German, Spanish, French, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Thai | Message 21 of 23 02 March 2007 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
I think we often say： Ni jia you ji ge ren? 你家有几个人？ You can also say： Ni de jia-li you ji ge ren? 你的家里有几个人？ This is more formal. I suggest you use the first one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| janalisa Triglot Senior Member France janafadness.com/blog Joined 6679 days ago 284 posts - 466 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese Studies: Russian, Norwegian | Message 22 of 23 03 March 2007 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kind of an interesting discussion here.
Personally, I don't understand why students of Japanese bother with romaji at all. Unlike Chinese, Japanese has a perfectly good phonetic writing system (hiragana) that Japanese children use to read their own language before they even learn characters. Hiragana should not take more than a week or so to learn and you'll have to learn it eventually anyway, so why not just learn it right from the start and get yourself used to it? Why don't beginning Japanese textbooks just have everything written in hiragana? Really, people, learning a non-Roman alphabet does *not* take that much work, and I wish people would stop being so afraid of foreign scripts. Chinese characters, admittedly, are a different story, but still. If you know hiragana, you can have them written above Chinese characters (as they are in Japanese childrens' books), so if you just read a lot you learn how to pronounce a lot of characters without really even having to try. However, just to clarify, I should add that it's not true that Japanese people can't read romaji. I've never met a Japanese person who couldn't read it. The only thing it seems to be used for, though, is typing on a computer when you are unable to type in Japanese, or when the other person's computer is unable to display Japanese. That, in my opinion, is the only thing it *should* be used for. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6575 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 23 of 23 04 March 2007 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||
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timinstl:I would also say that Ultimate Chinese sounds more authentic. The "native" speakers on Pimsleur's courses don't sound too native to me.
I've listened to lesson 30 of Pimsleur Mandarin III: (The opening dialogue is "Mr.Zhou, are you returning to America?...") This is quite authentic, especially for those who don't have enough opportunities to talk to Chinese speakers. I don't think there are problems. In practice, Chinese speakers omit a lot of things and talk much faster. Pimsleur won't follow this because you probably cannot follow well. Shusaku:I've never met, for example, a native Cantonese speaker who can read romanized Cantonese text. True. Most HK young speakers aged around 18 and above don't understand Jyutping or Standard Cantonese Pinyin (the only HKSAR standard). Secondary school students now have to learn the latter due to concerns about "wrong" pronunciations. This could be a serious problem in FSI Mandarin and, espeically, Cantonese. I have to correct myself twice or more to read a Cantonese sentence aloud. (I don't know if the Yale scheme is popular among materials in English) Mandarin is better because it uses Pinyin. I, as a speaker of both, would prefer practicing Mandarin without relying on pinyin. Edited by Andy_Liu on 04 March 2007 at 12:46am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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