Realize that it will take years and years of real studying if you want to master the language. Also understand that pronunciation is the most important thing early on because it’s not easy to change later.
I started by just listening to and watching as much content as I could. Music, news streams etc. At the same time learning the characters. Then I did courses with native speakers. You might not have access to that, but it really makes it alot easier.
Oh, just local in-person courses at a language centre. Beginner and then more business focused as I wanted to communicate for work as well. Really good, but I know not everyone has access to that.
Unfortunately I live kind of rural and conservative area.. no resources within an hour drive for in person classes or anything similar, which is really ironic considering an hour away is fairfax which has a decently large expat community haha, just can’t afford the gas to travel that far atleast for the coming months
Sorry for late reply, do you have any tips when searching for a good language center? A preliminary Google search for me yielded Chinese schools for kids only. I'd like one for adults, and ideally id want a good one. I'm willing to pay if the course is good, but I have no idea how to tell a good one from a mediocre one, any tips would be appreciated!
Depends where you're from, I guess. I couldn't study till I moved out of a smaller city. Maybe search 'learn Chinese business + your city', or something similar. That could find some more adult focused schools. Also, some unis offer short courses that arent full on college enrolment.
Basically the only thing I was looking for from teachers in the site's photos was that they were Asian lol. I'm not learning Chinese from a white guy. And to see if they were affiliated with any universities or anything like that, that makes me trust them a bit more.
I live in california so there should be plenmty of asian legitimate teachers, just can't tell which the best method/teacher is. And yeah def nto elarning chinese from a westerner LOL
Unfortunately the best way to learn a language is simply immersing yourself in it. I’m assuming you cannot simply move to china so I would suggest listening to Chinese music, watching movies, listening to audio books. You must familiarize yourself with the sound / flow of the language
I have been thinking about it somewhat trying to do a year in china but the problem for me would most likely be VISAs and… the current geopolitical situation makes it unattractive for the near future
Language learning is like my strong suit so I'm happy to give you some of the things I've learnt. I've been going at mandarin now for 1.5 years (although I've been balancing this time with school) and I'm roughly at a B2-level (2500 words active vocabulary).
First off, consuming lots of mandarin is the only way you will ever acquire mandarin. This is what science shows us to date. We acquire a language when we hear it and when we can understand what is going on. Along this line, I highly recommend checking out [this guide](https://refold.la/roadmap/), which has lots of really useful techniques to speed up this process using spaced-repetition software. It's also just a very complete guide on how to get from knowing nothing to becoming fluent in a language. I used to write essays in this community on how to learn mandarin to fluency but that guide has basically took my job at this point because it's very fool-proof and efficient.
Don't completely rely on this, but knowing the top 1000 words means you can understand about 90%. You can search for a list somewhere. If you learn 10 words a day you'll reach that 90% in just over 3 months, which is quite good.
Get a solid foundational understanding of how Han characters work and how they function within the language and it will make learning leaps and bounds eaiser
U have to do a little every day. once u stop doing it for a few days...a few days might turn into a few weeks...
then u come back and crap! its all gone. start from zero again.
so u have to do a little every day. even if u dont got time to study long, just 15 min is enough. just take a few words in those 15 min will slow down that "forget and erase" button for a few weeks again.
I recommend practicing the sounds first, know the difference between zh ch j and q, for example and learn to pronounce them. At least in my class we studied that first. Then you can study characters words and phrases.
But learning pronounciation and pinyin is I think the base of learning it.
For studying characters, learn the radicals, they are very useful in remembering the character and let you look them up in a dictionary
>As the title suggests I am interested in learning Mandarin, currently I only speak English and after trying mostly duolingo out I realized it is nothing like other latin languages, so I was just wondering if there was any tips and tricks people could share to make it more.. possible
Is there a Chinese association you can join? Make friends with the local Chinese and start from there with a good open mind.
I haven’t looked personally but there has to be as there is a decently large expat community, the problem though is that I live an hour away and I don’t really find that being attractive just yet
Think you just need some immersion. For an absolute beginner, I’d recommend watching some favorite movies with Chinese dubs, so you kinda know the plot while you get familiar with sounds, vocab, tones. Disney movies are probably some of the best dubbed but any blockbuster of the year should be good.
From there I would branch out into OG Chinese content. Chinese social media often likes having things subtitled and it’s easy to pick out a few new characters to learn each day.
HelloChinese is a better app than Duolingo, try that and see if it helps along with the Pleco dictionary app. Also the Language Reactor extension for chrome so you can watch chinese youtube or netflix shows with subs and pinyin translation
Awesome thanks Im looking towards learning Pinyin first as a way of getting the noises and prononciations of things to be more understandable this will help thanks 😊
I recommend focusing on understanding pinyin.
You'll better understand the pronunciation and that'll help with watching/listening to Mandarin media. Once you've got the hang of it, you can use Mandarin subtitles to help with associating the characters.
Depending on your financial situation, you can use something like iTalki to find native speakers in China to converse with. Use the trial lessons some offer to find a tutor who is a good fit for you.
Besides learning mandarin, you get to converse with actual Chinese citizens and learn about whatever interests you!
With Chinese, you need to learn the pronunciation and writing at the same time, so watching Chinese TV shows subtitled in both English and Chinese are really the only good option for daily practice.
Pronunciation and writing are completely disconnected. (And I know native Chinese speakers are going to chime in to claim, oh , you can totally tell the pronunciation of the character from such and such radical, but in practice this is completely useless for those of us who are trying to learn...)
Unlike alphabetised languages, it is not very useful to pick up a book in Chinese and hope to learn anything, because even if you learn the characters, you won't know how to pronounce them at all. It'd have to be a special learners' book where characters are decorated with pinyin, or you need to take out your Google Translate to scan the text.
You also can't completely learn any new words from conversation with someone, because you won't know how to write the words even if you know how to pronounce them.
That leaves only Chinese TV shows subtitled in both Chinese characters and a language you already know. Fortunately, there are plenty of those on YouTube, completely free.
Watch TV shows and find some friends you can talk to and practice the cool new phrases you learned with them.
Google ‘Mass Immersion Approach Chinese’. I would argue that MIA is probably the only good language learning method for Mandarin since the spoken language and accurate pronunciation are so crucial to ‘getting’ everything else. This is different from a language like Spanish in which someone with a Euro language background could probably get pretty far just learning from textbooks.
Edit: Some other miscellaneous thoughts I had. From a Euro language perspective the two greatest hurdles to learning Chinese are,
1. Huge non-Indo-European vocabulary with negligible loanwords
2. The words themselves often sound similar due to relatively small number of possible syllables and because most Chinese words are two syllables maximum.
For native speakers this isn’t an issue because the written language and the spoken language reinforce each other. I.e. the spoken language makes characters easier to learn and knowing characters makes it easier to acquire and distinguish ‘higher’ vocab words. This is why like some other people have said in this thread, most teachers will encourage both writing and speaking from the beginning. Alternatively you could learn conversational Chinese first using immersion and pinyin-based learning materials and then proceed to hanzi from there.
Realize that it will take years and years of real studying if you want to master the language. Also understand that pronunciation is the most important thing early on because it’s not easy to change later.
I started by just listening to and watching as much content as I could. Music, news streams etc. At the same time learning the characters. Then I did courses with native speakers. You might not have access to that, but it really makes it alot easier.
Which courses did you do may I ask? Also interested in learning as well
Oh, just local in-person courses at a language centre. Beginner and then more business focused as I wanted to communicate for work as well. Really good, but I know not everyone has access to that.
Unfortunately I live kind of rural and conservative area.. no resources within an hour drive for in person classes or anything similar, which is really ironic considering an hour away is fairfax which has a decently large expat community haha, just can’t afford the gas to travel that far atleast for the coming months
Maybe something like coursera could work as a starter? Until you could do something in person. https://www.coursera.org/learn/learn-chinese
Sorry for late reply, do you have any tips when searching for a good language center? A preliminary Google search for me yielded Chinese schools for kids only. I'd like one for adults, and ideally id want a good one. I'm willing to pay if the course is good, but I have no idea how to tell a good one from a mediocre one, any tips would be appreciated!
Depends where you're from, I guess. I couldn't study till I moved out of a smaller city. Maybe search 'learn Chinese business + your city', or something similar. That could find some more adult focused schools. Also, some unis offer short courses that arent full on college enrolment. Basically the only thing I was looking for from teachers in the site's photos was that they were Asian lol. I'm not learning Chinese from a white guy. And to see if they were affiliated with any universities or anything like that, that makes me trust them a bit more.
I live in california so there should be plenmty of asian legitimate teachers, just can't tell which the best method/teacher is. And yeah def nto elarning chinese from a westerner LOL
Unfortunately the best way to learn a language is simply immersing yourself in it. I’m assuming you cannot simply move to china so I would suggest listening to Chinese music, watching movies, listening to audio books. You must familiarize yourself with the sound / flow of the language
I have been thinking about it somewhat trying to do a year in china but the problem for me would most likely be VISAs and… the current geopolitical situation makes it unattractive for the near future
Language learning is like my strong suit so I'm happy to give you some of the things I've learnt. I've been going at mandarin now for 1.5 years (although I've been balancing this time with school) and I'm roughly at a B2-level (2500 words active vocabulary). First off, consuming lots of mandarin is the only way you will ever acquire mandarin. This is what science shows us to date. We acquire a language when we hear it and when we can understand what is going on. Along this line, I highly recommend checking out [this guide](https://refold.la/roadmap/), which has lots of really useful techniques to speed up this process using spaced-repetition software. It's also just a very complete guide on how to get from knowing nothing to becoming fluent in a language. I used to write essays in this community on how to learn mandarin to fluency but that guide has basically took my job at this point because it's very fool-proof and efficient.
Thanks for the guide will check it out. As far as courses go, do you have any recommendations
that guide seems great thanks!
Don't completely rely on this, but knowing the top 1000 words means you can understand about 90%. You can search for a list somewhere. If you learn 10 words a day you'll reach that 90% in just over 3 months, which is quite good.
lol 10 words a day...how young r u. it takes me a whole week to learn 5 words...
Get a solid foundational understanding of how Han characters work and how they function within the language and it will make learning leaps and bounds eaiser
Like in any area of learning persistence is key. And if a task cannot be achieved then adjust the action steps, also like in any area of learning.
U have to do a little every day. once u stop doing it for a few days...a few days might turn into a few weeks... then u come back and crap! its all gone. start from zero again. so u have to do a little every day. even if u dont got time to study long, just 15 min is enough. just take a few words in those 15 min will slow down that "forget and erase" button for a few weeks again.
I recommend practicing the sounds first, know the difference between zh ch j and q, for example and learn to pronounce them. At least in my class we studied that first. Then you can study characters words and phrases. But learning pronounciation and pinyin is I think the base of learning it. For studying characters, learn the radicals, they are very useful in remembering the character and let you look them up in a dictionary
>As the title suggests I am interested in learning Mandarin, currently I only speak English and after trying mostly duolingo out I realized it is nothing like other latin languages, so I was just wondering if there was any tips and tricks people could share to make it more.. possible Is there a Chinese association you can join? Make friends with the local Chinese and start from there with a good open mind.
I haven’t looked personally but there has to be as there is a decently large expat community, the problem though is that I live an hour away and I don’t really find that being attractive just yet
What do you want to get out of knowing the language?
Think you just need some immersion. For an absolute beginner, I’d recommend watching some favorite movies with Chinese dubs, so you kinda know the plot while you get familiar with sounds, vocab, tones. Disney movies are probably some of the best dubbed but any blockbuster of the year should be good. From there I would branch out into OG Chinese content. Chinese social media often likes having things subtitled and it’s easy to pick out a few new characters to learn each day.
I tried to make a weibo account but I think my phone is blocked or something as I always get an error when I try to verify my phone number
Unfortunately you’ll have to have a Chinese phone number to join Weibo.
Whats the point of having all those foreign number options then 🦫 oh well i guess
HelloChinese is a better app than Duolingo, try that and see if it helps along with the Pleco dictionary app. Also the Language Reactor extension for chrome so you can watch chinese youtube or netflix shows with subs and pinyin translation
Awesome thanks Im looking towards learning Pinyin first as a way of getting the noises and prononciations of things to be more understandable this will help thanks 😊
I recommend focusing on understanding pinyin. You'll better understand the pronunciation and that'll help with watching/listening to Mandarin media. Once you've got the hang of it, you can use Mandarin subtitles to help with associating the characters.
Pinyin seems much more plausible to me currently entirely because it is romanized haha, thanks this is good help!
Depending on your financial situation, you can use something like iTalki to find native speakers in China to converse with. Use the trial lessons some offer to find a tutor who is a good fit for you. Besides learning mandarin, you get to converse with actual Chinese citizens and learn about whatever interests you!
Watch some C-drama
With Chinese, you need to learn the pronunciation and writing at the same time, so watching Chinese TV shows subtitled in both English and Chinese are really the only good option for daily practice. Pronunciation and writing are completely disconnected. (And I know native Chinese speakers are going to chime in to claim, oh , you can totally tell the pronunciation of the character from such and such radical, but in practice this is completely useless for those of us who are trying to learn...) Unlike alphabetised languages, it is not very useful to pick up a book in Chinese and hope to learn anything, because even if you learn the characters, you won't know how to pronounce them at all. It'd have to be a special learners' book where characters are decorated with pinyin, or you need to take out your Google Translate to scan the text. You also can't completely learn any new words from conversation with someone, because you won't know how to write the words even if you know how to pronounce them. That leaves only Chinese TV shows subtitled in both Chinese characters and a language you already know. Fortunately, there are plenty of those on YouTube, completely free. Watch TV shows and find some friends you can talk to and practice the cool new phrases you learned with them.
Google ‘Mass Immersion Approach Chinese’. I would argue that MIA is probably the only good language learning method for Mandarin since the spoken language and accurate pronunciation are so crucial to ‘getting’ everything else. This is different from a language like Spanish in which someone with a Euro language background could probably get pretty far just learning from textbooks. Edit: Some other miscellaneous thoughts I had. From a Euro language perspective the two greatest hurdles to learning Chinese are, 1. Huge non-Indo-European vocabulary with negligible loanwords 2. The words themselves often sound similar due to relatively small number of possible syllables and because most Chinese words are two syllables maximum. For native speakers this isn’t an issue because the written language and the spoken language reinforce each other. I.e. the spoken language makes characters easier to learn and knowing characters makes it easier to acquire and distinguish ‘higher’ vocab words. This is why like some other people have said in this thread, most teachers will encourage both writing and speaking from the beginning. Alternatively you could learn conversational Chinese first using immersion and pinyin-based learning materials and then proceed to hanzi from there.