Learning Chinese?

[Brunellus]

So I picked up an English translation of Lo Guanzhong's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" the other day, and have been hooked. While I know that the chinese language is not ready for the desktop (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=120489&highlight=desktop+chinese), the thought has entered my mind that I might want to try learning Chinese. Since this is a pretty multi-lingual community, I wanted to ask what tips, if any, you can offer to someone might be about to study the Chinese language?

[ComplexNumber]

learn to think visually :). seriously.
although i can't speak mandarin or cantonese, i have heard from many that they are difficult to learn....especially for someone whose native language is alphabetic such as english.

[lucia_engel]

learn to think visually :). seriously.
although i can't speak mandarin or cantonese, i have heard from many that they are difficult to learn....especially for someone whose native language is alphabetic such as english.

That's very true. I'm a native Cantonese speaker and I can imagine how hard it'd be to learn the language if I wasn't born a Chinese. The best advice would be to learn Mandarin (first) since it's easier to pronounce. Learning simplified Chinese would also be a LOT easier than traditional, but a simplified Chinese character doesn't have the same logical form as a traditional character.

And do take classes, it's helpful to learn the history of the language at the same time.

Good Luck.

[robotzu]

My mother language is Chinese. I'm sure if you have learned some Chinese, you will find it very interesting. It has a very long history...

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Language

[robotzu]

If you want to learn Chinese. I'm glad to answer your questions about Chinese. But..my English is not very good. (Now I'm in Grade 2 in a senior high school in China and I'm living in a small town near Shanghai.)

[ComplexNumber]

i think its a good idea to learn a chinese langauage. i'm absolutely certain that in the next 10-20 years, either india or china will be the number 1 superpower and where all the jobs are.

[drucer]

where all the jobs are.

I too am afraid something like that will happen. Read this book.

http://tinyurl.com/yxucf6

[matthew]

As someone who has learned 3 languages beyond my native tongue let me give a small amount of language learning advice:

1. Find a native speaker to teach you the accent, otherwise you will always sound like a foreigner.

2. Concentrate on communication first. Learn simple things like greetings, civilities, phrase book style stuff. Learn to say them well and understand them when said. Build from that foundation...everything can be learned in a language far more easily if it is done with help from relationships with native speakers...these things give a foundation for those relationships where later you can ask "how do I write X?" or "how do you pronounce this word?" or "how can I express this thought?"

3. Books are valuable, but they should be your secondary sources, not your primary sources...start with people and your listening, speaking, reading, and writing conprehension will grow much more quickly and will be more easily understood by others.

4. The same thing as #3 applies to grammar. Learn how things are said/written naturally first, then go back and learn the rules to help you make sense of what you have learned. This is a little more difficult for westerners who are accustomed to seeing something in a book, learning a rule about it, and then practicing the rule ad nauseum, but you will find in the long run you actually save time via this method.

I haven't learned Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, any variety) or any tonal language whose writing system is character based. I have learned Arabic, though, so I have some experience learning a new system of writing, pronunciation and grammar that is very different from any of the European style languages. Learning a language that is this different takes commitment and desire, but I'm convinced it can be done by anyone willing to put in some time and effort.

Oh! The most important rule of all (zeroth rule?)...

0. Learn to laugh at yourself as you make mistakes. It will happen. Swallow your pride. It's easier on the ego if you have a sense of humor about it and can laugh with everyone around you when you try to tell a kind hostess that she was well cooked when you meant to say she cooked a fine meal. I've learned at least a dozen really bad words in Arabic by accidently saying them while trying to say something appropriate and innocent that happened to be very similar...being able to laugh and ask people to help you say/write things correctly will save you a lot of hassle in the long term at the small cost of momentary humility.

[fuscia]

good luck. i never even made it to "hello world".

[matthew]

good luck. i never even made it to "hello world".from Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr):

你好世界

[robotzu]

matthew，你会说中文？

[ComplexNumber]

from Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr):

你好世界
never trust babelfish for an exact translation :D

[matthew]

matthew，你会说中文？I have no idea...


never trust babelfish for an exact translation :DI'm sure that's the truth...speaking of which, anyone have any idea whether it was a close translation or not? I just entered "hello world" and cut/pasted what babelfish spit out...hopefully it wasn't another instance of me accidentally "saying" bad words. :)

[mostwanted]

matthew, just out of interest, is your native language "Berber" then? (since I figure you must know French besides English and Arabic).

[matthew]

matthew, just out of interest, is your native language "Berber" then? (since I figure you must know French besides English and Arabic).Actually, my location can be a little bit deceptive...I'm am in Fes, Morocco, but I'm actually an American from the state of Arizona.

American English is my native language. I also speak Spanish, Arabic, Moroccan Darija (which is a very different dialect of Arabic) and a little French--but my French is at such an elementary level that I really don't count it.

[fuscia]

from Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr):

你好世界

i never even tried to write it. i just wanted to learn some phrases so i could play with the intonations.

[mostwanted]

Actually, my location can be a little bit deceptive...I'm am in Fes, Morocco, but I'm actually an American from the state of Arizona.

American English is my native language. I also speak Spanish, Arabic, Moroccan Darija (which is a very different dialect of Arabic) and a little French--but my French is at such an elementary level that I really don't count it.

Oh I see :)

Your list of known languages is impressive... very diverse!

[lucia_engel]

anyone have any idea whether it was a close translation or not? I just entered "hello world" and cut/pasted what babelfish spit out...hopefully it wasn't another instance of me accidentally "saying" bad words. :)

That's actually pretty close to what I would translate "Hello World" to, but instead of 你好世界, I would say 世界你好.

For a character by character translation, 你 is you, 好 is good, 世界 is world. But if you say 你好世界, it sounds more like "So you're living the big life (好世界) huh", at least that's what comes to mind if interpreted as colloquial Cantonese.

With 世界你好, though still a bit clunky, is more like greeting a friend.


And for those wondering what this means 你会说中文:
你(you)会(can)说(speak/say)中文(Chinese)

[ComplexNumber]

That's actually pretty close to what I would translate "Hello World" to, but instead of 你好世界, I would say 世界你好.

For a character by character translation, 你 is you, 好 is good, 世界 is world. But if you say 你好世界, it sounds more like "So you're living the big life (好世界) huh", at least that's what comes to mind if interpreted as colloquial Cantonese.

With 世界你好, though still a bit clunky, is more like greeting a friend.


And for those wondering what this means 你会说中文:
你(you)会(can)说(speak/say)中文(Chinese)
looks like quite a scary language to learn. it seems like there is not likely to be such a thing as a crash coarse in chinese due to the length of time required to learn even the basics to a rudimentary level.

[meng]

Maybe
da jia, zao an
(good morning everyone)???

The best way to learn a foreign language is to find a girlfriend/boyfriend who only speaks that language. Problem solved, next question!

[net-x]

Maybe
da jia, zao an
(good morning everyone)???

The best way to learn a foreign language is to find a girlfriend/boyfriend who only speaks that language. Problem solved, next question!

Its a good idea :mrgreen:

[matthew]

That's actually pretty close to what I would translate "Hello World" to, but instead of 你好世界, I would say 世界你好.

For a character by character translation, 你 is you, 好 is good, 世界 is world. But if you say 你好世界, it sounds more like "So you're living the big life (好世界) huh", at least that's what comes to mind if interpreted as colloquial Cantonese.

With 世界你好, though still a bit clunky, is more like greeting a friend.


And for those wondering what this means 你会说中文:
你(you)会(can)说(speak/say)中文(Chinese)Excellent! Thank you.

[seshomaru samma]

侬好;)
I think spoken language and literacy should be separated. There are still many Chinese people who can speak but not read/write. In fact these people were the majority a few decades ago. As for the writing system - it is not that difficult. Japanese is far more complex.
You want to learn Chinese ? best advice - come to China, stay in some small town without any forigners for 6 months and you will be able to speak Chinese

[meng]

For anyone who lives in the US and is interested:

I have 4 copies of Lao Zi's (Lao Tzu's) Dao de Jing (Way of Tao) and 10 copies of Sun Zi's (Sun Tzu's) Bin Fa (Art of War), both English translation with original Chinese text, paperback edition translated and published by my father.

Free (including postage) to whoever wants it. First come, first served, PM me if you're interested. No strings attached, and I won't give your address to anyone else (in fact I'll delete it as soon as I post off the goods). [The question is, can I be trusted???]

And why would I offer to do this? Well, it's a small price to pay (media mail is cheap) to circulate the text more widely.

[lucia_engel]

As for the writing system - it is not that difficult. Japanese is far more complex.

Hmm. I took Japanese from grade 9-11 and IMHO the writing system was pretty easy to learn. Basically there's five "main" sounds a, i, u, e, o and then all the other characters are a variation of those sounds:

ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
sa, shi, su, se, so
ha, hi, hu, he, ho etc.

Of course, you have to learn the symbol for each sound and you have to learn two sets of "alphabets" (katakana and hiragana), where katakana is mostly used to "convert" foreign languages to japanese (ie. superhero > supaahiro). I think in total there's around 200 japanese characters to learn (though some look pretty similar so it's more like 100).

There is another writing system, kanji, which is more difficult, but that's because it's based on Chinese characters.

In comparison, there's at least 4000 Chinese characters and more impressively, most Chinese only knows 2000-3000 of them.

Edit to add: Just curious, are you native Chinese or Japanese seshomaru?

[seshomaru samma]

Hmm. I took Japanese from grade 9-11 and IMHO the writing system was pretty easy to learn. Basically there's five "main" sounds a, i, u, e, o and then all the other characters are a variation of those sounds:

ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
sa, shi, su, se, so
ha, hi, hu, he, ho etc.

Of course, you have to learn the symbol for each sound and you have to learn two sets of "alphabets" (katakana and hiragana), where katakana is mostly used to "convert" foreign languages to japanese (ie. superhero > supaahiro). I think in total there's around 200 japanese characters to learn (though some look pretty similar so it's more like 100).

There is another writing system, kanji, which is more difficult, but that's because it's based on Chinese characters.

In comparison, there's at least 4000 Chinese characters and more impressively, most Chinese only knows 2000-3000 of them.

Edit to add: Just curious, are you native Chinese or Japanese seshomaru?
no no , Japanese is way more difficult than Chinese
it's true that Chinese uses more characters ,but for day to day use 2000 are enough, I think for day to day use Japanese uses just as much or slightly less. The thing is , in Mandarin almost all(99%) of characters have one sound made out of one syllable ,so the character 東 is always pronounced 'dong' , you just need to remember that and you are ok . In Japanese there are many readings so 東 can be read 'tÕ' and can also be read 'higashi' . The kanji 上 has about 8 readings in Japanese while in Chinese it's always 'shang'. To me it's always difficult to figure out what should be written in which system , why is 'coffee' written in Kanji while 'ramen' written in Katakana ？
In terms of pronunciation Japanese is easier , as Chinese has much more consonants ,vowels and of course the tones which can be up to 8 tones in the southern varieties . But in my experience the Chinese writing system is much easier than Japanese.
As for your question ,I'm a native of neither. But I've been living in Chine for 6 years and my wife is Japanese so I have a fairly good understanding of those languages. I can speak Mandarin and can understand Shanghainese , I can read and write both classic and simplified Chinese.　As for Japanese , I can read but not write , understand but not speak.

just my 2 cents...

[lucia_engel]

The kanji 上 has about 8 readings in Japanese while in Chinese it's always 'shang'. To me it's always difficult to figure out what should be written in which system , why is 'coffee' written in Kanji while 'ramen' written in Katakana ？

I see what you mean. When I learned the language I also realized that the character 日 is differently pronounced in several occasions. But I guess I've always thought of it as hiragana first and then I convert it to kanji and that helped me remember which goes with which. Alot of Chinese characters are pronounced differently too in Cantonese depending on the word association.

So the difficulty is actually the confusion that arises from the illogical kanji pronounciation system but that doesn't make the characters harder to write.

Does Japanese use alot of kanji characters? (ie. how many do you need to know in average)

[seshomaru samma]

Alot of Chinese characters are pronounced differently too in Cantonese depending on the word association.
in Shanghainese as well, for example 人 (man) can be read 'nin' or 'sen' ,but generally speaking, Chinese characters have one reading, while in Japanese most characters have at least two (onyomi and kunyomi)


So the difficulty is actually the confusion that arises from the illogical kanji pronounciation system but that doesn't make the characters harder to write.
In terms of writing ,Chinese and Japanese Kanji are almost identical, that's why my mother in law can can come to Shanghai and understand the subway map or some of the newspaper headlines without understanding a word of Chinese.
there are variations like the famous word 'chi' ,written like this in traditional Chinese:氣 like this in modern Japanese :気 and like this in simplified Chinese :气. But anyone who can read one style can easily make the switch to another (at least to read it)

Does Japanese use alot of kanji characters? (ie. how many do you need to know in average)
They must use a lot , this (http://www.kanjistep.com/en/about/writing.html)website claims you need 2000 to read a newspaper

[meng]

For anyone who lives in the US and is interested:

I have 4 copies of Lao Zi's (Lao Tzu's) Dao de Jing (Way of Tao) and 10 copies of Sun Zi's (Sun Tzu's) Bin Fa (Art of War), both English translation with original Chinese text, paperback edition translated and published by my father.

Free (including postage) to whoever wants it. First come, first served, PM me if you're interested. No strings attached, and I won't give your address to anyone else (in fact I'll delete it as soon as I post off the goods). [The question is, can I be trusted???]

And why would I offer to do this? Well, it's a small price to pay (media mail is cheap) to circulate the text more widely.
Wowee, the response was ... underwhelming. Probably my fault for placing the notice at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and phrased suspiciously like spam. No matter - I can spend the money on myself rather than on postage.

The offer is now closed. Congratulations to the two respondents who will be receiving their books shortly.

[matthew]

Wowee, the response was ... underwhelming. Probably my fault for placing the notice at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and phrased suspiciously like spam. No matter - I can spend the money on myself rather than on postage.

The offer is now closed. Congratulations to the two respondents who will be receiving their books shortly.You were very generous to offer. I would have taken you up on it, but I live in Africa.

[meng]

Yes, that was the other thing, I had forgotten that members here are located all over the globe!

[ComplexNumber]

this highlights just how difficult translations between english and chinese can be :D
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6052800.stm


China has launched a fresh drive to clamp down on bad English in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

..................

Emergency exits at Beijing airport read "No entry on peacetime" and the Ethnic Minorities Park is named "Racist Park".

..............


Menus frequently list items such as "Corrugated iron beef", "Government abuse chicken" and "Chop the strange fish".

..............

The mistranslations arise because many Chinese words express concepts obliquely and can be interpreted in multiple ways, making translation a minefield for non-English speakers.

[nightfire117]

I'm glad they're... cracking down on bad English in Beijing's signs and stuff. Hehe. But, indeed English and Chinese are quite different and often times translations aren't easy to do.

~Nightfire

[coder_]

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is great :)

I've read it in English though.

[Jhongy]

I'm from the UK -- but have been living in China for 8 years.

Go for it -- it's about the most useful second language you can learn these days. However, bear in mind:

- Foreigners' pronunciation of Chinese sucks. Even people who have studied for years. Get a tape/CD with native speakers, or pull a CCTV (China Central TV) stream off the 'net to get some exposure to proper tones -- better yet, come to China, get Chinese teacher or girlfriend...

- Tones aren't that hard once you get used to them. It's tiring at first, but in reality it's not that much different from English. For example, think of English sentences that end in a question -- they always have a certain, rising intonation at the end. No choice about it -- get the intonation wrong, and the listener probably won't understand. Sure, Chinese is more complex than this, but it's just as natural.

- Learn to write while you speak -- plenty of books/websites available, and it's fun. Just make sure you learn simplified Chinese --- traditional might make more sense in terms of the parts that make up the characters, but they are much more tiring to write, and only used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

- Don't believe people who tell you that Chinese is 'too hard'. It is Just Different ;-) . Basic Chinese grammar is simpler than English -- and rules of etiquette are much more straightforward.

- Avoid straight translations of words or characters. Think in terms of shades of meaning, if you can.

- You'll never be a native! Regardless of how well you (think you) can speak or write -- even if you learned Chinese from the day you were born.... Chinese people will still generally repeatedly comment on how you've got good Chinese 'for a foreigner' -- or how you can use chopsticks. No way around this. Just smile and tell them that you're still learning, or that you have a long way to go, and leave it at that...


I'm no expert (no foreigner can ever be!), but those are the biggest mindset impediments I faced when I started to learn.

[Lucifiel]

Chinese, huh?

Though I'm a Chinese, the last time I actually spoke more than 20 sentences of Mandarin was many years ago.

I can't even read the Chinese papers nor can I remember most of my Mandarin now. About 1 to 2 years ago, I made an effort to relearn my Mandarin. That didn't work because I soon lost interest as people just kept bombarding me with their recommendations, demands, etc., etc.

Besides, I soon learnt that the Mandarin I'd learnt in elementary + high school was very different from the Mandarin spoken in ,say, China and other places internationally.

So, it was quite difficult trying to remember all these things and still, retain my sanity.

Eh, Chinese isn't a scary language. There's one language which was voted the most difficult language to learn in the entire world. I think that was an Icelandic language?

[Heidi18]

I made some good experiences learning languages with computer software as some of them offer great multimedia advantages. Unfortuntaly for Linux there are not many programs out there. Recently I came across a software called L-Ceps Personaltrainer Mandarin (by the way I also use the Hindi software from them) which runs under Linux. They have a demo version on their homepage with which I already learned a great deal. You can have a look here: http://www.l-ceps.com/en/chinese-mandarin/learn-chinese-mandarin-ptrainer.html

[niconel]

I just quickly scanned this thread, so pardon me if I'm repeating someone else's advice. I just give this as I'm a laowai (foreigner) here in China for the past few years.

You should try the tools and free stuff available at www.chinese-tools.com

Personally I learned tons using Pimsleur's "Teach yourself Mandarin"

Feel free to drop me a line if you want to know more about China and Chinese from a foreigners perspective.

[Changturkey]

I am a Canton speaker, but I can't read/write Chinese. I was born in Hong Kong, but emigrated before I could go to a Chinese school. I kinda want to learn writing/reading, any good programs/resources?

[1991sudarshan]

i find it very interesting to learn chinese and japanese especially through linux software! that is the reason why i jumped from windows xp to linux:D:D

[overdrank]

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/5451/necromancing.jpg