Are there any suggestions for facilitating the learning and understanding of basic Mandarin Chinese?

Question

I am a junior in college and English is my first language. I am now taking Mandarin Chinese 101. I know its a little late to be learning such a complicated new language but I have a strong interest in the Chinese culture and I think learning Mandarin will be useful for me in the future. Are there any tricks or tips to learning the tones or any other facet of the language out there that have been useful to other Americans learning Mandarin? After a few classes, I'm a little overwhelmed with the complexity of the language, the characters and seeing just how different it is from English.

Answer 1

First, let me congratulate you for learning a new language! I think it's great that you have decided to learn Mandarin and it is completely possible to learn Mandarin as an adult.

It's true that the tones are one part of Mandarin that are especially hard for English speakers, and they are also very important. You might just have to force yourself to practice and memorize the tones for the words that you learn. With the characters memorization is the goal. Don't feel bad that you don't know as many characters as native speakers; they have been working on memorizing them for years.

In general, the goal for learning a new language is to get as much exposure as possible to material in that language that you understand. Going to your class and hearing your teacher speak in Mandarin will certainly be helpful. Also you can expose yourself to other materials in Mandarin, such as Chinese movies and radio programs. You can maximize your understanding if you have previous knowledge of the content. For example, you could watch a movie once with subtitles so you know what's going on in the movie, and then watch it again and again without subtitles to listen to the Mandarin and try to understand the dialogue.

Don't give up; language learning takes time! But it seems that you are very motivated. I wish you a lot of success!

Answer 2

My Suggestions on How to Learn Mandarin
Mandarin is difficult but not that difficult. Secret: do one thing at a time. Eg, I would suggest you do the recognition first, but Americans want to learn to speak as soon as possible! Learn to crawl first. The speaking part is extremely difficult because of the four tones, stumbling blocks even for native Chinese speakers! Beginners should forget about oral Mandarin first. Recognise what the characters mean. Eg. "Ah, this character means one, that one means two, that one means three and so on." 一， 二， 三。 In fact, you could begin Mandarin by looking at the characters but reading them in English in your head. Eg. 我是人。could be read in English, in your head as "I am (a) man." or "I am human." So, in theory if you know the meaning of a lot and a lot of Chinese characters, even if you do not know the sounds, you can understand what Chinese sentences mean. And you can still communicate with a Chinese by simply writing down the Chinese characters. This method is preferable to speaking Mandarin where the wrong tones give the listener ear-aches and puzzlement.
Oral Mandarin is actually easy and difficult at the same time depending on how much you know! If you know that a lot of Chinese characters have the same sound, (homonyms are words having the same sound: examples in English are: lose, loose; air, heir), then, pinyin becomes easy. Pinyin is the Chinese system of spelling for the sounds of the characters. But I think oral Mandarin should be learned much much later, after you have learned what most of the characters mean. So, let's go back to character recognition; how to do it? Step 1, get a good Chinese English dictionary, better, a couple, the more the better. In the net, Jim Breen's free site at Monash University is good but still do not have some of the words found in ordinary Chinese novels. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html. But then, you must get someone to teach you how to use the Chinese dictionary. If you try to do it on your own, you may need 30-60 mins, but with someone teaching you, only 10! This Chinese-Englsih is your life-line to learning Chinese Mandarin. Any Chinese character you come across in your reading, you will look up in this dictionary then copy down in the left side of your note book, with pinyin and meaning on the opposite, facing right page, like this:
爱 | ai4 love
人 | ren2 man, person
要 | yao4 want
钱 | qian2 money
4X6 inch notebooks with each page having 18 -20 lines would do fine. Every day, or as often as possible, glance through the characters and see if you know their meaning. If you have forgotten, look at the opposite page and lock it in your memory again. There is no other way but memorization. So, constant revision is necessary. After having done 7 to 8 of these 100 page notebooks, you should be able to read most Chinese novels with about 60 - 70 percent degree of understanding. The aim of this method of study is not just passing 101 Chinese but to know how to master the language with lots of vocabulary work and going through all the Chinese books in the library. Leave the Chinese classics alone until one has learned modern Mandarin because Classical Chinese is almost like another language which even native Chinese who know modern Putonghua find difficult. To recap: do you vocabulary first, forget about the oral. Use a note book and collect words the same way one collects stamps. Do a lot of reading where any strange word is written down into your note book and its meaning searched for. All this means a lot and a lot of dictionary work and revision. Is it worthwhile? Yes, if after learning the language, you continue reading in Chinese, if you have access to a huge Chinese library; no if you do not intend to. Caveat: the language takes up so much time, you will not have enough time to do your reading in English. With best wishes
...green1768...