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[philgreek]

Hello,
I am heading out to China in teh new year and was wondering if anyone knew of the best way to learn mandarin before I get out there. I am thinking of buying linguaphone and was wondering if anyone had any experience with it. I am far more focused on learning the spoken language rather than going into the complexities of the characters yet. Any help would be much appreciated, thank you, Phil

[kimo]

I have no experience with linguaphone. I just suggest you spend the majority of your efforts on learning the tones with the aim of being able to hear and distinguish them and say them correctly. This will, in my opinion, facilitate your learning the language faster and making yourself understood better once you're in China. Beyond that, of course, start getting a feel for basic grammar and expressions. Learning a few basic characters and the proper stroke order would be helpful. When in China, I found knowing how to read and write was a very useful social tool.

[philgreek]

Thanks Kimo. I just didn't want to think about characters too early as they are so tricky that a few of my friends who are competent linguists gave up learning chinese. I do appreciate however that they will be useful if not neccessary for many circumstances. Cheers again

[funakoshi]

i wouldnt worry about the characters, because there is waaay to many to learn, and too many variations. Focus on listening skills, and basic speaking. I have been here only 2months, and i can already sometimes get the idea of what ppl at my school are talking about. I can speak even less, but only because i havent been keeping up with my chinese lessons!!

[ChinaMovieMagic]

If you have a DVD machine, the A==B Repeat function is a great way for:
*improving listening comprehension, using subtitles and/or bilingual audio
* helping facilitate the trasfer of the brief A==B audio input--from short-term memory to long-term memory

It's VERY IMPORTANT that you select movie segments with voices that are PLEASING/ATTRACTIVE to your ear.

[senor boogie woogie]

Hola!

I use the MDBG Chinese dictionary (Google MDBG and it will come right up). By doing this, you can see how the language is structured. There are many thousands of characters, but many are very familiar and you will see them constantly (我，是，你，的,) for example. This is my favorite part of Chinese is the beautiful writing. Chinese take great pride and care in their written language. There is only one way to write a character, and if you write it out of sequence, it is wrong, no matter how nice and legible it looks and is easily read by anyone. It's like writing the letter "E" and being required to write three horizontal lines first and then a vertical left line. Any other way, it's wrong. Want to learn how to write good Chinese, ask your Chinese children students. Trust me, my babies are my harshest critics.

If you can, buy some tapes that you can LISTEN to this language. Chinese has four tones, and if you use the wrong tone, the person will not understand you or think you are trying to say something else entirely. Buy some tapes and listen to them in the car, or in your walkman, etc.

I love the French language (people another story altogether) but French has its own sounds, diction and tones. Same with Chinese. When you come here , listen to your advanced students and you will see many common errors, such as "I very much like", instead of "I like very much". I have asked a student "When are you going to go to University", and they will say "two years later" instead of "two years from now". I also try to teach them "Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western China" instead of "North of China" , "South of China" etc.

In some ways, Chinese is easier than English. For example, days of the week. Chinese say Xing Qi Yi (Day One), Xing Qi Er (Day Two) and so on. The language does not have plurals and articles are not of great importance. Most Chinese have problems with tenses, little tense work in Chinese.

To me, to learn a langauge is like learning how to play an instrument, and learning any language is hard work, and a lot of the work is not fun, it is tedious mental labor. My Chinese s u c k s because I am lazy. Period. I am unwilling to do the work. Now (xianzai) I am drinking wine typing on Dave's instead of reading my Chinese book which is collecting dust in my drawer. The winners and the go getters do the work and become fluent within two years. I speak good survival Chinese, but that's it.

Most kids hate English and are there because they have to. I would say that 5% percent of my primary school class students will be fluent and use English as adults. I am of value here because it gives the student exposure to a native speaker, which is of great value here. many of here complain that we feel that we are "entertainment monkies", but especially to the children, I am. I believe in do by doing, I want the child to witness me doing something and hear the language coming from me.

You have the advantage coming to China because everyone obviously speaks the language you want to learn. The Chinese do not have this. I work with some intellegent, young Chinese teachers who teach the kids basic English, but cannot always understand what I have to say, and is difficult to have a conversation. When you come to China, do not deem these people as stupid, understand that these people have had minimal exposure to English, and they do not use the language in their non-professional day to day affairs. We, as foreigners have a tremendous advantage to learn Chinese because it is available and everywhere.

No Chinese knows what "MANDARIN" is. I know, I have taught advanced adult learners. MANDARIN is called Pu-tong-hua or Beijing dialect. Hanyu is another name, but this refers to the written language.

Good luck. Enjoy China. It's a challenge at time and will test your nerves, but most of us love it all the same.

Senor

[ContemporaryDog]

That's an excellent site, Senor. Cheers for that.