Your Thoughts/Experience with Learning Chinese

Leon, you can't go wrong learning Chinese. When you leave school to pursue a career with international scope, having the ability to speak Chinese gives you big advantage. It's quite difficult because it's a character-based system and you have to remember thousands of words. I suggest that you start learning right away and continue after college until you feel you have a pretty good command of the language.

Knowing Chinese not only gives you good opportunities in work, it also gives you a window to really appreciate the rich Chinese culture.

Just my 2 cents.

 

IMHO...its one of the toughest languages around... I studied it for 10yrs and still failed. Perhaps its due to the lack of motivation on my part.

The best way to learn any language is to embed yourself in the country. U will learn really fast.

 

Pardon me, many years ago, my teacher told me that it's supposed to be Mandarin rather than Chinese. We are Chinese but as a language, we speak mandarin but do we learn mandarin or chinese? I'm a little confused as well!

Anyway, perhaps you can try first to see if you would like to pursue it. It's quite an undertaking for someone new to it, to make it easier, you'll have to expose yourself to the culture & only certain parts of China uses it as most districts have their dialects & accents. Still, I personally know of many caucasions who speak, read & write Chinese fluently. I have an Italian friend who speaks 9 languages because he gets himself a girlfriend in those countries Makes it easier huh.

 

Hi,

move to Mainland China for a while and you will learn.... very quickly.

regards, seeya on the road!
Dilligaf

 

I am a westerner who speaks Chinese. Unless you learn it as a kid you will almost certainly only ever speak it in a rather accented way. I was 19 when I seriously started learning it. I have lived in China and Taiwan for 10 years plus including most of my 20s but I still speak it with an accent. Besides the written one of the other great difficulties of Chinese is the tones. Mandarin is actually easier than some other Chinese dialects for this. Cantonese, Hakka or Minnanyu (also known as Taiwanese or Hokkolo) have more tones and are harder to learn. I My written was once good enough to read a newspaper but now has declined somewhat even though I am living in Taiwan. Basically my written has been getting worse ever since I started working and had Chinese people who would write letters to customers etc. In the past I have written newspaper articles and a book in Chinese but I did so only by having Chinese people help me fix up the mistakes. This might sound very egotistical but even doing this is well beyond 95 if not 99% of westerners who ever start studying Chinese. One thing about learning Chinese is that you do not need to be Einstein, you do however need to be someone who will not give in easily. Stubbornness will help a lot if it means you will keep plugging away at studying it.
Don't think learning Chinese is any great path to riches. My degrees are in Commerce and Chinese. I have basically had to fight all the way in terms of getting work. Although I make a reasonable but not amazing living by running my own imports company in Taiwan now when I worked for foreign companies before in Asia I was not really being paid well.
Living in China or Taiwan is no sure way of learning. Many foriegners who are either teaching English or working in foreign companies wind up just needing to use English a lot. Certainly if you get a base from formal learning your chances of picking it up by living here increase a lot though. Basically English IS the international language and Chinese people do recognize that. They might just want to practice their English on you regardless of your Chinese. Also some Chinese people will find it hard to comprehend that a white (or black) person might speak OK Chinese. I have seen a European origin friend who grew up in Taiwan, non-English speaking country parents, educated in local schools and lived here all of his life so he speaks 100% perfect Chinese and Taiwanese but imperfect English yet I have seen local people persisting in using bad English to talk to him.
I agree about the girlfriend thing. I used to get told I spoke Chinese like a girl, which was probably largely atributable to having learnt a substantial portion of my Chinese off the pillow but it certainly helped overall. Changing girlfriends will help though! I am serious. If you spend too much time just talking with one person you will both get used to knowing what words each other can understand, accent imperfections etc. After a while you will not really be pushing yourself.
Another thing to seriously consider is Taipei (aka Taibei) in Taiwan is probably a better place for learing spoken Mandarin/Putonghua/Chinese/Guoyu whatever you like to call it than anywhere in China. The textbooks in China tend to just be not as good and more importantly it is easier to make normal local friendships etc here than in China.
Just my two RMB or NT worth on the matter.

 

Hi Leon, I have been here for a few years, but I made the mistake of hooking up with my company translator after a month or so after being here. Where ever I went she went, so I was never forced to speak out of necessity, not a good way to learn.

My best advice is to take a break from your studies back home (assuming it is easy to return to where you left off), come over here for a year to learn Chinese in a school. I had some friends at Zhejiang Uni in Hangzhou. They tell me that at the moment the are more scholarships than there are students so you may even get a chance to get free education. In one year you will be such a level that once you return home you should still be able to progress at a reasonable speed.

Really, it is bloody easy to do this, do not think that it would be a huge undertaking. One of my friends got pissed off with his job in New Zealand, quit on the spot, few to HK, got a China visa there in 4 hours, crossed into Shenzhen, got a 24 hour train to Hangzhou and was in class only a few days after leaving his job.

Someone your age will have a ball here, the food is amazing, beer is cheap and the girls (esp Hangzhou or Sichuan) are friendly and cute. I can not imagine you would ever regret deciding to do this. I only wish I was young(er) again, I would most certainly do it. And if I can not find a job soon, maybe I will!

Cheers, Neil

 

I took first year Chinese in college and it was extremely difficult for me. Save yoursef the trouble and check out Rosetta Stone instead:

http://www2.rosettastone.com/en/

[edit] remember that most things are harder to learn as you get older so learn what you can a.s.a.p. [/edit]

 

From my understanding, Chinese is the language and Mandarin is a dialect. So therefore you are learn how to read/write Chinese and how to speak Mandarin.

To answer the original question, it is quite easy to pick up verbally if you submerge yourself in the environment. As for the writing, it would be quite difficult but ping-yin is relatively easy to learn. It was difficult for me to pick up the reading and writing portion living in the states since I was 2 and taking classes up to the college level

I'd recommend enrolling in a University either in Taipei, Taiwan or mainland China (Beijing University, etc)

 

Travelling abroad and immersing yourself in the culture is the most effective way to learn. I grew up speaking mandarin but after I moved to the States as a young child, I had little chance outside of home to develop my linguistic skills further. It wasn't until I worked for an Asian firm after college where my mandarin improved dramatically since it was spoken about 50% of the time.

 

go to china, get a gf and you would deff improve your chinese.

 

better yet... save the plane ticket money and date a Chinese girl here.

 

Hi Leon,

As a Westerner I can thoroughly recommend learning Chinese. Some people are just naturally good and languages, some are not, and I'm not. That didn't mean I couldn't learn though. (I studied mandarin). I started with a part time course, just two nights a week, a few hours each.

You do need a few attributes (And this applies to anything you learn). You need to really want to learn the language and also understand the culture. Secondly, you need to make time for study. If you have these two, you will have no problem.

I particularly enjoy learning to read and write the characters, they are really beautiful.

One of the many pleasant things about Chinese people is they are genuinely excited when a Westerner speaks chinese so you'll have no trouble finding people to practise with.

I also have a chinese girlfriend...and that helps a lot too, though she gets pretty impatient sometimes!

Go for it.

Regards,

Carl.

 

Watch Chinese TV and Movies.

Most have subtitles (since there are many dialects besides Mandarin). When I was growing up in Taiwan I was able to read the newspaper at age 6 because I watched so many cartoons and kung fu flicks lol. To bad I've forgotten almost all of it, damnit.