I recommend signing up for a chinesepod.com account and learning there. They have some great material, a good community and great resources.

symphony Wrote:Listen to native material - which I'm already doing (And listening to this stuff makes me remember why I began with Chinese in the first place - I absolutely love this language. I never really had much of a reason to study Japanese, I just figured I would never be able to master tones, so I might as well do something. But thanks, shirokuro, for posting the discussion on tones. Very interesting.)

No problem. ^^

It's great that you're listening to lots of native materials and that you love the sound of the language, I think that will be really motivational for you! Listening lots should be really good for your listening comprehension, and will probably also really help your pronunciation.

Quote:Use smart.fm lists and mine from native material? - Is this where I start?

I'm not really sure what level you're at, so sorry if some of what I mention is too basic or you know already.

With Mandarin (or any other language), I think it's good to start by reading up on the pronunciation/phonology of the language. Here are some links from Sinosplice:
* Pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese: Setting the Record Straight
* Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills
* The Process of Learning Tones
* Toward Better Tones in Natural Speech

There are also a lot of good articles in the "pronunciation" category on Laowai Chinese 老外中文.

You should also decide which phonetic system to use. It's probably a good idea to be familiar with both pinyin and bopomofo, the two most popular systems. (There's a lot of information on pinyin on Pinyin.info.)

(I think I would just choose one system and learn it by including the phonetic readings for the sentences you put in your deck. You should pick it up pretty naturally that way.)

What resources you use is totally up to you. Some people like to start with highly-structured resources like textbooks, vocabulary lists, example sentences from dictionaries, and so on, while other people like to dive into native material right away. You can also do both at the same time. If you're already really into native material, you could try mining from that now and see how it goes, and maybe put it off if you find it too hard right now. Or, if you start with textbooks or vocabulary lists and soon find them boring, you could switch to using native materials. Just try to find what works for you and keeps you motivated.

If you do want to start with structured resources, the Master Chinese Characters series on Smart.FM seems good. You could probably use that along with the Zhongwen Red site that zer0range mentioned as a good foundation. There's also Zhongwen Blue and Green for more sentences.

Going directly into native material actually isn't as hard as it sounds, though. (I switched to only mining native material just last month and am enjoying it way more now. Also, I agree with what IceCream writes about the importance of context here: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=84427#p84427)

Mining from Chinese movies or drama is a good place to start, because you can watch a lot of them with English subtitles and then often find exact Chinese subtitles or transcripts. You can use subs2srs to make the mining process easier.

Quote:Back when I studied Mandarin a few years ago, I mainly used podcasts for learning new vocabulary, and I would learn the Hanzi for whatever the new words I had just learned in the podcast. Perhaps I could do this while adding the sentences into Anki?

Yeah! I actually asked pretty much the same thing here. I definitely think you can do it. That's exactly what I'm doing with kanji right now, and I find that it works fine for learning to read. I only learn the kanji that are in sentences that go into my deck. It's admittedly less organized/streamlined than doing something like RSH/RTH/RTK, but since you've already done so much of RTK, I think it should be pretty simple for you.

You'll want to figure out what you want your hanzi cards to test you on, like whether you need to know how to read the character, what it means, the correct stroke order, and so on. (Personally, for my kanji cards, I just test being able to write them.)

Quote:Also, I think now I've changed my mind and will be going with traditional, since I've done so much of RTK (even though I'll have to learn both anyway).

I asked a friend from Mainland China about this, and he said that although he learned to read simplified, he's able to read both, although reading traditional takes longer. So I think you'll eventually pick up both if you want to, no matter which one you start with.

Quote:Also also, once I get to a decent level, I definitely plan on getting help from my friends. Maybe I'll just sit and read through some texts with them, and they can critique my pronunciation and such.

That's a really good idea. But I don't think you even have to wait to get to a decent level. If your friends don't mind, you could maybe ask them when you have questions about a specific sentence, word, grammar question, and so on. Also check out this forum: http://www.chinese-forums.com/

Right now, with my Japanese very much nearing a good level and an imminent move to Japan coming (which will maintain my Japanese level quite nicely I believe), I've been looking to either Korean or Chinese to fill that "learning" void.

Here's what I've come up with:

I have 18 volumes of manwha I want to read very badly. I want to know what they say and be able to translate them for a few friends of mine, as well. However, I tried out Korean and found I don't really like the sound of the language, and the pronunciation is just ridiculous of some of the combinations of characters.

Now, chinese I happen to really like. However, I don't particularly like (or know?) any good chinese media. I have those comics in korean and I also know some dramas I'd be interested in, but what about Chinese? What's common "native" material?

I know it sounds like I'm asking for suggestions here, and I kind of am. But I think my main question is what do you think will be faster to learn, considering my interests and assuming I'd be in Japan?

I would advise against using Integrated Chinese textbooks. I started learning Mandarin while living in Xi'an, China teaching English. I picked up Integrated Chinese as well as two books that were part of a series, "Intensive Spoken Chinese" and "Rapid Literacy in Chinese." Integrated Chinese is definitely textbook Chinese, whereas the Intensive Spoken Chinese book was immediately relevant and useful. It hits things at a faster pace, and there is no filler material. You said that you have experience in Japanese, and that will be of help (I majored in Japanese at uni before heading off to China). Of course if you are not living in China at the moment the relevancy issue won't be as apparent, but for me at least, Integrated Chinese found its way into the trash very quickly.

Here's a link to Intensive Spoken Chinese:

http://www.amazon.com/Intensive-Spoken-C...691&sr=8-1

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Right now, with my Japanese very much nearing a good level and an imminent move to Japan coming (which will maintain my Japanese level quite nicely I believe), I've been looking to either Korean or Chinese to fill that "learning" void.

Here's what I've come up with:

I have 18 volumes of manwha I want to read very badly. I want to know what they say and be able to translate them for a few friends of mine, as well. However, I tried out Korean and found I don't really like the sound of the language, and the pronunciation is just ridiculous of some of the combinations of characters.

Now, chinese I happen to really like. However, I don't particularly like (or know?) any good chinese media. I have those comics in korean and I also know some dramas I'd be interested in, but what about Chinese? What's common "native" material?

I know it sounds like I'm asking for suggestions here, and I kind of am. But I think my main question is what do you think will be faster to learn, considering my interests and assuming I'd be in Japan?

雪山飛狐

Awesome story. It was first a book but in 2007 they made it into a 40 episode drama series which is really awesome. I dl'ed it off D-addicts for a friend and i'm watching it slowly too.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9B%AA%E...B%E7%8B%90

Thanks for the replies guys!

There was also this new thread posted after I posted this message, and in case no one here saw it, I'll link it because it has a ton of media for Mandarin!

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=88377