I want to take a short break from Japanese and learn a little bit of Mandarin. I personally grew up speaking Cantonese at home but never learned how to write. But having completed Remembering the Kanji, I now know how to read at least 800 Traditional Characters in Cantonese. (Knowing the English keyword, the writing and then associating it with my spoken Cantonese was so easy that it was mainly passive)

However, I just don't know how to begin and certain areas are very awkward for my situation. I tried to find the chinese equivalents of the Japanese resources I used. I began learning Japanese by using Japanesepod101 and I still listen to it from time to time. Apparently, the equivalents would be Chinesepod and Chineseclass101. I listened to both of them (for at least 10-15 lessons each over the past few years) and they just sound so boring to me. Maybe I'll just have to suck it and use it though.

Next is grammar. Knowing only speaking Cantonese is as awkward as it gets. I half-know stuff and things I do know, I can't explain. So I pretty much have to start from scratch. From what I listened to at least, the podcasts doesn't explicitly do grammar. If it was Japanese I'd just say Tae Kim, Japanese Manga way + Dictionary of Japanese Grammar x3 and you're set for a while. Chinese =? Seriously, I don't have a clue.

I remember first coming to this forum and every few posts I see an advocate of Core6k or Kanji Odyssey 2001. I see nothing close to these things mentioned so I'm assuming they don't exist. So a general textbook recommendation would be greatly appreciated(because the Chinese-forums section of Tb recommendation is horrible imo)

I started studying Mandarin properly about 3/4 months ago, after studying it on and off for maybe a year or so and having been to mainland China 3 times and Hong Kong twice. I think if you can already speak Cantonese and know some Japanese you'll be able to progress very quickly. A lot of it will just involve mapping new pronunciations to characters and vocabulary you already know in Cantonese or Japanese. The pronunciations can differ quite significantly but are usually close enough to make some connection to at least one Japanese onyomi reading or (I presume) more easily the cantonese pronunciation. One difference is that Mandarin lost most of it's syllable final consonants which are still preserved in Cantonese and Japanese ( eg. 福: mandarin fu, Cantonese fook, Japanese fuku). Another common change is consonant 'k' often becoming 'j' or 'x' in mandarin. There's some interesting information about sound changes on Wikipedia if you look up sino-japanese vocabulary I believe. I also think you'll have a huge advantage recognising mandarin tones because of your cantonese.

If you've done RTK then I think you're familiar enough with how kanji work and know enough radicals that you don't need to do any more RTK style bulk hanzi learning. What I'm doing is using the hanzi frequency lists at zhongwen.com and learning vocabulary for each character to familiarise myself with the the most common characters and character readings

I occasionally visit www.minmm.com for reading practice though I'm not really reading all that much chinese yet.

For listening I alternate between an audiobook (Roald Dahl's the witches) and listening to Serge Melnyk's free chinese podcast which is the best of its kind I've found and occasionally music (for enjoyment more than anything else).

My main study now is listening and pure vocab study (about 2000 words so far).

There's also this massive thread of chinese resources which I haven't gone through yet but there's bound to be a lot of good stuff there.

Also I occasionally practice speaking on sharedtalk.

Thank you so much for the indepth answer. I'm so glad I asked! The changes thing will be really useful for me and I doubt I was going to find out on my own anytime soon.

I'm interested in doing what you're doing with the hanzi frequency list. It's essentially the same as Ko2001 and it'll definitely help both my Mandarin vocab and Cantonese reading .

http://www.zhongwenred.com/

Granted, I've been out of the beginning resource game for a couple of years, but at the time, this was the best available. It's got practical sentences and dialogues, recorded audio, pinyin, etc... practically made for SRSing, if that's your thing.

Your biggest obstacle at this point may be overcoming pinyin. The key to mastering pinyin is to realize that it has only a very tenuous link to English pronunciation and mimicking the sounds over and over and over.

One good way to do this is through audio flashcards. Chop the audio into sentence by sentence with a tool like audacity, put the audio on the front, the Hanzi, pinyin and English translation on the back. Now you can replay the audio as many times as you need to in order to mimic the sounds.

Here's the quick and dirty as I see it for resources...

nciku.com - indispensable dictionary, has stroke order, Chinese to Chinese, etc.. pretty sure it has mobile phone support too if that interests you.

ppstream - best TV software out there - combine this with youtube and you won't need to go anywhere else to watch programming in Chinese.

chinasmack.com - somebody posted this a while back and I've been addicted since. It's a great news replacement site, all authentic, with good English translations, amusing topic material, slang (both of the commonly used variety, and internet geek speak) explained... all in all just a great resource.

Routledge University Press has some great books teaching Grammar. My neighbour was praising them, she learns Chinese, so she also has some of their books. Here is a list. The one she used most was Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar. But the other books might be worth a glimpse or two, too.

http://www.routledge.com/books/subjects/..._LA101015/

zer0range Wrote:ppstream - best TV software out there - combine this with youtube and you won't need to go anywhere else to watch programming in Chinese.

I'm so sorry, but that is the most hilariously named software in the eyes of my 5 year old sense of humor.

Hehe, yeah the Chinese have a way with names.