Hi guys!
Lately I've been toying with the idea of starting Mandarin Chinese. Until now I've been focusing 100% on Japanese, and will probably continue to do so, but since I've improved my studying methods a lot, I thought that I could make at least some progress doing Chinese for say 30 min a day. I know I won't make that much progress, but 5 sentences / words a day for 3 years (5475 sentences / words!) is much better than nothing!
My goal is to work up a foundation in Chinese, so that I'll get a kick-start when I start focusing on Chinese only, after I've gotten my Japanese to the level I want.

I seriously know nothing about studying Mandarin Chinese. All I know is that I love the sounds of the language, that it has 4/5 tones and a bunch of kanji (or hanzi? Whatever...)
What really worked for me in Japanese was doing sentences in the beginning, then single words / vocab after a while.
I went through KO2001 during my first months of learning Japanese, and found it really rewarding. Are there any similar books for Mandarin Chinese? Or like a Core pack or something?
I'm looking for simple, useful sentences with audio. I'm going to use Anki, so copy-pastable stuff / premade-decks would be hot

And please, if you have any other start-up-tips or for-the-love-of-God-don't-do-the-things-that-I-did-in-the-beginning stories, please tell me

Thank you guys so much!!
Peas and luv!
Z

Zhongwen Red

I'm almost done with an Anki deck where I spliced up the audio and did all the sentences. One exists, I know. However, it wasn't to my study style. Mine is simple and has the Sentence in hanzi, pinyin, and translation. Of course, the audio plays after flipping it.

I will also be going through the pinyin in my deck, not sure if it was edited in the other. Pinyin tools loves to put 要 as yao1 rather than yao4 which it seems to be in every sentence in Zhongwen Red.

I'm interesting in started Mandarin Chinese but just worried that it would probably take a lot of effort, just as I put into Japanese. 0r maybe I should make a separate deck that I add only 10 new sentences/10 new vocab per day. Not sure if it would be useful to do RTH+traditional because I did do 3007 kanji for RTK.

ta12121 Wrote:I'm interesting in started Mandarin Chinese.

I"m also interested. There doesn't seem to be a RTK->TaeKim->Core2k->Kanji Odyssey->Core6k->JLPT2 Grammar type of equalivant for Chinese.

Also, if you've already gone through RTK, I don't think RTH will be necessary. Think about what you gained from RTK, how to remember the kanji through primitives(radicals) and getting a vague sense of meaning from it. The meaning is soon replaced by actually learning vocabulary and knowing all the primites(radicals) allow you to apply the same methods to new Hanzi instead of pushing through another uphill slog whilst relearning a lot of Hanzi with the same Kanji equalivant.

DevvaR Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:I'm interesting in started Mandarin Chinese.

I"m also interested. There doesn't seem to be a RTK->TaeKim->Core2k->Kanji Odyssey->Core6k->JLPT2 Grammar type of equalivant for Chinese.

Also, if you've already gone through RTK, I don't think RTH will be necessary. Think about what you gained from RTK, how to remember the kanji through primitives(radicals) and getting a vague sense of meaning from it. The meaning is soon replaced by actually learning vocabulary and knowing all the primites(radicals) allow you to apply the same methods to new Hanzi instead of pushing through another uphill slog whilst relearning a lot of Hanzi with the same Kanji equalivant.

True, plus I started to delete a lot of RTK kanji because I don't need it anymore. I learned through vocab and sentences. I used to have 3007 now I'm down to around 2286. I figured I'll probably learn the same things through vocab at a faster pace as well.

I'm thinking of working through basic Chinese grammar,vocab,sentences and some immersion to mandarin. Maybe so I can build it on a few years. I know japanese will take priority but I doubt it will cause my Jp skills to fade.

If you want to learn Chinese, I would suggest you don't need to do RTH after doing RTK because the characters are 90% the same (that's my guesstimate), but focus instead on learning the good Chinese pronunciation of the characters.

In my case, I took a course at the university; that was perfect because beginners need someone to imitate the sounds from and someone to correct you, because foreigners usually tend to exaggerate the tones while speaking. Also, tones change depending on the context of other words in the sentence. You also want to associate the correct sounds to the pinyin. It is essential to have this training if you want to be understood, since it is easy to mix up the tones if you're not careful, and end up pronouncing something else than what you actually meant. Like when you think you are asking for where the post office is, but actually saying that your wife has a very fuzzy bush instead.

The good news is, once you master the pronunciation, then Chinese is a piece of cake to learn compared to Japanese. The grammar is trivial, many words are the same as in Japanese (because the Japanese borrowed them from Chinese in the first place), so your progress is going to be much faster. I think that grammatically, Chinese is even easier than English.

louischa Wrote:If you want to learn Chinese, I would suggest you don't need to do RTH after doing RTK because the characters are 90% the same (that's my guesstimate), but focus instead on learning the good Chinese pronunciation of the characters.

In my case, I took a course at the university; that was perfect because beginners need someone to imitate the sounds from and someone to correct you, because foreigners usually tend to exaggerate the tones while speaking. Also, tones change depending on the context of other words in the sentence. You also want to associate the correct sounds to the pinyin. It is essential to have this training if you want to be understood, since it is easy to mix up the tones if you're not careful, and end up pronouncing something else than what you actually meant. Like when you think you are asking for where the post office is, but actually saying that your wife has a very fuzzy bush instead.

The good news is, once you master the pronunciation, then Chinese is a piece of cake to learn compared to Japanese. The grammar is trivial, many words are the same as in Japanese (because the Japanese borrowed them from Chinese in the first place), so your progress is going to be much faster. I think that grammatically, Chinese is even easier than English.

Makes sense, so the best route is first getting used to tones/saying them and then mastering them. I agree with not doing RTH, I remember one of my Chinese friends saying that the characters are 80% the same. .

Plus I've learned what needs to be done on how to learn a language now but it's still a different one completely.

Also I was wondering if I should learn traditional or simplified? Or both?

Traditional vs. simplified characters: depends on where you want to go. Simplified are used in Mainland Chinese, so if your focus is business or teaching there, go with simplified. Traditional are used in Taiwan, so if you are planning on going down there, then learn traditional - but I'd say that 95% of Japanese kanji (guesstimate again) are identical to traditional Chinese characters. Hong Kong also uses traditional, but then the language is not Mandarin, and good luck if your goal is to pronounce Cantonese like a native!

If you'd like to learn simplified, if you've done RTK, then you've done most of the hard work already. Most simplifications are really straightforward. For instance, 言 becomes 讠, and that applies to all compounds having the radical 言. Likewise, 長 becomes 长, 貝 becomes 贝 in all compounds as well. So there you go, knowing these simple mappings allow you to "know" already a bunch of simplified characters.

Some characters are so simplified that they are unrecognizable for us, RTKers. For instance, 為 becomes 为 (makes sense, but you need to learn that), and 書 becomes 书 (not so obvious), and 幾 becomes 几 (impossible to guess). These extreme cases count for perhaps no more than 1-2 hundred characters (my guesstimate, here again).

So there you go: learning simplified characters will take someone who went through RTK just a couple of weeks - so this is really a trivial investment. But then your primary focus should be on learning proper pronunciation.

Another annoying thing is that **some** characters have evolved to have different meanings in Japanese, so you'll have to "unlearn" some of the RTK meanings and replace them by proper chinese meanings. But hey, if you were serious about learning ... Japanese in the first place, you'll know that learning new meanings of familiar characters post-RTK is something you need to do all the time. So learning Chinese is not such a great challenge after all.

I personally started learning Chinese, and then I stopped because I couldn't handle the characters. After doing RTK I and II, I give myself two more years to become more fluent in Japanese, and then I will return to Chinese. There would be too much interference between the two languages if I decided to continue Chinese at the same time, but that's just my personal preference. But boy, how much easier Chinese is compared to Japanese. It's dramatic and when you tell that to people, they almost refuse to believe you.

louischa Wrote:Traditional vs. simplified characters: depends on where you want to go. Simplified are used in Mainland Chinese, so if your focus is business or teaching there, go with simplified. Traditional are used in Taiwan, so if you are planning on going down there, then learn traditional - but I'd say that 95% of Japanese kanji (guesstimate again) are identical to traditional Chinese characters. Hong Kong also uses traditional, but then the language is not Mandarin, and good luck if your goal is to pronounce Cantonese like a native!

If you'd like to learn simplified, if you've done RTK, then you've done most of the hard work already. Most simplifications are really straightforward. For instance, 言 becomes 讠, and that applies to all compounds having the radical 言. Likewise, 長 becomes 长, 貝 becomes 贝 in all compounds as well. So there you go, knowing these simple mappings allow you to "know" already a bunch of simplified characters.

Some characters are so simplified that they are unrecognizable for us, RTKers. For instance, 為 becomes 为 (makes sense, but you need to learn that), and 書 becomes 书 (not so obvious), and 幾 becomes 几 (impossible to guess). These extreme cases count for perhaps no more than 1-2 hundred characters (my guesstimate, here again).

So there you go: learning simplified characters will take someone who went through RTK just a couple of weeks - so this is really a trivial investment. But then your primary focus should be on learning proper pronunciation.

Another annoying thing is that **some** characters have evolved to have different meanings in Japanese, so you'll have to "unlearn" some of the RTK meanings and replace them by proper chinese meanings. But hey, if you were serious about learning ... Japanese in the first place, you'll know that learning new meanings of familiar characters post-RTK is something you need to do all the time. So learning Chinese is not such a great challenge after all.

I personally started learning Chinese, and then I stopped because I couldn't handle the characters. After doing RTK I and II, I give myself two more years to become more fluent in Japanese, and then I will return to Chinese. There would be too much interference between the two languages if I decided to continue Chinese at the same time, but that's just my personal preference. But boy, how much easier Chinese is compared to Japanese. It's dramatic and when you tell that to people, they almost refuse to believe you.

thanks for that long explanation. So for the RTH, I should skip it, since the major of them are the same. Well originally I planned to Cantonese, but this was back in high-school. I decided I will stick with mandarin Chinese. I'll get myself motivated and passionate about it before I dive into a new learning arena. I'll stick with simplified. What I will focus on is tones,reading,listening/grammar. Not speaking or writing. I want to build those skill slowly if possible.

So Chinese is easier than Japanese. I can understand that, the grammar is easy, there is only 4 tones, to be fluent you just need to memorize characters and no other system of writing. Plus doing RTK makes it easier.

I've always wondered what the draw to Cantonese is. So many foreigners seem to go for it instead of Mandarin even though it is comparatively much less useful of a language.

Is it because of kung fu movies or the background of most Chinese-Americans?

Jarvik7 Wrote:I've always wondered what the draw to Cantonese is. So many foreigners seem to go for it instead of Mandarin even though it is comparatively much less useful of a language.

Is it because of kung fu movies or the background of most Chinese-Americans?

Kung fu movies definitely. Plus Cantonese is spoken(majority) of overseas Asian communities.

I can understand the draw of media (my total lack of interest in modern Chinese culture is probably why I don't study Chinese more than I do), but not really the overseas Chinese bit.

Wouldn't all first generation immigrants also know Mandarin? Second generation ones would probably be able to speak only some Cantonese as heritage speakers.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I can understand the draw of media (my total lack of interest in modern Chinese culture is probably why I don't study Chinese more than I do), but not really the overseas Chinese bit.

Wouldn't all first generation immigrants also know Mandarin? Second generation ones would probably be able to speak only some Cantonese as heritage speakers.

From what I can tell here in Canada, most know both(bilingual or even trilingual with English in there). But second generation of people who come here only know Cantonese and don't have an interest for learning Mandarin.

Well there's 71 million native speakers according to wikipedia, so it's not entirely insignificant. It's more than most European languages. Also learning either mandarin or cantonese is going to make learning the other much easier. Incidentally cantonese pronunciation is closer to Japanese than mandarin is, which could make it easier for people who already speak Japanese.

I never meant that it was insignificant, just that Mandarin is so much more useful of a language. Most Cantonese speakers also know Mandarin fluently but the reverse is not true.

I guess there are some bragging points for knowing a "dialect" though, if you know the putonghua too. I've been harboring thoughts of learning Okinawan even though it's a giant waste of time better spent on getting my French back up to par

Oh, and last detail: be patient. I recall that in the beginning of my Chinese studies, there were some sounds ("qi" and "qu" as opposed to "ji" and "ju") that I couldn't reproduce at all, and some that were easy for me but that other classmates could not say at all ("xi" - same consonant as the German "ch" in "ich").

I remember one evening I had to ask a pretty Chinese friend of mine to yell "qi qi QI QIIIIII!!!!!" into my ear hundreds of times, and I still couldn't get it. Each time I would try say "qi" it would sound like "ki" or "chi" or "ji", which are different sounds in Chinese. That was hugely frustrating, and I thought it was impossible to learn to produce these sounds in a manner that would be intelligible to native speakers.

Then a few months later, I woke up and I knew how to say "qi" correctly. Something clicked in my brain, or in the relationship between brain, ear and speech. But I had to work at it a long time.

Same thing happened for the tones, it took me maybe 6 months of practice before they became natural (bear in mind that "ma2" has not the same meaning as "ma3" or "ma4", and that's something our brains (assuming your maternal language is not tonal) have trouble getting to terms with.

Perhaps it takes musical talent to properly learn to speak Chinese when you are a foreigner. I know of some people who can read newspapers in Chinese, but who never managed to produce the correct sounds. Do not be a foreign devil like that! Be an intelligible foreign devil, all devils will thank you for it.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I've always wondered what the draw to Cantonese is.

Personally for me, Cantonese sounds a lot more awesome than Mandarin(especially the swearing and bad mouthing, threats etc.) and that is probably because of the modern media of Cantonese kung fu movies and so forth and because my family friends all speak Cantonese. My parents can speak both and I'm assuming some of my family friends can speak Mandarin, but they we always have a gathering, its always Cantonese.

But at work, my colleagues speak Mandarin though.

In terms of getting started with Chinese(let's stick to Mandarin for consistency's stake), what would be a good path to take for acquisation of basic grammar and vocab to the point where native level immersion can take over? As I stated in my original post, for Japanese, something like RTK->Taekim->Core6k/Kanji Odyssey->JLPT2 Grammar.
(Also, according to my parents, they learnt Cantonese in about 3 months from watching Cantonese movies with Chinese subtitles. Apparently, its called the TV methods or something within language learning groups.)

louischa Wrote:Oh, and last detail: be patient. I recall that in the beginning of my Chinese studies, there were some sounds ("qi" and "qu" as opposed to "ji" and "ju") that I couldn't reproduce at all, and some that were easy for me but that other classmates could not say at all ("xi" - same consonant as the German "ch" in "ich").

I remember one evening I had to ask a pretty Chinese friend of mine to yell "qi qi QI QIIIIII!!!!!" into my ear hundreds of times, and I still couldn't get it. Each time I would try say "qi" it would sound like "ki" or "chi" or "ji", which are different sounds in Chinese. That was hugely frustrating, and I thought it was impossible to learn to produce these sounds in a manner that would be intelligible to native speakers.

Then a few months later, I woke up and I knew how to say "qi" correctly. Something clicked in my brain, or in the relationship between brain, ear and speech. But I had to work at it a long time.

Same thing happened for the tones, it took me maybe 6 months of practice before they became natural (bear in mind that "ma2" has not the same meaning as "ma3" or "ma4", and that's something our brains (assuming your maternal language is not tonal) have trouble getting to terms with.

Perhaps it takes musical talent to properly learn to speak Chinese when you are a foreigner. I know of some people who can read newspapers in Chinese, but who never managed to produce the correct sounds. Do not be a foreign devil like that! Be an intelligible foreign devil, all devils will thank you for it.

I understand where your coming from on this one, when I started learning Japanese there was a few sounds that I couldn't hear probably. Not sure how I did it but it came from a lot of listening. I remember because when I was watching subtitled anime a long time ago, I thought one of the characters was saying kageyoshri but in reality he was saying "bankai, zenbonzakura kageyoshi". It took me a while just to be able to distinguish separate sounds in Japanese. The key is for your brain to make a new connection for that language. That's the only way we can really learn a language well, the mind has to get used to it(but this usual happens on it's own accord, without us worrying about it). That's what happened to me in Japanese. I was soon internally was able to understand JP-JP in audio form and in text form.

But from what your saying my goal should be:
1.Listen to the sounds and repeat and have someone correct you.
2.Practice more and more until you get better at it
3. Keep going/listening some more until it's close to 95% and more.
4. Then start worrying about learning vocab(building it up, so your listening skills can increase) and learn grammar,context and see where you go from there.
5. By 1 year get to an advanced reading/listening ability(it's possible, I reached it in Japanese around the 1 year mark, now for me it's all about filling in the gaps in my knowledge and getting better and better)

DevvaR Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:I've always wondered what the draw to Cantonese is.

Personally for me, Cantonese sounds a lot more awesome than Mandarin(especially the swearing and bad mouthing, threats etc.) and that is probably because of the modern media of Cantonese kung fu movies and so forth and because my family friends all speak Cantonese. My parents can speak both and I'm assuming some of my family friends can speak Mandarin, but they we always have a gathering, its always Cantonese.

But at work, my colleagues speak Mandarin though.

In terms of getting started with Chinese(let's stick to Mandarin for consistency's stake), what would be a good path to take for acquisation of basic grammar and vocab to the point where native level immersion can take over? As I stated in my original post, for Japanese, something like RTK->Taekim->Core6k/Kanji Odyssey->JLPT2 Grammar.
(Also, according to my parents, they learnt Cantonese in about 3 months from watching Cantonese movies with Chinese subtitles. Apparently, its called the TV methods or something within language learning groups.)

That's probably because they were already familiar with mandarin, making Cantonese easier? It's completely different coming from a foreign perspective. It took me 2 years to get to an advanced level of skill in Japanese and I'm not even close to being native-level. But this is coming from a guy who is of non-Asian decent. So when I learned Japanese I knew absolutely no knowledge of kanji,sounds,idioms,vocabulary,grammar,wording,pacing,character systems,writing,reading,speaking,listening. These were all clueless to me. But since I know Jp, it should making learning Chinese faster than usual, since I know what it really takes to learn a language fully.

ta12121 Wrote:That's probably because they were already familiar with mandarin, making Cantonese easier?

Well, clearly, of course. Well I guess what I'm trying to say is, when trying to choose between Mandarin and Cantonese, just go with one with more resources/support, and once you've reached a fluent level, it shouldn't take too long to pick up the other. So don't worry about it too much. I wasn't trying to sound like a show-off saying that I'm advantaged because of my Asian heritage or anything like that.

DevvaR Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:That's probably because they were already familiar with mandarin, making Cantonese easier?

Well, clearly, of course. Well I guess what I'm trying to say is, when trying to choose between Mandarin and Cantonese, just go with one with more resources/support, and once you've reached a fluent level, it shouldn't take too long to pick up the other. So don't worry about it too much. I wasn't trying to sound like a show-off saying that I'm advantaged because of my Asian heritage or anything like that.

No problem, I didn't mean anything bad with what I said before. I've learned it really comes down to having a passion for the language. That alone will take you far.

louischa Wrote:But boy, how much easier Chinese is compared to Japanese. It's dramatic and when you tell that to people, they almost refuse to believe you.

Chinese is easier than Japanese, though only slightly — my estimates based on informal observations suggest that if, starting from the ground, a foreign language learner coming from a Western language needs 6 years* to reach a good level in Japanese, that close to of a youngish [14–18 y.o] teenage native speaker (intermediate to upper-intermediate concerning written and spoken recognition + production), he'd need near to 5 years to reach the same level in modern Chinese. Double that if the goal is more ambitious, like reaching the level of a highly educated adult (I mean double the time and perhaps also the effort, because it's quite comfortable to stay at the intermediate plateau forever and not progress much anymore.)

* 6 years is just an example; it depends on many factors including, though not exclusively, the methods and materials used, the learner's health habits, and how much he likes the language.

ta12121 Wrote:So Chinese is easier than Japanese. I can understand that, the grammar is easy, there is only 4 tones, to be fluent you just need to memorize characters and no other system of writing. Plus doing RTK makes it easier.

In some ways, knowing Japanese helps to decrease the time needed to learn Chinese and vice versa; I don't know how much, but I guess it's maybe 10% to 35% off of that time frame I mentioned before, with the biggest savings coming from the reading comprehension, thanks to the kanji, kango (漢語) and, to an extent, on'yomi. On the other hand, when it comes to understanding Chinese grammar, English (or, better yet, a romance language; I say this from experience) helps tremendously more than Japanese. Then it's all about the sounds; it's not only the tones that are different, but many syllables are also pronounced differently than both in English and Japanese (so the tones are 4 + neutral, with 3 tone sandhis; syllables [consonants and vowels] that are read differently than expected for one who has never paid too much attention to Mandarin Chinese before, that's slightly more.)

But there's a catch: the more languages you know, the less time you have to use them actively, which is needed if you want to keep them all to a very high level; the similarities between them only help so much. The hardest part is keeping the production top-notch, without falling prey to interference.

DevvaR Wrote:In terms of getting started with Chinese(let's stick to Mandarin for consistency's stake), what would be a good path to take for acquisation of basic grammar and vocab to the point where native level immersion can take over? As I stated in my original post, for Japanese, something like RTK->Taekim->Core6k/Kanji Odyssey->JLPT2 Grammar.

For Chinese, perhaps it could be:

RSH → New Practical Chinese Reader ↔ HSK vocab.

There are also specific and appraised grammar books, such as A Practical Chinese Grammar and Modern Mandarin Chinese grammar, in case you want to try that.

I should say that I'm only giving an idea, as I'm not using that approach so don't know how well that could work (I actually don't even know how well the Japanese version you mentioned works.) In my case, what I'm doing is somewhat similar to the sentence method + immersion proposed by the old AJATT and the like. Progressively graded sentences with audio spoken by natives you can get from many sources; I'm using ChinesePod and CSLPod as my main ones.

Another thing I'm trying now, and enjoying, is to memorize lyrics of songs (always reading the hanzi, with the help of Perapera-kun), though you should remember that, in Mandarin music, the tones are much less emphasized, sometimes even neutralized. Nevertheless, music is the only thing that I can listen to repeatedly multiple times, so I'm taking advantage of that. Videos I usually tend to watch only once — there are a lot of them on Youku (I enjoy watching sports news more, and regular news less, for example.)

There's also a lot of manga translated from Japanese into Chinese, which are usually very easy to read — and considerably different from the manhuas made in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, which are very nice too (there are bad ones of course, just like in Japanese.)