How many readings do Chinese characters have in Chinese (Mandarin)?. Is it like in Japanese where each character usually have more than 1 reading?.

Basically what I am asking is how the characters work in Chinese? Since I already know how they work in Japanese.

I don't have any statistics, but the vast majority have 1 reading. A fair number have 2 readings, and from what I've seen, very few have 3 or more readings. The only character I can remember seeing with more than 3 readings is 著, which appears to have 4 readings.

A dictionary I looked at had 6 for 著!

What's annoying for the foreign learner is that some of the multiple pronunciations are just tone differences -- I actually find it easier to remember that 得 as dei3 means "must" and de2 is "get" because they're different sounds, compared to remembering which meaning goes with wei2 or wei4 (為).

But I'm really bad at tones in general...

If they are usually only 1 reading, then wouldn't it be rather useful to study that along with the character when doing Heisig?

That's actually a major critisism of his sytem, that (unlike Japanese,which his method was originally applied to), most Chinese Characters have only 1 pronunciation, so why not learn them with the word.

If you're using the site's SRS, it lists pronunciaiton with the character, so you can learn pronunciation of characters along with the characters. Or, you can opt to finish RTH/RSH sans pronunciations and learn pronunciations later when you learn how to speak.

So it's perfectly possible then, well that's good to know.

Another question, which set of characters should one learn for Mandarin?. Traditional or simplified?

Think that would depend on if the main stuff you want to read is from the mainland or not. I personally chose traditional because I liked Taiwan and simplified kanji look god-awful.

I just read that simplified characters are used in the mainland, so they're used mostly by Mandarin speakers, in other words, I can't avoid them.

Is there a guide / tutorial that introduces Chinese from the perspective of someone that has studied Japanese?. Basically, I want to know the differences between Japanese and Chinese in how the characters are used?.

Actually, in Taiwanese is pretty close to Mandarin, so Traditional becomes an option if yo want to go to Taiwan.

turvy Wrote:Basically, I want to know the differences between Japanese and Chinese in how the characters are used?.

In Japanese Kanji are used for the steams of adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, as well as for most nouns. In Chinese, characters are used for everything. Let's take a simple sentence:
我是中国人.
wo shi zhong guo ren

Each charater has only one-syllable of pronunciation. Wo means "I", Shi means "To Be". Since Chinese uses Characters, there is absolutely no conjugation of nouns (no plurals or genders), adjectives, or verbs.

Zhong Guo Ren is one word and it means "Chinese (person)". So the the sentence means "I am Chinese".

What about the tones? How do you read the tones from wo shi zhong guo ren by looking at 我是中国人?

One more thing, when you are typing Pinyin and write "wo" the input gives me a few options, the first one is 我. Does each of the characters presented stand for a different tone?. Also, what if I don't know the character but know the tone wò, wó, etc?.

I think to know the tones you just have to know the word. I know chinese characters have radicals that give hints on the general pronounciation but i dont know if they show any info on tones within them.

Each character stands for a different wo some may have the same tone.

If you know the tone and reading but dont know the character, you used to be able to type in the tone along with it, but i havent been ableto recently.

Is there a common / popular guide to beginning in Chinese for Japanese learners?. I've seen the thread about Chinese resources but there is 1000 different links in there. Is there anything you'd recommend?

What about Chinese 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade readers using pinyin to start with the language?. I would also need a good iOS dictionary where I can search easily. Any ideas? What do you use when you read?.

Marble101 Wrote:Since Chinese uses Characters, there is absolutely no conjugation of nouns (no plurals or genders), adjectives, or verbs.

It's better to say that one of the reasons why the current writing system developed is that there is no conjugation of nouns, adjectives, or verbs (although there is a theory that Old Chinese had them). The lack of conjugation is not something that was imposed on Chinese due to the limitations of the writing system.

As for Chinese learning, I don't know of any resources...I took a class so I can't really help there. Chinese is totally different from Japanese so having Japanese knowledge is only of minimal aid.

For those of you learning Chinese, how much of an aid is the fact that Chinese has apparently such an easy grammar, at least compared to Japanese. Does that mean it's easier to get to a point where you can communicate and understand what people say?.

In my Japanese, I am reading 4th grade books now and I understand >90% of what I read and yet I can't still communicate and have trouble understanding what people said.

turvy Wrote:For those of you learning Chinese, how much of an aid is the fact that Chinese has apparently such an easy grammar, at least compared to Japanese. Does that mean it's easier to get to a point where you can communicate and understand what people say?.

Yes. I was able to get to a basic communication level in Chinese much faster than in Japanese. The initial problem is the pronunciation, which can be a very big hurdle.

But some of it is based on what you practice -- you get better at what you practice, with only some spillover to other areas. So if you mostly do reading, you're going to get better at reading, not oral communication.

Yes, definitely, but if I read a huge amount of stuff the spillover will pile up and eventually I will be good enough to get into oral communication with considerable less effort (right?). But don't get me wrong, I think this is largely a personal thing, like, I am all-in for hard work but it's just so depressing to stumble to say the most ridiculously and simplest things in Japanese, whereas I don't mind stumbling in my reading and the progress is certainly steadier.

So, how much faster was that process? Is there a popular online / published resource for Chinese learners, like for example, there is Tae Kim's for Japanese?

Not sure how helpful the site is, I kindof only skimmed the first page. But http://www.chinesemaster.net/modules/chinese_material8/ does some reviews on Japanese-Chinese Learning materials.

So here is my approach to learning Japanese that has been working so far:

1. Get books that introduce Kanji progressively, like 1st~12th grade books, or light novels.
2. Read.
3. For every word I don't understand/remember I look it up. For this I use Midori but an electronic portable jisho would do as well or better.

How would I do this in Chinese?. If I am reading Pinyin how do I know what character is for wō, wò, wó or wŏ?

turvy Wrote:How would I do this in Chinese?. If I am reading Pinyin how do I know what character is for wō, wò, wó or wŏ?

Well, that's the problem with pinyin. Unless you know the characters and can tell from context which pinyin is supposed to be which character, it can be difficult to tell which pinyin corresponds to which characters. This is just like trying to read Japanese in romaji.

turvy Wrote:I just read that simplified characters are used in the mainland, so they're used mostly by Mandarin speakers, in other words, I can't avoid them.

Is there a guide / tutorial that introduces Chinese from the perspective of someone that has studied Japanese?. Basically, I want to know the differences between Japanese and Chinese in how the characters are used?.

Just a couple of stuff online...
日本語の漢字と 中国語の漢字の違い
http://chn.owlnet.jp/taishou-gengo.html
日中漢字比較
http://www.chinese1.jp/kanji/a.asp

I think you can find more useful materials at the library.

turvy Wrote:Is there a common / popular guide to beginning in Chinese for Japanese learners?. I've seen the thread about Chinese resources but there is 1000 different links in there. Is there anything you'd recommend?

What about Chinese 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade readers using pinyin to start with the language?. I would also need a good iOS dictionary where I can search easily. Any ideas? What do you use when you read?.

Some suggestion...

Six Animations and Six 5Q-Books (Simplified Chinese and Hanyu Pinyin; Traditional Chinese and Hanyu Pinyin; Traditional Chinese and Phonetic BoPoMo)
Content: Six well-known children songs and tongue twisters. These animations are enlightening reading materials.
http://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/read-alou...60219?mt=8

Hip Hop Land Chinese K1 (2 Books +Audio CD) (Pinyin Pastimes/Creative Chinese)
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Books-Piny...9867397355

Ah, thanks, good stuff.

As for the iOS dictionary I found Pleco for the iOS which addresses all my problems. Just type in wo1, wo2, wo3, wo4.

Also, I just ordered Anna Mei Banfa!: A Short Beginners' from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.co.jp/Anna-Mei-Banfa-B...152&sr=8-1

It has pinyin in one page and simplified characters in the next. That's exactly the kind of material I was looking for (actually just books in pinyin) but I couldn't find anything else and Amazon didn't suggest anything. Does anybody know of similar texts / books, graded readers, whatever.

turvy Wrote:In my Japanese, I am reading 4th grade books now and I understand >90% of what I read and yet I can't still communicate and have trouble understanding what people said.

The Japanese written form and spoken language are vastly different. I've met some who are "half-Japanese" by heritage and they are able to hold a daily conversation in Japanese but they have problems reading the Japanese language, even for simple stuff like subway station names.

turvy Wrote:But don't get me wrong, I think this is largely a personal thing, like, I am all-in for hard work but it's just so depressing to stumble to say the most ridiculously and simplest things in Japanese, whereas I don't mind stumbling in my reading and the progress is certainly steadier.

I suppose, the trick is learning to laugh at our own mistakes, folly & stupidity. I make lots of them, at the same time, it also helps to build up my confidence and I said "thanks" to the native person who corrected me and took the trouble to tell me the difference.

eslang Wrote:

turvy Wrote:In my Japanese, I am reading 4th grade books now and I understand >90% of what I read and yet I can't still communicate and have trouble understanding what people said.

The Japanese written form and spoken language are vastly different. I've met some who are "half-Japanese" by heritage and they are able to hold a daily conversation in Japanese but they have problems reading the Japanese language, even for simple stuff like subway station names.

They're not "vastly" different; modern written Japanese is fairly close to modern spoken Japanese; of course there's a more formal register but it's not that much different from the typical spoken language.

Subway station names are not simple. Place names are one of the absolute hardest things to read in Japanese; you can never be sure you have the correct reading unless you already know what the name is supposed to be.