# Tips for learning, improving, brushing up



## somody

I'm going to be taking Mandarin starting next year along with my French, English, Hungarian and Spanish.  Any tips for me?


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## JediMaster

Try not to gag when pronouncing some of the sounds.
Make the "Chinese alphabet" your friend.
Practice different tones of different words and learn the subtle differences in each.  (As I'm sure you already know, a different tone can be a completely different word.)

All this coming from someone who has tried/ is trying  to learn Mandarin but hasn't gotten very far.


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## somody

Thanks.  Anything else?


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## Javiergonrol

Hello!

 I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for 2 years. However, my level is still very basic. To be honest, it's one of the mnost difficult languages to learn. However, it's also very beautiful, the characters have meaning by their own: For example, flat is lou3 (3 is the tone).  I can't write it down, but the character is composed by wood, woman and wheat, that's the place made of wood were you there is a woman and wheat. This is only one example.

 As Jedi master said before, the pronuntiation and the tones are really important; know why? "ma" can mean mother, horse, etc ... depending on the tone!!!! XD
 Another point is writing: it has an order of the straws, from left to right, from up to down, etc ... Learning them in the correct way from the beginning is also important. By the way, I had to spend hours and hours writibng Chinese characters to learn them; it's hard, but it's nothing if you like the language.
 Another point is the non-existence of an alphabet itself: there are radical characters, and then complementary characters that give meaning or phonetics, or both. 

 So in my opinion writing and pronuntiation are the most difficult points; grammar is really organised and logical, so easy from my Spanish point 

 Finally, you have to think as you were Chinese. This might be obviuos, but it's really important. You have to understand their culture, their way of thinking; once you do it, everything will be easier. Can be like Neo at the beginning of Matrix, firstly was such a mess, but then you find out this character is used here and there, that this verb is also a noun, you start making patterns ans collocations, and after working hard everyday (every single day) you realise you are on the good way.

 Remember that a character might be or not a word: wo3 is I, but xue4xi2 is study, you know...  My teacher told there are more than 52.000 characters. Knowing only 3000 you are albe to read an article in a newspaper, but who is lucky one who can learn 3000 characters? jejeje

 Takes time, more than european languages I may say, but it's totally worthy. Hope not to have been so long, but to took a topic I couldn't avoid. By the way, cheer up in studying Chinese!! you can do it!!

 Ánimo y muchas fuerzas!
 JavierGonRol​


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## somody

Thanks!  Great advice...


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## Liambeiwai

欢迎你学中文(I warmly welcome you to learn Chinese)
Here are some tips:
          1 TONES  If you pronounce the wrong tone, maybe you want to praise someone will become an insult or even fighting.
          2  Write more  Unlike European languages, we use characters. The best way to learn Chinese characters is to write one at least 5 times( We learned like this when we were pupils).
          3  Chinese people are happy that a foreigner can speak Chinese. Don't be shy, even we know that our language isn't easy. If you make mistakes, we can tolerate and just smile.
          4  In Chinese, we don't have the term of tense.
          5  It's hard at the beginning. After you overcome it, it will become very very easy.
          Good luck


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## showerbabies

Congrats on tackling one of the hardest ones out there!

The only tip I can give is ... get your ear in "tune" with the language, by strolling around chinatown or flip to the chinese(/international) channel.


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## somody

Thanks guys.  Yeah, I know about those infamous tones !  I have some Chinese friends, and they were saying three words that to me sounded exactly the same.  Apparently, one was flute, one was small (小), and one was family (I think).  I need practice!

P.S.: How do I type Chinese characters?  The one for small was copied and pasted from another site.


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## BasedowLives

What kind of school do you go to that allows you to take 5 languages at one time at such a young age?


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## somody

Umm...I live in Toronto.  I go to school where English is the main language (as is my fluent one).  I learn French in "Core French" class (1h15 every day in the first of the two semesters).  I'm learning spanish in "Core Spanish" class (1h15 every day in the second of two semesters).  I'm learning Hungarian at a Hungarian church on Saturdays.  I may learn Mandarin Chinese at a night class that goes for 2 or so hours every Monday night.  Hope that helped.


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## Copycat

Hello Somody



			
				somody said:
			
		

> P.S.: How do I type Chinese characters? The one for small was copied and pasted from another site.


 
If you wanna type Chinese charactors, first you'd make sure your windows system can support for Asian double-bytes languages display, than download and install a totally free software named Microsoft Pinyin IME(version 4.0 is newest) on your system. Unfortunately it just has a Chinese version, but dont warry, just press "Enter" button is okay when you installing it


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## DolceVita

Find a chinese friend.

I am a chinese in china and maybe i can be of some help to you. 

(is it allowed to post my contact info here?)

Talk to you soon.

No, it is not allowed. You are allowed to have your IM details in your profile, though. Thanks for your understanding.


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## Mutichou

大家好!
I'm learning Mandarin Chinese too. I began this year (1 hour and a half per week only).
Here are my tips for learning hànzì: I write them several time, and I write the meaning and the pronounciation.
Pronounciation is difficult too: I often can't recognize the tones when the teacher speaks. And some sounds sound almost the same for me.

Having a Chinese friend would help, but I don't know how to meet someone in China.


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## nichec

Mutichou said:
			
		

> 大家好!





			
				Mutichou said:
			
		

> I'm learning Mandarin Chinese too. I began this year (1 hour and a half per week only).
> Here are my tips for learning hànzì: I write them several time, and I write the meaning and the pronounciation.
> Pronounciation is difficult too: I often can't recognize the tones when the teacher speaks. And some sounds sound almost the same for me.
> 
> Having a Chinese friend would help, but I don't know how to meet someone in China.


 
Bonjour and hello :
We wrote them several times when we were kids too (what a nightmare...my mother forced me to write my name 100 times the day before I first attened school ) I guess it can be very confusing sometimes because we have five sounds for every given combination and sometimes you have two (or more) words that sound exactly the same but with different meanings and typings, and sometimes you have more than one meaning and sound to a word (gee, I'm suddenly happy that I don't have to learn it )....I guess it's basically because this is a really old language. Languages are always somehow linked to cultures, so when you are learning a language that has been used for more than 5000 years, you can naturally expect some difficulties in it because of the richness of that language/culture. And I guess it's also difficult for western people because it's a totally different language system ( so you will appreciate our efforts in learning English and French )

Hummmm...my advise is....hang in there 
Well, try to get as much information as possible, read in Chinese, listen to Chinese conversations or songs, watch Chinese movies, speak and write as much as you can. You'll do best if you can think in Chinese, but I guess that's the same for learning all the languages (from my own experience)

Pay a lot of attention to pronounciation though. I have lots of friends (American and British and French) trying to talk to me in Chinese, most of the time I can't understand because they didn't make the difference between the five sounds I mentioned before, so it sounds like robot-Chinese to my ears But well, I'm always happy when someone tries to speak in Chinese (not now, I'm trying hard to speak French ), no matter how it sounds......


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## fine

learn it start from PinYIn

here is good site for learning chinese from start.


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## Kräuter_Fee

I'm learning Chinese but I just have 3 hours a week so it's not much. I've heard you'd need 24 years to learn Chinese lol! I find it really hard. 
Anyone here learning it???


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## nichec

Kräuter_Fee said:
			
		

> I'm learning Chinese but I just have 3 hours a week so it's not much. I've heard you'd need 24 years to learn Chinese lol! I find it really hard.





			
				Kräuter_Fee said:
			
		

> Anyone here learning it???


 
I've been learning it for 24 years, and I'm still discovering new things every day. (that's the same for every language, isn't it? you just have to keep practicing...there's no other or simpler way.....) It's really not that difficult, if I can learn English in Taiwan to the degree of being mistaken as a native speaker, you can learn to use Chinese well in your own country too. Don't be afraid and don't believe what they say, nothing is impossible.


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## Pivra

I tried to learn Chinese once long long time ago for a very very short time. I gave up with the pronounciation and the alphabets. I think it would be kind of a useful language in the future but I just found it difficult for me. (i can remember some but i just cant pronounce them right.)

 Toronto is a pretty multi cultural city Ive been there twice and about 40% of the population are visible foreigners. I live in a smaller town north of Edmonton so there arent really much foreigners here and my school offers only 4 other languages, which are Sp Fr Gm Jp but I've seen a school in Edmonton where they teach Mandarin too.


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## ZhenDaoCreditsWriters

Hi, 

I'm living in a Chinese environment and have been practicing for two years and I'm still not fluent, but that's my own fault for being really picky about pronunciation. 

To learn the tones: I spent a few months just learning to make my voice
1. HIGH
2. go uP
3. NikE (Start high, drop down then go back up, it looks like the Nike check)
4. DRop and 
5. _fast
_What I noticed is that I was already making all the same sounds in English but that in English we use tones to convey emotional meaning. So now I use the following emotional triggers to make my voice do what it is supposed to do:
1. happy
2. insecure and asking a question
3. public speaking
4. almost angry
5. in a rush

Perhaps not surprisingly, the second tone is the most difficult for most people who travel here. 

I also still have a hard time hearing the tones when I start listening to a new speaker. I need to have several conversations with a person before I can start to hear what tone is being used. 

The Chinese Alphabet:
I hope what was meant by this in a previous post was what I call "buh puh muh fuh". I think maybe the mainland doesn't use it, which is too bad, because in my opinion Pinyin (all systems) are too ambiguous to be used as reliable references of pronunciation. Also, a lot of typists are lazy and don't include the (very important) tones when they type pinyin pronunciation. 

"buh puh muh fuh" is an alphabet that has very reliable, consistent pronunciation. It's as consistent as German, or more so. After learning "buh puh muh fuh", a student can read no-English childrens' books that have pictures, Chinese and the pronunciation in the consistent alphabet. This is an excellent way to learn grammar and Chinese "thinking" (ie: the culture's deepset beliefs). 

Those are the first two steps (tones and a reliable pronunciation alphabet with tones). Next, when learning French I was taught to keep an "autodictionaire". It's a small book in which I write all the words I think I might later use. No scribbling allowed. This is good copy and it should be small so it's easy for you to read on a bus or when standing in line somewhere. For Chinese you need 4 pieces of information for every word:
1. the Chinese character
2. pronunciation
3. tone (emotional sound, if you think like I do)
4. translation

My "autodictionaire" is small. One page holds ten to twelve grouped words plus one or two sentences that give me the grammar. Grouped words may be greetings, colors, numbers, what to say in a taxi, and so on. 

Hope this helps,
Zhen


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## Neever

Hello!

I have just started to learn mandarin - it's going ok, but it is a slow process! i was wondering if anybody out there knows anybody whose native language is english, with no background in mandarin, who is now fluent, or at least very good? if you do it might help keep me optimistic! if you do, and that person is you, any tips?!

thanks,

neever


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## XiaoYue

Hello,
I'm italian and I live in Italy, but I discovered chinese language about 1 year ago thanks to an online game mainly played by asian people. I admit that this language is very intriguing. I have many asian friends (from China and Singapore), who encourage me to learn chinese, or, at least, pinyin.
At the moment, nothing serious... it's just an idea, I only know how to build some phrases in pinyin.
I found an useful online dictionary english-pinyin-traditional/simplified which helps me to learn new pinyin words. Sometimes, my chinese friends are impressed by my writing.
In truth, I'm not so interested about pronunciation 'cos I don't speak with them (yea, this would be very hard), it's always a written conversation. I just would like to be able to write/understand pinyin.

Now, I'm looking for new web sites which explain the chinese grammar using the pinyin. I need to come back on some matters, as the future and the past (i've never learned the future and I'm forgetting the past).
I would appreciate a lot any your advice.

Thanks in advance.


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## guruguru

Hi,

Well the key is to study - which sounds silly but many people just go to class and expect to learn that way. I make lots of my own paper flashcards, and also use software to help (I study Japanese). I think it is good to mix the two ways of studying. If you get down lots the vocab and  characters, you start to listen better, and then you pick things up that way and become like a snowball rolling downhill.

I happen to also make online software for learning languages. You can see the mandarin one at the address below...

www(dot)cm-prep(dot)com

Good Luck,

Jon


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## demoore

The best way (and probably the only way) to remember the characters is to spend one hour every day practicing the writing. I did it two years long, now I can read chinese.


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## fine

right! keep practice.

here is a good site to learn chinese: www(dot)chinese-learner(dot)com


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## kia861

Hi, I've started to study chinese between  one  months and I need an efficient method for study , I'm confused , please if someone have tips please give me. We can compare our opinion!

Thank you very much


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## palomnik

My undergraduate degree was in Chinese. In addition to the excellent advice that other people have given here, let me put in my two cents.

It was definitely true back when I was in college (some 30 years ago), and I'm afraid to some extent still true, that Chinese classes tend in the long run to emphasize reading over speaking. I met any number of people when I was learning the language who could read Confucius but couldn't put an intelligent sentence together. It's fatally easy to get caught in that syndrome, depending on the direction your teacher wants to go. My solution for this is to rely heavily on material produced in China rather than in the west. It helps keep you focused on the spoken language.

Watch TV and movies in Chinese. A surprisingly large amount of material produced has excellent audio quality, unlike some material in other languages from other countries, including the USA; I suspect that this may be due to the fact that since there are so many regional dialects, it is important for material produced in Mandarin to be clear and succinct so that the maximum number of listeners can understand it. 

Resign yourself to the fact that it will probably take three years before you can read a newspaper with ease. It's a sad fact but true. Chinese is not really difficult; arguably, it has the easiest grammar in the world, but the signposts are just totally different from what you're used to with western languages, and this will slow down learning. And the fact that the cultural tradition is totally different from what westerners are used to makes for a learning gap too.


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## jaxineau

nichec said:


> I've been learning it for 24 years, and I'm still discovering new things every day. (that's the same for every language, isn't it? you just have to keep practicing...there's no other or simpler way.....) It's really not that difficult, if I can learn English in Taiwan to the degree of being mistaken as a native speaker, you can learn to use Chinese well in your own country too. Don't be afraid and don't believe what they say, nothing is impossible.


 
I still think there is a degree of difficulty for caucasian to learn Chinese. I think the pronunciation is a very difficult component. There are sounds that they can't make. There is also the characters recognization and writing that are not easy to master. The grammar isn't that hard, I think, for that there are no verb conjugations. However, like you said, it's not impossible. I have seen non-Chinese speakers speak amazingly well.



somody said:


> I'm going to be taking Mandarin starting next year along with my French, English, Hungarian and Spanish. Any tips for me?


 
I think the best way to learn any language is to be exposed to the language. Being in Canada, and especially in Toronto, you have a lot of resources. Go to Chinatown and just listen to how people speak. Rent Chinese movies. It's ok if you don't understand it. The most important thing is to be immersed in the language.

However, I do no suggest that you learn so many languages at once, especially when French and Spanish are quite similar and Hungarian is a quite difficult European language, grammar wise. Chinese is really going to challenge your innate ability for languages.

I speak of this from experience. I am your age and I know how you want to learn so many languages at once. I speak both Mandarin and Cantonese fluently and am still learning it. At the same time I am learning English, French and Spanish at school, while having tutor for Japanese and Portuguese and self learning German and Greek. It is not easy to balance out all the languages. I would recommend that you be specialized in few first, then continue on with others.

If you need anyone to chat with in Chinese, French or English, feel free to send me a message and we can go from there.


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## gohby

大家好，

华语是我的母语，也是我在家里应用的语言。很遗憾地，我没有很多机会应用它。因此，我的华语已大不如前（我曾经在学校学了10年)-我虽然还会看中文字，但是在表达方面觉得很（欠缺?)，而且我应用字汇的本领也不如用英语来得顺畅，精确。（例如：单单打出这几行字已经觉得很费功夫，而且还必须修改）请问我能如何让我的华语更上一层楼呢? 有没有任何网站或大致上来说客观的新闻网好让我多听华语-或许用这个方式我能重新掌握我的华语水准。

谢谢！


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## nightdragon

新闻网站，可以帮你练习中文阅读能力：
新浪新闻：http://news.sina.com.cn/
凤凰资讯：http://news.ifeng.com/

华人论坛，提高中文写作能力：
天涯论坛：http://bbs.tianya.cn/

视频网站，提高中文听力：
优酷网：http://www.youku.com/


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## fyl

有兴趣的话，可以多逛逛百度贴吧、豆瓣、人人、优酷、微博等等。中文的互联网世界也是很广阔的，别有一番天地。
我个人很少看新闻，了解的不多。
除了新闻之外，还可以看各种讲座脱口秀相声评书，娱乐的同时还可以增长见闻，毕竟语言是以文化为依托的。央视做过一个节目《百家讲坛》，讲各种文史知识，比较经典的一些网上应该可以搜到。相声比较容易找，推荐单口大王刘宝瑞，吐字极其清晰容易听懂，代表作《官场斗》，网上很容易找到。如果时间充裕可试试长篇评书（不过需要一定的中文水平，甚至需熟悉一些北方方言，因为只有音频没有字幕），袁阔成的《三国演义》是经典中的经典，单田芳的《白眉大侠》也非常精彩，从小到大听了很多遍，网上都有。


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## brofeelgood

你能写出语法无误的这一段,已经证明你之前的十年寒窗并没白费,根基已经扎得不错. 不管是什么语言,要能掌握得好,要能不断地提升水平,关键都在于多接触及能够学以致用. 即使是偶尔过来这论坛瞧瞧也是有帮助的.


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