Mandarin for the absolute beginner

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qeadz
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Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby qeadz » Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:53 pm

Hi,

A friend of mine is looking to learn Mandarin hoping to achieve a conversational level. He has asked me for some advice on how to approach this (since he knows I am learning Korean). Now I have not and will not try fill his ear with my opinions on how language learning is working for me since I have not achieved a high level in Korean so my opinion shouldn't have any value placed on it.

Instead, knowing his personality, I am looking to suggest a course of action which will get him started and if he has success with it then he will find his own way (as I have) through this process.

I have some broad questions for Chinese learners here:

His connection is to Taiwan, so they only use the traditional writing system right?
If so, how important is learning the characters? To my _untrained_ eye it would appear that bunches of content for language learners available online uses it so I'm thinking the best advice is to spend some time learning the characters - taking it slow but steady from day 1.

Should he make use of a native speaker to help him from day 1?
It would seem to me that developing an ear for the tones and being able to reproduce them accurately is almost universally recommended as the first thing to do (probably while learning Pinyin right?). If this is the case then I'm learning toward suggesting he has regular time with a native speaker ensuring he is heading in the right direction.

How does a beginner Chinese learner approach consuming lots of input?
In Korean it works out very well for me because the writing system is phonetic. From the beginning I was able to work through a wide variety of content because the audio and text were related in this way. I can't imagine how slow my progress would have been had they not been related like this.

Then I have some more specific things to find out:

I've had a look on the Chinese Language Reddit as well as searches on this forum. There are a lot of blogs, podcasts and peripheral kinds of learning aids suggested. My friend probably won't (initially) be the kind of person to spend time sifting through lots of resources - gleaning bits from here or there.

So it would appear that perhaps good advice for his situation:
- a grammar studybook (or perhaps online equivalent)
- a good chinese/english dictionary app for phone with pinyin, audio in Mandarin
- graded readers
- possibly Pimsleur

Would make a good package? Maybe its too much of a package! I suspect he's looking at like an hour a day or so of study and Pimsleur could eat half of that by itself.

The most important thing (IMHO) is a course of action which would see him making progress early and not floundering amidst a bunch of resources - each doing their own thing.

I'm open to suggestions if learners have any.

One of the more comprehensive resource lists I've found is: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2940
Thanks Reineke. Just trying to distill that down to something simple that will set him on the course toward Intermediate, by which time he would have probably discovered more himself.
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby Ezy Ryder » Wed Apr 26, 2017 8:59 pm

qeadz wrote:His connection is to Taiwan, so they only use the traditional writing system right?
If so, how important is learning the characters? To my _untrained_ eye it would appear that bunches of content for language learners available online uses it so I'm thinking the best advice is to spend some time learning the characters - taking it slow but steady from day 1.

Taiwan, yay~ From what I can tell, almost exclusively Traditional. Now, some so-called "vulgar variants" seen in handwriting have become the standard in Simplified (e.g., 國 in Traditional, 国 both as a vulgar variant and Simplified), but those are exceptions, rather than a rule.
How important is it to learn them? It depends what are your goals. If by "conversational" your friend means "being able to have a simple conversation face to face/over the phone/over Skype or Line" etc., then they are redundant. If he means "being able to converse on a variety of subjects eloquently and without either of the sides having to simplify their language", then, I'd say, even though they aren't absolutely crucial, being literate is very useful. And if you learn characters in a right way (e.g., an order which reduces the number of elements to remember+mnemonics+SRS), characters are not as bad as they may seem at first (and since the real "difficulty" of the task stems from the # of characters, rather than strokes, the difficulty of Traditional is definitely comparable with that of Simplified). The beginnings will be tough, but eventually, learning characters becomes literally easy.
qeadz wrote:Should he make use of a native speaker to help him from day 1?
It would seem to me that developing an ear for the tones and being able to reproduce them accurately is almost universally recommended as the first thing to do (probably while learning Pinyin right?). If this is the case then I'm learning toward suggesting he has regular time with a native speaker ensuring he is heading in the right direction.

You don't really need a native speaker to learn to distinguish the tones. And being a native speaker isn't the same as being a good teacher. If someone attempts to (arguably, mis-)pronounce words to make the tones "clearer", you're essentially being taught to understand the way people... don't speak? Possibly, beginners thinking that "in quick (natural, really) speech, they don't use tones", might be a symptom of that.
So, if he happens to know someone who's an experienced learner or teacher, why not. Knowing speakers of a language can be really motivating either way.
qeadz wrote:How does a beginner Chinese learner approach consuming lots of input?
In Korean it works out very well for me because the writing system is phonetic. From the beginning I was able to work through a wide variety of content because the audio and text were related in this way. I can't imagine how slow my progress would have been had they not been related like this.

Mandarin isn't non-phonetic. "Ghoti" and "fish" don't look alike, and yet are homophones in English. "Read" and "read" are spelt the same, and yet pronounced differently (infinitive and participle). 論、輪、倫、淪 can almost all be pronounced the same (although admittedly, the first one will usually differ in tone). 北京 and 背景 look very similar, and differ only in tone. 其、期、麒、淇 are all pronounced the same... Those are not coincidences. It's not always that easy, but most characters work that way (a "has something to do with" part + a "sounds/sounded (vaguely or not) like" part).
And is being able to guess the pronunciation of an English word somewhat more reliably than a Mandarin one's really that much of an advantage to the average L2 learner?
I'd say, get a pop-up dictionary, and SRS a lot.

As for resources:
SRS
James W. Heisig's "Remembering Traditional Hanzi" I and II. AFAIK it teaches only ~3,000 characters, which isn't enough for literacy, but calling it a "solid foundation" would be an understatement. Most importantly, the order is an absolute godsend.

And some general tips:
-If you don't care about being able to write by hand - don't bother. It won't make you remember characters better in the long-term, and not being able to read a character you can write is not unheard of.
-If you're learning to write by hand, the stroke order seems to be mostly useful just for calligraphy, unusual IME's, and passing tests.
-Try to keep learning to read separate from learning to listen. I spent my first year of learning Mandarin mostly on literacy development, and I regret having done so. IIRC, I got to a level of (being able to read) about 10-13k words, and writing (by hand) about 3k characters. My listening, was almost non-existent. So, maybe try keeping them separate as much as necessary.
-SRS!

PS Most Taiwanese can read Simplified as well; and most Mainland Chinese can read Traditional, too. So far as I can tell.
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby snowflake » Wed Apr 26, 2017 9:52 pm

For audio I've been suggesting starting with Pimsleur 1 and 2, then moving onto Glossika. If he has friends who can order material for him, then I also suggest 連老外都再用的英語 which is basically an English phrase book.... It comes with a CD that has both English and Mandarin (3 1/2 hours). I can suggest other Taiwanese books which have English and Mandarin audio though those would be overwhelming at this stage. Good luck to your friend.
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby qeadz » Wed Apr 26, 2017 11:09 pm

Thank you both for your input!

So I have two rather dumb follow-up questions:

In my experiences learning Korean, reading has been extremely important for understanding grammar, sentence structure and learning/encountering vocab. Were my friend to begin his Mandarin journey without reading, what would his study look like? I mean he clearly wouldn't be reading and then listening to what he read on LingQ as his mainstay (which is what I have been doing for Korean) if he cant read.

The second is relating to Pimsleur - most places I have read reviews of it suggest it is best used alongside other study material. So would that be more grammar related material it should be used alongside?

So far for courses online he might do I've come across ChinesePod and Yoyo Chinese as two he could consider. There is some Integrated Chinese workbook I've seen recommended too.

I had forgotten about Glossika, but thanks to snowflake suggesting, thats another.
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby qeadz » Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:32 pm

Meh. I didnt wait for more replies.

Thank you for your suggestions. I sent him a long email with a stack of resources and relayed some of the tips.

He says he hadn't even found half the stuff I relayed and now he gets to take the bits he wants and leave what he doesnt want... hopefully he manages to find a good routine.

I actually enjoyed looking up the content and even watching some of the sample videos from various sites. For a very *brief* moment I almost felt excited as if I wanted to learn some Mandarin!
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby arthaey » Mon May 01, 2017 2:00 pm

Mandarin is on my longer-term TODO list, but I intended to use pinyin for a good long while before worrying about being "properly" literate.

Maybe pinyin would work for your friend, too?
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby Axon » Mon May 01, 2017 10:14 pm

There are some very intelligent people - linguists , professors, Sinitic language experts - who recommend a pinyin-only approach for the beginner. I happen to disagree, but if it's motivating and keeps you learning quickly, feel free to ignore the characters and focus on the pinyin.

Let me add two pieces of advice that I think are of utmost importance when learning Chinese:

1. Learn complete sentences. The LINE dictionary http://ce.linedict.com/dict.html#/cnen/home has a little dialogue-of-the-day section read by native speakers. It goes back years and years, and while some of the English translations may be odd, these are very useful dialogues. By internalizing Chinese in the form of complete sentences, you will naturally pick up Chinese sentence structure. Word order in Chinese has a huge effect on meaning, so make sure to really drill the patterns into your brain. Glossika is great for this, as well as the Chinese Grammar Wiki: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Main_Page'

2. Learn proper pronunciation. I'm not even talking about tones; there's already good advice on tones out there. I have seen lots of people spend years on learning Chinese without ever learning how the sounds really work. Take the time to properly study Pinyin and drill yourself on what all the initials and finals are. For example, a lot of people pronounce xue and shui identically, but in fact they don't share any sounds. This is obvious when using IPA: [ɕɥ̯œ] vs [ʂu̯eɪ̯] but is hidden if you just take Pinyin at face value and aren't strict with yourself on pronunciation.
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby arthaey » Tue May 02, 2017 5:58 am

Axon wrote:2. Learn proper pronunciation. […] This is obvious when using IPA: [ɕɥ̯œ] vs [ʂu̯eɪ̯] but is hidden if you just take Pinyin at face value and aren't strict with yourself on pronunciation.

A huge +1 to learning IPA to improve your pronunciation!

If you don't have the gift of accurating repeating back what you hear (and I very much don't), I strongly recommend taking the time to learn the IPA. Yes, you have to learn a little bit of technical vocabulary, but that's the whole point: by learning the details of how to form sounds, you'll produce them better and more accurately even just from written descriptions.
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby qeadz » Tue May 02, 2017 6:45 pm

Thank you for the tips. When next the topic of language learning comes up, I will hear how he's finding things and add these suggestions in as things he might consider.

Right now he probably already feels like he can't shut me up so I'm taking a break from it. Poor guy just mentioned he's been watching some videos and wants to learn Mandarin... casually asked if I knew of any resources that might be useful... and *BAM* two long emails hit his inbox in addition to discussion about his goals and what he thinks he will achieve.

I mean I want to help beat the enthusiasm drum, but if he is really interested in it then the initial progress he finds should be its own reward.
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Re: Mandarin for the absolute beginner

Postby snowflake » Wed May 03, 2017 1:39 am

qeadz wrote:Right now he probably already feels like he can't shut me up so I'm taking a break from it.
....snip....

I mean I want to help beat the enthusiasm drum, but if he is really interested in it then the initial progress he finds should be its own reward.


Know what you mean....I know some couples where the wife is a native Mandarin speaker and says their American spouse is learning the language. Then after hearing me speak, she'll tell her husband to talk to me about materials, etc. But when I ask the husbands or mention specific materials in passing, they generally say something about how dedicated I am. Now I weakly smile when the wives say their husbands are learning Mandarin.
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