A language learners’ forum

Honestly, I think the first 2 units of Rosetta Stone Mandarin are the best foundation out there. It's likely you have free access to it through your university. If not, you can buy online access for a couple months.

Here's why:

1 - The first 8 sub-sections on "Reading" focus exclusively on minimal pairs using pinyin
2 - The first 8 sub-sections on "Pronunciation" focus on pronouncing one word at a time using characters (as long as you have your previous lesson set to characters, which you should). These have a great benefit of hearing words in isolation, but then strung together in a short phrase that might involve sandhi, without the obtuse textbook explanations.
3 - Every speaking exercise allows you to a) slow down the native audio even further and b) record yourself imitating the speech to compare/contrast side by side.
4 - You get some basic introductory words/sentences, all of which form the foundation for the exercises listed above. So, you're not drilling utterly abstract minimal pairs, etc.
5 - "Alphabet" screen, which can be accessed from anywhere in the course, contains every syllable in every tone so you can compare and contrast yourself. If the reading/pronunciation exercises haven't done enough to help you distinguish ch and q or c and z, you can listen to them back and forth literally forever.

Once you have a grasp of the pronunciation, definitely get McNaughton's Reading & Writing Chinese to supplement whatever course you decide to begin with.

Edit: If you decide to kickstart, I would strongly suggest trying to get a little further and test into the 2nd semester course. If you do all this work and then have to sit around listening to other people butcher tones for a couple weeks, it would really suck.

Purangi wrote:Tones are quite tricky, but far from impossible to master. You need to learn to hear them and then produce them. This is best done in a face-to-face session with a native Mandarin speaking tutor. Using tapes, Skype sessions, etc. won't nearly be as efficient.

So I think the best way to really kick start Mandarin would be to hire a tutor and to work only on pinyin and tones for the first 4-5 hours. Forget about characters, vocab and grammar for now - you'll have plenty of time for that later. Instead, make sure you master every single pinyin syllable with the five tones. Start with monosyllabic words, than move on to two-syllable and three-syllable combinations. Have your tutor give you a ton of pinyin + tones dictations. This is critical and it will be the foundation upon which you will build everything else.

Ideally, the tutor should come from the place where you will be using your Mandarin, i.e. North China, South China, Taiwan, Sichuan, etc.

Good luck!

Hi Purangi, do you think it would be a complete waste of time using a tutor via italki to learn how to use tones properly at the beginning? I agree that it's much more efficient in person, but the problem is that in the next month I'll be in 4 different cities, so face-to-face sessions aren't really on the cards right now.

I only studied Mandarin for a few months around the end of last year and the beginning of this year (though I'll probably go back to it in the near future) and I mainly focused on the written part (understanding subtitles), so I can't recommend anything related to the sound system or the pronunciation, but if you are interested in grammar, The Chinese Grammar Wiki has great explanations (and they also sell two books so that you can have all the info available offline).

Don't know if this would help you, but I gathered a lot of information before I started with Mandarin.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... f=15&t=695

EDIT: There is a link there to a realistic learning plan for Mandarin. Worth a read.

Dylan95 wrote:

Purangi wrote:Tones are quite tricky, but far from impossible to master. You need to learn to hear them and then produce them. This is best done in a face-to-face session with a native Mandarin speaking tutor. Using tapes, Skype sessions, etc. won't nearly be as efficient.

So I think the best way to really kick start Mandarin would be to hire a tutor and to work only on pinyin and tones for the first 4-5 hours. Forget about characters, vocab and grammar for now - you'll have plenty of time for that later. Instead, make sure you master every single pinyin syllable with the five tones. Start with monosyllabic words, than move on to two-syllable and three-syllable combinations. Have your tutor give you a ton of pinyin + tones dictations. This is critical and it will be the foundation upon which you will build everything else.

Ideally, the tutor should come from the place where you will be using your Mandarin, i.e. North China, South China, Taiwan, Sichuan, etc.

Good luck!

Hi Purangi, do you think it would be a complete waste of time using a tutor via italki to learn how to use tones properly at the beginning? I agree that it's much more efficient in person, but the problem is that in the next month I'll be in 4 different cities, so face-to-face sessions aren't really on the cards right now.

Good idea to use an online tutor. It will take quite a number of lessons and you can use various apps to test yourself in non lesson time.

The process of recognising and speaking them correctly is rather arduous but getting a good batch of lessons of learning and practicing under your belt helps you have good lifetime habits.

Dylan95 wrote:Hi Purangi, do you think it would be a complete waste of time using a tutor via italki to learn how to use tones properly at the beginning? I agree that it's much more efficient in person, but the problem is that in the next month I'll be in 4 different cities, so face-to-face sessions aren't really on the cards right now.

Hi!

I really can’t speak in absolute terms. All I know is that for me personally, online tutoring just didn’t work. I was not able to hear the tones of my partner, except when they greatly exaggerated and extended them. I started doing the same, only to be told that nobody speaks like that. To be honest, I think it perhaps even made my learning even more difficult later on.

It might be different for you, especially given that the technology has improved immensely since that time. My tip would be: Don’t overthink it, just do it. You will find an approach that suits you eventually. Mandarin sounds hard, but it’s *mostly* a myth, I think. It’s challenging and time-consuming, without a doubt, but if you come China, you will meet tons of foreigners who speak and read Mandarin, even though they probably have much less aptitude and passion for language learning than you.

Most importantly, do keep us updated on your experience!

@purangi

I would say I had the opposite experience. I actually like over emphasis of the tone during learning because it helps me reinforce the correct tone.

I tend to flatten out the tone naturally so over emphasis brings my tone to nearer normality when speaking.

Rhythm and flow also contribute to sounding more natural but these are skills to be developed later.

1. I'll say to start with pinyin and listen to the audio repetitively. Something like https://chinesepod.com/tools/pronunciation/section/17 or find youtube videos that focus on that - like this . Pinyin is a very helpful tool, but when we learn it, make sure to close the eyes and try to imitate the sound rather than focus on the pinyin (romanization). When I took a short course in Beijing, the teacher focused on the tones and also asked us to slowly pronounce the pinyin one by one each time the class started. I think that was a very good exercise.
2. After getting comfortable with them, continue to learn from an app (http://www.chinese-skill.com/cs.html). Or website https://chinesepod.com/library/channels/list/newbie. Or youtube.
3. Watch some Chinese movies to get used to their sounds.

I wouldn't recommend 'random' online teacher.

I got the Fluent Forever Combo decks, the pronunciation trainer and the first 600 words. A good starting point that teaches you how to use the PinYin system, and how the language sounds. Very helpful, especially with tones. Still hard as s*** though.

I'm switching my deck to bopomofo because I'd rather learn that than pinyin. I've already picked up hangul, so bopo shouldn't be that much harder, vs training myself to not hear english when reading pinyin. I'm sure I could if I wanted to, but I also find bopo super interesting.

The point is, when learning mandarin and starting with Pinyin, you are quickly reading first the pinyin transcription rather than "reading the characters". With BOPOMOFO or without Pinyin, you are directly in the Chinese mode without any latin writing. Tones are recorded in Pinyin not the unaspired/... that makes a difference for beginners.