<p>I am a senior who will be attending Swarthmore next year. I have no experience in Asian languages; I am an Irish Catholic kid who has taken seven years of French. How hard is Mandarin, really? Is it fun? (I am very interested in East Asian, especially Chinese, culture and history - part of the reason I want to take up Mandarin.) Tell me about your experiences. Thanks :)</p>
<p>I want to take Mandarin too but it would be difficult with an engineering major</p>
<p>I'm a native mandarin speaker (was raised speaking mandarin as my 1st lang) do you just want to learn how to speak it?? or how to write it as well? because writing in chinese is EXTREMELY difficult.. i went to 11 yrs of chinese school, and i'm still not completely literate. BUt i would definitely recommend learning mandarin (it IS the most commonly spoken language in the world :D) heh</p>
<p>I would most definitely like to speak it fairly proficiently. I am not taking this on as a one-semester thing. I am willing to dedicate much of my time as an undergrad (probably English major) to studying Mandarin. I am not sure about writing; it depends on the curricular offerings and how the department at Swat is structured. Thanks :)</p>
<p>i'm a native mandarin speaker too. i would say speaking is easier than writing. i guess for non-native speakers the hard part about mandarin would be mastering the tones. to learn to read/write chinese you really need to apply yourself.</p>
<p>If I want to major in engineering but still want to learn to speak Mandarin, would that be allowed? Do they even have classes where you just learn to speak Mandarin and not write it?</p>
<p>Some colleges probably have Mandarin conversation classes. Most have them for Spanish, but I guess that's a different story.</p>
<p>If you really just want to learn to speak, you should try an audio course like Pimsleur, which is an excellent introduction to spoken languages, especially ones with difficult pronunciations like Madarin. There are 3 levels, and unfortunately each one runs in the $250-300 range, but I know you can download them off the internet too. <--I'm not advocating this!</p>
<p>This is my first semester taking it. It's pretty much taking up all of my time, which sucks because as a polisci major I have a lot of reading to do. Other then that and not doing very well in it so far Its a lot of fun and I recommend it. Just make sure you have a lot of time on your hands</p>