<p>I'm a homeschooled student applying to college this autumn (English is my first and only language), and I want to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese. I've got two books on the subject: Chinese For Dummies<a href="lol">/I</a> and *Mandarin Chinese in 30 days. I really want to learn a new language, as it's (a) required for college (b) useful (c) fun. If things go well, I might even take the SAT this November.</p>
<p>Problem is, I have no idea where to get started. How does one pick up a new language? Should I just go through the books? Or should I try and find some free online courses, evening courses, or a private tutor? </p>
<p>Thanks! ^^ -is eager to get started on this-</p>
<p>First of all, why do you want to learn Mandarin?
Second, when you said that you might take the SAT in November, do you mean the SAT 2 in Chinese? It might be difficult learn enough Chinese to get a good score on the SAT 2 by November.</p>
<p>Anyway, use books, language CDs/free online programs (make sure they’re good though), and find Chinese music to listen to. The music will help you learn the tones better. Also, learn more about Chinese culture and read Chinese literature (in translation).</p>
<p>The more exposure you have to the Chinese language, the better you will be. and practice, practice, practice. Flash Cards are okay, but after a while try to write different kinds of sentences with the words you do know.</p>
<p>“Anyway, use books, language CDs/free online programs (make sure they’re good though), and find Chinese music to listen to. The music will help you learn the tones better. Also, learn more about Chinese culture and read Chinese literature (in translation).”</p>
<p>I agree with that! Also, I wanted to learn Japanese and it really helped watching anime shows with english subtitles, you hear lots of every day conversations and its fun to watch. You might be able to find chinese shows with subtitles</p>
<p>I’d also check out the itunes store, they have a lot of free podcasts that help teach you the languages. SAT might be hard, especially after such a short period of study, because its mainly native chinese speakers taking it so the curve is harsh!</p>
<p>If you have the money, I recommend getting the Rosetta Stone’s Chinese Mandarin, levels 1-3. It’s about $500, so it’s quite an investment, but it’s about the same price as as a community college course. It will help a lot of with the listening and pronunciation, but will do little for the reading comprehension. </p>
<p>And some final advice, reading Chinese is mostly about memorizing characters. Standard Chinese has about 30,000 characters (50,000 if you count the really obscure ones). Be ready for some mind numbing memorization. It requires a lot of patience.</p>
<p>I honestly wouldn’t suggest trying to learn proper Chinese from a book or independently for that matter. Chinese has a lot of complexities and learning from a book will only teach you how to say basic phrases (it will be difficult to emulate tones properly if you do not have an actual teacher meaning you might end up saying something completely different which could end in disaster). As previous posters have mentioned, I would suggest going to class at a community college as that will be much more effective than books. It’s very difficult to learn Chinese properly without learning from someone experienced with the language or is a native speaker.</p>
<p>I would recommend going to Chinese school. Most of my Chinese friends take classes every sunday (for like the past 10 years). Books are not enough, you have to hear people speak and practice speaking yourself. You will learn much faster this way.</p>
<p>yeah you probably have to go to some sort of formal class (this will help a lot). I’ve been trying to learn Chinese by myself for ever, and it’s really difficult (even with a Chinese-speaking mom). But since I go to regular Spanish class at school, I’ve learned much more.</p>
<p>Books and self teaching are not enough. A college class would be good but a Chinese school would be even better, and complete immersion by learning and studying in China would be ideal.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advice :). I’m going to Malaysia in a few months (it’s in South East Asia); will I be able to learn Chinese there if I can only speak English beforehand? I’ll try and take a class or something. I will definitely check out the iTunes store too; thanks for the tip ^^. </p>
<p>Yes but, you can survive with 1000-2000 and I think 3000 is the government minimum for “literacy” No one <em>actually</em> knows 30,000 characters… or even more than like 10,000</p>
<p>At a superficial level, some aspects of Chinese grammar won’t seem too weird to a native English speaker. Chinese sentences are almost always Subject-Verb-Oject. “I love you” in Chinese is just that - “Wo ai ni / I love you.” It is not “I you love” like in French. In addition, adjectives are placed before nouns, not after. A “red car” is a “hong che / red car”, not a “car red”, like in Spanish.</p>
<p>Furthermore, there are no verb conjugations in Chinese! So, you don’t have to memorize stuff like “drop the -er, add -e.” You’ll have to memorize other things, yes, but no endings and stems.</p>
<p>Having said that, there are still many reasons why the State Department classifies Chinese as one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn. Almost none of the words will sound familiar to you, and the Sino-Tibetan language family is quite different from the Germanic language family.</p>
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<p>It’s very likely that you’ll be able to learn Mandarin Chinese in Malaysia. The country has a sizable Chinese minority. However, be warned that Hokkien, Hakka, and Cantonese are more commonly spoken than Mandarin among ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. With varying difficulty, I can understand almost any regional variety of Mandarin, but I can’t understand Hokkien, Hakka, or Cantonese.</p>
<p>I agree that the hardest part about Chinese is not in the grammar, but the fact that the words will be unlike those in any language you’ve studied before. Except for Japanese, but the meaning might be different for the same character in Chinese and Japanese.</p>
<p>My father is from Malaysia, and I’ve been several times. Fabrizio basically nailed it on the head, you may be able to learn Mandarin through conversations with the locals, but most of the Chinese there have ancestors that came from southern China, which means that Mandarin is less common than Hakka, Cantonese and Hokkien. My surname is in the Hakka dialect, for example.</p>
<p>Yes, the grammar is the easiest part. It’s realizing that you can’t learn 26 figures and then put them together in various ways to form every word; you need thousands and thousands.</p>
<p>Also, many Americans seem to have a problem with the tones.</p>
<p>The tones can definitely be weird at first. A lot of Chinese joke about how Americans learning Chinese speak Henanhua, or Henan dialect. It doesn’t really mean that they speak Henan dialect, it just means they completely butcher the tones.</p>
<p>Of course, with practice, this problem can be solved. One of my non-Chinese friends actually speaks much better Mandarin than my ethnic Chinese suitemate. They both have accents, but the former’s is much milder than the latter’s.</p>
<p>The grammar sounds pretty simple; but I’ve tried saying the four tones and I find it rather hard to constantly remember which tone to say and when. I’m actually British and speak with a British accent, but I doubt it makes that much of a difference… should I bother going through my “Mandarin Chinese in 30 Days” book right now? (I’ll try and find a class when I go to Malaysia in July).</p>