Pinyin frustration!

[griz326]

I read that because English & Chinese use the same sentence structure (loosely speaking), that a person could happily string words together to communicate in Chinese.

Alright! ...makes me an expert because I can use an English to Chinese dictionary to write pinyin.

HA! I get the bright idea to try to translate one of my letters back into English from the Pinyin and it was ABSOLUTE gibberish...nonsense. Very discouraging.

Clearly, English and Chinese do not translate 1:1. So now what! Is it even worth trying to communicate in Pinyin until I finish the Pimsleur course?

TIA,

Steve

[DrZero]

No two languages translate 1:1. What you're trying to do just isn't possible.

Try to get a good feel for Chinese grammar. Maybe use a textbook to supplement Pimsleur. Then you'll be able to construct reasonable sentences.

There are similarities between Chinese and English grammars, but there are a lot of differences, too.

Pinyin is very useful for learning new words and grammar (without having to take time to learn the characters). But it is not so useful if your aim is to write letters and such. Chinese people don't like to try to read it -- it's awkward for them. In fact, if they know some English, they would rather use that than pinyin.

[griz326]

I cannot believe that a language book would have said you can just string words together then. I knew it was too good to be true. ;)

Okay...grammar. Can someone recommend a basic grammar book, please.

I am also studying characters, but don't really see them as words yet because I'm trying to draw them with proper stroke order...I guess I should multi-task more thoroughly on this part of learning Chinese.

[kudra]

...back into English from the Pinyin

It's not quite clear what you were doing

Can you provide some step by step examples, this should be amusing.

One problem could be that even for pinyin with the tone, you still have to pick which of the many possible homophones you would want. I'm not saying this is what you were doing, but without some context, if you picked one of these homophones at randome, this approach is doomed.

I read that because English & Chinese use the same sentence structure (loosely speaking), that a person could happily string words together to communicate in Chinese.

where did you read this? Again presumably you'd be "communicating" with someone who could determine context so it might work better than what I described above. By better, I'm not saying you'd be communicating effectively. Probably would depend on whether you had accurate pronunciation including tones.

So now what! Is it even worth trying to communicate in Pinyin until I finish the Pimsleur course?

what do you mean "trying to communicate in Pinyin?" Surely typing out simple stuff in pinyin, even without tones, most people who can read pinyin would be able to guess your meaning.

Anyway, I ask not with the intention of solving your 1:1 translation problem, but more to

illustrate to you and other beginners that there are probably no shortcuts.

Edit: seeing your post after the opener, looking for grammar, try this

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8091-texts-used-in-us-university-programs

There is also a thread on best study tools.

[griz326]

I thought I read that in Yong Ho's Beginner's Chinese...but could easily be mistaken because I've read so many different books about China this year. It might even have come from one of the travel guides in the Chinese language section...now that I'm thinking about it...that's probably more likely.

So you want an example? Okay. Please, don't be too hard on my ignorance....

My English:

I just got back from shooting practice. For the next two months I will go to the woods (woodland) every night to shoot my firearms to prepare for hunting season. It is important to me that my shooting be good for the hunt.

My Pinyin:

Wŏ zhènghăo huílái cóng mìngzhòngnénglí. Wèi zhè èr yuèfèn wŏ jiāngyào qùxiàng zhè líndì mĕiyī yèwăn xiàng shèyĭng wodĕ qiāngzhī zhè zhŭnbèi wèi shòuliè jìjié.

I'll appreciate constructive criticism once you all pick your collective selves up after ROFLOL.

[imron]

I think you might have read that the basic sentence structure of Chinese and English are the same. i.e. they both follow the Subject-Verb-Object pattern when constructing sentences. For simple sentences that only have a subject, a verb and an object, you can quite happily translate one-to-one (though I'm sure there are probably exceptions somewhere): e.g.

I like to drink tea.

wo xihuan he cha.

She loves you.

ta ai ni.

Once you start to get beyond that though and add more things than just simple subjects, objects and verbs, then it gets all messy.

Another problem arises because often there will be more than one translation for a given word, and you will need to choose the correct one depending on the context. For example, for "just", you chose the translation "zhènghăo". And while "zhènghăo" does mean "just", it means it in the context of "just right" or "exactly right", as in "the amount of money you've given me is just right". One way to help avoid these errors is to do reverse lookup on the word you've just translated. So, if you translate "just" to "zhènghăo", look up "zhènghăo" in your dictionary and see if it gives you the meaning you intend. If it doesn't, then keep doing that for the other translations of "just" until you find the one you need. In this case a better translation for "just" would be "gāng" or "gāngcái", etc etc.

[trevelyan]

Prepositional and subordinate clauses are not treated the same in Chinese as English. Your English sentence is REALLY complex. Read it again with these phrases bracketed:

I just got back [from shooting practice]. [For the next two months] I will go [to the woods] [every night] [in order to shoot my firearms [in order to prepare [for the hunting season]]]. It is important [to me] [that my shooting be good [for the hunt]].

Prepositional phrases precede the verb in Chinese. If English used the same word order our sentence would read "I [last year] [with him] [to Beijing] went":

我去年为了学习中文跟他在一起去了。

[griz326]

Thank you for the help.

I will write simple sentences. It is like writing radio newscasts.

The weather is good.

Practice makes perfect.

The Chinese language is tricky. ;)

[wushijiao]

Griz,

Of course you should keep trying! Don’t be discouraged by errors, just try to figure out what you need to change. I like the fact that you are being aggressive about learning.

I know I have read many times that Chinese grammar and English grammar are similar, but I think people who say that are mainly comparing a variety of languages, and then find that English and Chinese are not as dissimilar as, say, English and Russian, or English and Latin, or something.

In addition to what other have suggested, I think it might be a good idea to memorize a lot of beginner materials aurally, especially dialogues. Ideally, I think learning and memorizing useful phrases/sentences in Mandarin first will help you subconsciously learn some tough grammar.

[flameproof]

I read that because English & Chinese use the same sentence structure (loosely speaking), that a person could happily string words together to communicate in Chinese.

Did you read it on the internet? If so, then it must be true.

But seriously, don't believe everything you read. Mandarin has more word order tolerance as other languages, however, there is a system that should be followed....

[Gulao]

Mandarin has more word order tolerance as other languages, however, there is a system that should be followed....

I wouldn't say that. Maybe more than other analytical languages, but go look at Hungarian, or Old Latin if you want some changeable word orders.

[HashiriKata]

Almost a universal principle: For all languages, the less there are changes to the form of the words, the more rigid the word order can be (= languages that don't rely heavily on morphological changes will be more rigid in word order). In this sense, Chinese is similar to English (but don't take the word "similar" too far! ).

[griz326]

Will the quality of my dictionary have anything to do with good translation of English->Chinese...or should my BBK & Pleco dictionaries render good translations???

(It was the Pleco dictionary I used to translate my Pinyin taken from the BBK back into English nonsense....... )

[flameproof]

Will the quality of my dictionary have anything to do with good translation of English->Chinese...

As long as you don't have the hungarian dictionary from the Monty Python sketch you should be OK.

There are a few Engl>Pinyin dicts on the markt. Mine is "Made in China" and was rmb 5.80 - and it's OK for its money.

Much deeper is my PDA dict for my ipaq. However, both languages have some ambiguities and it's often difficult to find the right foreign word for a beginner. What I mean is, you check the English word - and the Mandarin has 5 entries for that word, without much explaining. In Mandarin there seem to be also some variations between spoken and written language.

So any dict should be used with some caution.

[kudra]

@Griz

I'm still curious. What did you get when you translated the pinyin

My Pinyin:

Wŏ zhènghăo huílái cóng mìngzhòngnénglí. Wèi zhè èr yuèfèn wŏ jiāngyào qùxiàng zhè líndì mĕiyī yèwăn xiàng shèyĭng wodĕ qiāngzhī zhè zhŭnbèi wèi shòuliè jìjié.

back into English?

[griz326]

I'm sorry Kudra...I did not save the nonsense translation back into English. I'll look to see if I saved any of the nonsense translations.... Like I said, I was frustrated...so most went straight into the trash.

[griz326]

Maybe I am trying to do to much too fast and should focus on one thing...

Maybe I should be content with Pimsleur and a good grammar book to start, I do not feel like I'm making the progress I'd like to make.

Pinyin's primary purpose is to allow Westerners to pronounce Chinese. Correct?

[imron]

No. It was designed by the Chinese as a way of pronouncing the sounds of Mandarin Chinese using an alphabet and is used by Chinese children when they are learning to read and write characters. The fact that it uses the Roman alphabet, also makes it simpler in some respects for Westerners, and makes it convenient to type on a computer, but it also makes it prone to mispronunciation if you haven't learnt the sounds correctly. See here and here for more info.