Learning Mandarin - Some Questions

[crystak]

Hello everyone,

Just registered as I found some of the topics on here interesting. I've actually started learning Mandarin about 3 weeks ago and I try to do approximately 40-50 minutes every day (currently using the Pimsleur audio guide). I also have the Colloquial chinese book + audio for beginners but I feel that this book is jumping straight into complex conversations so haven't been able to use it so well. Any recommendations of a better book that preferably also includes audio to hear the tones?

My main concern is learning how to write chinese. I'm getting used to the pinyin pronounciations, including the tones representations but the simplified chinese characters seem so hard to learn and would also involve calligraphy mastery. I am also interested in finding a book that deals with such aspects of the chinese writing. I would appreciate some recommendations. Also, what way of inputting the characters do you use? I also seem to get a lot of ??? when viewing pages written with the simplified chinese characters. I currently have Windows Vista on my computer; is there an extension or something I'm missing?

[renzhe]

1) You can check the wikis on this forum for some recommendations. Very popular textbooks which include reading, writing, listening and exercises are New Practical Chinese Reader and Integrated Chinese.

2) Pimsleur is fine, but it will only take you to the very very basic levels of Chinese. It can help you develop an ear for tones, though, so if it doesn't bore you to death, it's a good tool. Takes a lot of time, though.

3) The characters ARE hard to learn. Not impossible, and you don't need any calligraphy (people usually pick up the proper stroke order relatively easily once shown the basic few rules). You will need several years before you can write a meaningful number of characters, however. It is hard work.

4) New Practical Chinese Reader has exercises for writing simplified characters, with the stroke order and stuff. This is best shown by somebody in person, though. You can practice on your own after that. Keep in mind that it is possible to learn to read Chinese without knowing how to write every single character you know.

5) Check the wiki on the top, there is a section on input methods for Chinese. People use a variety of input methods. I use SCIM on Linux using Smart Pinyin.

6) Sounds like a problem with the fonts. If you have simplified and traditional fonts installed, you should be able to see all the characters on here.

7) 加油!

[Hofmann]

If you don't know much about the structure of Chinese characters, you should read a bit about them. Knowing their structure makes learning much easier.

This post contains a section about Chinese character structure. The rest of the post is about writing, but it is aimed more for the write-it-and-make-it-beautiful crowd rather than the just-write-the-freaking-character crowd. Still, you may find it useful. (FYI the Renzhe on those forums is not the renzhe who posted above me.)

Also, if you see a bunch of ?????????, then make sure you have Chinese fonts. Assuming you're on Windows 2000 or later, the GB18030 support package contains the SimSun18030 font, which should contain most any character you'll ever encounter. Also, make sure your browser is configured correctly. Can't help you with that.

[Oliver_CL]

Dear stak

I suggest you read some books which published for chinese children, for there are lots of vivide pictures beside the "hard" characters, and I guess there must must be some pronunciation for the charaters in some popular books, thus you can learn the characters easily. What you will do is just like what a child will do, you need patience and conference to learn chinese, it's long distance through which you must walk step by step, take care of your base of learning, you will find it more significant when you come to read more in chinese.

Keep learning chinese everyday, just like we learn english, you will forget most of what you had learned with leaving them only several days. So sometimes, keep some native chiese speakers in your chatting list is necessary.

MSN:chenlei815@hotmail.com

[crystak]

Thanks a lot for all the replies!

I found New Practical Chinese Reader on Amazon and ordered it.

Hofmann, I'll download that support package and see if it helps. Thanks for finding it for me.

Yeah, I know it's hard to learn mandarin and requires a lot of dedication. English isn't my first language either, so I learnt it in highschool, together with german and I'm not bad at german either but as you said, I haven't practiced it recently so it got a bit rusty.

I'll add you on MSN, would be great to chat from time to time. I don't know any native chinese speakers to talk to at the moment so it would help.

[The Elf Piper]

I just configured my computer which runs Vista to display (and input) characters. I just searched the Help guide for Languages and it talked me right through setting it up.

(Not that I know what to DO with most of it yet...)

[Hofmann]

I find that Microsoft built in phonetic IME's are not very good. Google Pinyin is much better.

[scott-chen]

Learning Chinese character for foreigners are really difficult. But everything has its rules. Be more familiar with character structure. For example, the very basic part, in Chinse we say "héng shù piě diǎn zhé". I really think that gonna help you!!!

[jinhr]

crystak,

As native Chinese, I havn't written Chinese for many years. Usually I type in front of computer, using Wubi or Pinyin. You can type as soon as you have learned pinyin.

Practice, Practice, Practice, the only way to learn a foreighn language.