A few questions about learning materials...

[Sean93]

Hello! I've recently begun trying to learn Mandarin because I want to visit China someday. The book I decided on was "Key to Chinese Speech and Writing vol. 1" by Joel Bellassen and Zhang Pengpeng.

1. Has anybody here any experience with using this book? Would you consider it good or not-so-good for learning Mandarin?

2. Has anyone here learned using Bopomofo? The book I'm using now uses Pinyin, but I read about Bopomofo somewhere and it sounded interesting. Would you consider it better for learning than Pinyin or worse?

Any other recomendations you might have are also greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[renzhe]

There is nothing wrong in learning how to use bopomofo, but you should know that pinyin is THE prevalent romanization method for Mandarin and that it would make a lot of sense to base your learning on that.

Pinyin is a must, especially in China. I don't even know if many people know bopomofo nowadays on the mainland.

One advantage of bopomofo is that it doesn't create false ideas in your mind about how some words sound, because it doesn't remind you of English. It is still used in Taiwan for teaching kids.

But once again, pinyin is not optional, as everything in China (and half of the things in Taiwan) is romanised in it, so the more familiar you are with it, the better. Virtually everything is romanized in pinyin nowadays.

[sukitc]

I agree with Renzhe that you should focus on pinyin as your starting point. You could pick up bopomofo at a later stage, it's fairly easy to. I consider bopomofo as a reading tool, rather than a pronunciation tool. This is because a lot of publications in Taiwan published for children and other learners of Chinese have bopomofo accompanying the characters.

[daofeishi]

I used those books (book 1 and 2) for self-study while I lived in Ningxia. I liked them a lot, especially since they force you to learn characters from the start. I always get annoyed with books providing both characters and pinyin on the same page, since it's tempting to look at the pinyin, no matter what, if it's there

However, you haven't told us how you are planning to study Chinese. Do you have a teacher? If so, this book is a great complement to a textbook covering grammar (which almost isn't covered at all in Bellassen's book). If you do not have a teacher, but you are in an environment where language immersion is easy - my recommendation stays the same. But if you are trying to study Chinese entirely on your own, you have to be really careful. Tones and pronunciation are extremely important, more so than in most other languages, and Bellassen's book will teach you none of those. In that case, you should start out with massive amounts of listening training, trying to learn how to reproduce sounds and tones first. Try to find a native speaker who can correct you too. If you get this wrong from the start, you might end up getting some really demotivating problems at some point down the line (e.g. when you're going to China to try and practice what you've learned). There are books (+CDs!) dedicated to this. ChinesePod.com is a great starting point too.

Edited January 21, 2009 at 09:22 AM by daofeishi

[Sean93]

Thank you all for your advice. Daofeshi: Yes, I am studying alone because I only want to go to China on a short trip. Do you have any specific recommendations for books/CDs that teach pronouciation?