Using Manga to Learn Chinese

[Lerastes]

I've been interested in Chinese for a while and I enjoy some Japanese manga. I looked up some Chinese translations and it started out okay. Unfortunately though some of the characters are so small and blurry that I can't make them out enough to look them up in a stroke/radical character dictionary. Because they're images, things like MDBG or the Firefox plug-in don't work on them.

I really enjoy the "immersion" methods of learning languages that some online books have talked about but I haven't used them for the Asian languages with character-based writing. Is there a better way to go about doing this or should I use more traditional methods?

[Liyisi]

i think this is a great way to learn chinese but if i can suggest a ManuhaManga for you?

12 Prince is a really good Manuha even though i have read an english scanlation you can probably read the raws if you get a hold them ^_^

[chrix]

it might be a bit too hard for a beginner, but this is a great webcomic also making fun of a lot of things in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義): http://san.pengguo.com/ . It has the comic in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

The Japanese and Korean versions are definitely lagging behind, it seems like the English and Chinese versions are updated at the same time, so I'm not sure if the English version is the original, or the Chinese version, or both... But it's great. Some of the allusions might not be understandable without knowing the details of the story. The expository parts are written in a way that might be quite hard to understand, but the dialogue is quite colloquial. So the best thing might be to read both English and Mandarin versions together. Also be prepared that ROTK has hundreds of characters, and that back in the day they had several names, names given at birth, and names given when entering adulthood etc., which makes it quite confusing sometimes, so use Wikipedia a lot

Oh, and the standard caveat applies: ROTK is a Ming era romanticisation of what happened during the Three Kingdoms period 1,300 years earlier. Many of the stories are embellished.

[atitarev]

I use PenPower on my pocket PC to look up characters but if there are too many, it may be difficult. I also find that recognition works worse for traditional characters.

[chalimac]

I use manga too. You can get good quality printed translations of manga at yesasia.com. There was a similar topic recently at:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/20760-easy-reading-from-taiwan-suggestions

I recommend that you learn some chinese first using textbooks. If you go straight to manga the frustation factor can be too high. Too many new words and onomatopoeia . Get the English translation of the same manga to aid your reading and not have to check constantly a dictionary. Again, keep it easy and gradual, don't be overwhelmed trying to reach too far at first.

[roddy]

Someone should start a Manga of the Month topic - link to an online version if there is one, read it in step at a page / chapter / whatever a day.

[skylee]

Try this. I am still reading this series.

[atitarev]

Wow, that's "Nodame Contabile". Great link, thanks, Skylee. I was planning to watch the Japanese drama (someone recommended) based on this manga.

The names:

Japanese: のだめカンタービレ

Chinese: 交響情人夢 (trad.), 交响情人梦 (simp.)

By the way, you can search for it on www.dvd511.com and watch, the search only works for simplified Chinese.

I agree, textbooks and storied with translations are better to start with.

Liyisi, it's manhua, not manuha, you misspelled it twice, just in case you don't know:

漫畫 / 漫画] mànhuà

[moderntime]

Thank you so much for this, I was just thinking that I wanted to read Nodame Cantabile in Chinese! How serendipitous!