Learning when your partner is Chinese

[Neil_H]

Hello All,

I am new to the site and just from a brief scan I can see I have been missing a lot from not being on this forum.

I am English and have been studying Mandarin seriously since July 2008. I have used books, Chinese POD, some CD courses and so on to practise during my lunch hour at work. I am in a unique situation unlike most mandarin students of being married to a Chinese girl who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and English all fluently. She also speaks a large number of local dialects. She is the main reason I want to reach a reasonable level of Chinese communication. Watching her translate a 3 language conversation between, Mandarin, Cantonese and English at high speed back in 2003 has always left me envious and proud at the same time. I have been to China twice (2004, 2006) and will be going back in 2010 for my father in law’s 66th birthday. We both live in England

The arrival of our baby daughter this year has resulted in far less time for us together and I suppose the key bit of information I am after it how to make best use of the wonderful resource I have?

When I ask her to train me she just responds with, “go on, speak to me in Chinese then” rather than doing anything in a structured way.

I have learnt over 400 words now and am finding my database of words is getting too big to remember. Old words are falling off the edge as they are not being used. I feel like I need to cement those words in with structured sentences and conversations so they become lodged in. Then move onto learning some more new words in a second phase, rather than keep picking up new words every few days with the Chinese pod lessons.

I am good at translating Chinese to English but speaking back in Chinese is always a lot harder as I need to have a good think to get the words in the right order.

My current thinking is to get her to create a number of practice sentences based on the 400+ words I know and for us to keep practicing them and incorporate them into daily life. Once these are second nature and fast I should look to build on this with extra vocabulary.

???

[Hong XQ]

About what to study, I am no example. Still my 2mao is, the vocab that sticks is the one you use most. For me, the lists on cooking and argument are most indelible. Maybe you can start with the vocab you most frequently use regardless?

I'm guessing along the lines of 尿布, 橡皮奶头 and other 小儿科. I find it makes learning fun to join acting and speaking. Obviously if you regularly fit in English conversations with your 妻子 about 国际政治 then good for you and I am not only 十分佩服 but even somewhat 羡慕

[renzhe]

Are you learning to read as well as speak?

400 words is a good start, but you will need more in order to become conversational, and flashcards using an SRS program are an excellent tool in getting you there. They also take care of the "forgetting" problem by reminding you of the older words are proper intervals.

Also, reading is a good way to keep things fresh in your memory, once you have the basic vocabulary down.

Many people find that the conversations with the significant other become monotonous and repetitive if your vocabulary is too small. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get enough exposure to new and old words while living in England. That's why reading and flashcards play an important role for those of us learning outside of China.

You have a partner who is willing to talk to you and help you whenever you want. That's a great resource. At the same time, understand that she is not a language teacher and, like most of us, has no idea how to teach you. You'll have to put in a lot of effort on your own -- which is something you're doing, but perhaps you could make it even more structured -- and use her for explanation, corrections and conversation.

It sounds like you're gathering vocabulary in a rather random way. I strongly recommend following a good textbook, preferably one that sticks to the HSK guidelines. 1000 random words won't take you far, but the 1000 most common words will mean a lot. You can involve your girlfriend into your study in many ways, so she knows your progress and vocabulary. My girlfriend has been following my progress for a long time, and she always had a really good feeling for which words I knew and how she should express things so I can understand them. If you get your girlfriend involved into your study plan (structured around weekly lessons from a good textbook), you'll probably make better use of your girlfriend's time -- you can discuss the lessons, she will see which words you've learnt, etc. In other words, the structure should come from you, and ideally it should come from a really good course. Your girlfriend can't provide structure, as she's not a teacher, and has never learned Chinese in a structured way.

Just some random thoughts based on what you've told us. Perhaps you're doing some of this already.

[Neil_H]

Not learning to read but I can understand some of the simplified words and read them or sentences out. Just not the characters stuff.

She is my wife not girl friend. As you say she is not a teacher which is why we have trouble progressing.

The 400+ words are the common words accross a wide spectrum. One of the books we used covered all the main areas and now we have started on the Advanced version of it.

This was the book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginners-Chinese-Hippocrene-Yong-Ho/dp/0781810957/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252342690&sr=1-22

I am not at the beginer level anymore. I can have a conversation with my parents in law and translate for them with english people as long as they put up with my bad tones!

Some of the problems are understanding someone when they speak fast. I only get about a 3rd of it.

[anonymoose]

It sounds like you have a basic foundation with the vocabulary, but you are missing the grammar. I suggest you buy a grammar book (Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip Po-Ching and Don Rimmington is an excellent book published in the UK, and includes pinyin) and work through it so that you have a more systematic way of creating coherent sentences.

Vocabulary acquisition is always the biggest task when learning any language. This will just take lots of time, especially if you are not in a Chinese environment, but if you can get your grammar in order, you will have a lot more opportunity to make use of the vocabulary you know and it will stick better.

[Meng Lelan]

At the same time, understand that she is not a language teacher and, like most of us, has no idea how to teach you.

This is a very common observation among those with a Chinese spouse/partner/girlfriend. I myself teach Chinese at a heritage school and I can tell you that guys with a Chinese spouse/partner/girlfriend comprise half my classes. They take class for this very reason.

Seriously consider taking a formal class in introductory Chinese that gives you a foundation in speaking, listening, writing, and reading. It can be a class at the Confucius Institute, online class, community college outreach, etc etc, try doing this for two semesters. You will need a foundation of pinyin, tones, basic strokes, etc that a trained teacher is able to provide you. After two semesters decide how and where you want to go with this thing.

[xianhua]

Renzhe, the good lady went from 'signifcant other' to 'partner' to 'girlfriend' all in the space of one post there. (sorry, English sense of humour) I certainly second the partner not being a teacher aspect though.

My wife and I (well, me really) try and set aside a designated time for talking Chinese. Unless you insist on this, then with family and work, the chances just seem to slip away. Our designated time is meal time. I purposely leave some stories from the day until meal time, forcing myself to have to commnunicate them in Chinese.

Try and talk to other Chinese people if possible as they will use different words to your wife (and they don't know what you know). I've always found this tricky though as the other party may think you are looking down on their English skills by using Chinese, and insist on using English. Just explain your reasons though. Then be prepared for being spoken to like a child (which in terms of learning the language you are really).

Are you raising your child as bilinugal? Our daughter is just over one and I have found just listening to my wife talking to our daughter very useful. Mainly as she will repeat the same things over again and again, although I've yet to find a conversation with an adult where I can use 老虎怎么叫? - I'm working on it though.

[Neil_H]

I have the book Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar a practical guide by Claudia Ross and Jing-heng Sheng. However when I asked my wife could we concentrate on the grammar for a while she did not seem interested. I have yet to study from the book but do thing everything would make much more sense if the foundations of grammar were in there at this stage and not later.

I don't have the time to go away to a school to learn or to take up the writting. I have a full time job and little baby.

Vocabulary does take time and I would be happy to practise every day learning a few more words once I can speak sentences with the words I know correctly. It is all those little words in between that often throw me.

I am enjoying the feed back and comments here. I guess I have quite a lot of frustration built up as the will power to go on when you don't have any encouragement needs to be very high.

An example of this could be my parents in law who came over to England in March when my daughter was born. They spoke to me in Chinese when it suited them but were unwilling to give me any training or practise. They communicated in their local dialect despite being able to speak Mandarin meaning I learnt nothing. When it suited them I was expected to understand their Chinese.

[renzhe]

Are you using a textbook for learning Chinese? Something comprehensive, like New Practical Chinese Reader, Integrated Chinese or similar?

[imron]

but were unwilling to give me any training or practise. They communicated in their local dialect despite being able to speak Mandarin meaning I learnt nothing.

Both of these points are completely normal, and in fact are to be expected.

For the first point, unless someone has a strong interest in say teaching or their native language, most people don't really like having to act as teacher. It's work, and people normally don't like working in their spare time unless it's on something that interests them. This is completely normal. When you visit China, I'm sure you would get tired if your wife's relatives kept expecting you to be their English teacher, or the English teacher for their children (you might be ok with the first few times, but believe me, it gets tiring pretty quickly, especially when it becomes *expected* of you).

For the second point, imagine it the other way around. Say a Chinese girl marries a British guy, and they live in China. She doesn't speak much English, but is learning. Let's say the guy's parents are from Scotland and they come over for a visit. Although they can speak "the Queen's English" if they want to, instead they never do this and only speak with a Scottish accent and use vocab/expressions local to Scotland and so the Chinese wife "learns nothing". You can hardly fault the parents for behaving naturally. Just because someone *can* speak Mandarin, doesn't mean they feel comfortable doing so and the difference is even more stark between Chinese dialects and Queen's English/Scottish English.

Anyway, you're asking for advice from random strangers on the internet, so here's my 2 cents. It seems to me that the frustration you have built up is caused largely by your own unrealistic expectations about the role your wife and her family need to play in teaching you Chinese. The reality is, they can really only play an incidental role at best, especially when you are still a beginner. I know you say you are not a beginner, but with a vocabulary of only 400+ words, you are still firmly in beginner territory (sorry, that's just how it is).

This is all being compounded by the fact that Chinese is a difficult (and often frustrating) language to learn, and people who you believe should be helping you become an easy scapegoat rather than the language itself. The fact is though, Chinese takes a long time to learn - even for people studying full-time. You have other commitments that prevent you from studying full-time so don't be surprised if your progress is slower than expected.

As for how to improve the situation, the first step is to accept that your wife and her family can't play a significant role in your learning process, and that this situation is normal and they can't be faulted for that (would you seem interested if your wife bought a book on English grammar and said "Honey, lets spend our spare time learning the finer details of English grammar").

Then, because you say that you are beginning to find it difficult to manage all the words you know, an SRS program like Anki is probably going to be a good idea, especially if you are time strapped because it optimises the time spent on learning/revising so you spend more time on the stuff you don't know well, and less time on the stuff you're good with.

To make the most of something like Anki, this means you'll probably also need to learn how to at least read characters (a different skill from writing, and significantly easier to do, especially with something like Anki). Although learning to recognise characters might seem like a huge time sink, the time benefits gained from using an SRS program will offset the time spent learning to read, and will open up many other avenues of learning (native-level books, newspapers, blogs etc).

[wushijiao]

For what it’s worth, I’d recommend getting a few comprehensive beginners books that come with audio (CD’s or tapes). Briefly learn the words and grammar in the lesson (don’t worry too much if you don’t understand everything) and then aim to listen to a specific set of audio around 100 times. I’m not joking!

Since your working, hopefully you can utilize the time it takes you to go to work (in your car or on public transport) to do this.

(To make it a bit easier to accomplish the 100 times goal, you can download the free software Audacity. Then you can make your CD files into MP3 files with some other free software (there are lots for free that you can download). Then you can cut play out the English and any intro music (which can often occupy 20-50% of some CD’s). One thing I like to do, is if they give you a dialogue, copy and paste person A’s lines like: AAA then BBB, then AAA…and so on. You can even slow down the audio as well).

(Note: you can also listen to a lesson's audio, say, 20 times, (and then you might understand 70-90%), but feel free to move on to other chapters. A good textbook should re-use vocabulary. Every few days, review old lessons. Hopefully you'll find that a lesson you were working on a few weeks ago is now more like 95-100% understood).

Anyway, in my opinion, you must listen to audio a ridiculous amount of times for the vocab and pronunciation to stick in your mind. Flashcards are also a good idea. If you use a few different textbooks, they’ll cover each other’s gaps and you’ll get introduced to vocabulary in slightly different contexts.

I think it would be best to use textbooks and audio for a while to help re-build and consolidate your base in a systematic way. For all the faults in textbooks, the authors of textbooks are much better experts at getting one to a good base compared to native-speaker partners. Hopefully, over the course of 6-12 months you can complete two or three comprehensive textbooks with audio. For learning characters, I’d also recommend “Rapid Literacy in Chinese”. If you do this, I’m very confident that you’ll see improvements, and you’ll gain confidence as you learn more.

Edited September 8, 2009 at 12:56 AM by wushijiao

[Meng Lelan]

"Honey, lets spend our spare time learning the finer details of English grammar"

In all honesty a brilliant point. I would just absolutely hate that happening to me.

[gato]

I have the book Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar a practical guide by Claudia Ross and Jing-heng Sheng. However when I asked my wife could we concentrate on the grammar for a while she did not seem interested. I have yet to study from the book but do thing everything would make much more sense if the foundations of grammar were in there at this stage and not later.

I think you need to take a more pro-active approach to your learning. You are not going to get anywhere f you give up on your book just because your wife doesn't want to read it with you. You should consider yourself fortunate that your wife is willing to practice speaking with you. Judging from others' experience here, not everyone's significant other is so willing to practice with a beginner. Expecting her to be your teacher would be too much.

Here's a post that should be helpful to you:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/5007-some-advice-for-beginners

Some advice for beginners

Get a structured beginner's textbook like New Practical Chinese Reader or Integrated Chinese, reserve some time to study every day, and you'll be on your way.

[imron]

Also, here's a thread from a few years back from the opposite point of view:

Is it my fault if my husband's Chinese speaking isn't improved?

[Neil_H]

Sorry if my posts take a long time to appear. They have to be approved first it seems.

That post on the English husband is interesting. He most probably thinks he is advanced because some of the courses say advanced on them or the books. If you log onto Chinese pod and try Advanced you will get a shock. I am doing the elementary lesson on Chinese pod which is between beginner and intermediate.

I have to say whenever my wife gets time to assist me with my mandarin I never turn it down or say I want to relax now. Sometimes it is too late at night for it and I can’t think properly.

My original motivation for learning Mandarin was that I knew my daughter would be born this year and someone had to communicate with the parents in law. This was why I did it. Not for my own benefit but so someone could communicate with them whilst my wife was in hospital. They were meant to be over helping us but it turned out more like a holiday for them with me driving them around places! They would never have left the airport if I had not translate the problems with the luggage being to heavy and where they need to go etc.

This is why I mentioned it in the above posts. I was learning so I could help out and communicate whilst my wife was not available to translate. This was why I felt disappointed when they were not interested in practicing with me.

I really have felt like just giving up as I will not be living in China and don’t really have a need to learn Mandarin other than to communicate with them and other members of her family when we go to China every two years.

That said I have spent over year on this and I don’t want to be left out when my daughter starts to pick up Mandarin as well as English. I also like the challenge and feel it enriches our relationship if I cross that bridge and speak her language to.

Funnily enough after I showed my wife my first post we had a good long lesson last night as luckily our daughter decided to take a nap whilst we were having dinner so we were able to continue for 40 minutes using the grammar book mentioned above until she woke up.

[Neil_H]

I have just noticed an intermediate course being run only 5 miles from my house at a local College starting on the 23rd of September for one year. Looking at the content it is more like beginer level but includes writing and a qualification. 2.5 hours a week. I am very tempted to go for this as a way of ensuring I stick to it. Hopefully they will provide homework I can work on together with my wife.

[imron]

Sorry if my posts take a long time to appear. They have to be approved first it seems.

Yep, it's the same for all new members to prevent spam. After a few posts this restriction gets lifted. You should be able to post without any problems now.

[imron]

I really have felt like just giving up

I think most Chinese learners have felt this way at various times during their study. The ones that become successful are the ones that don't give up

I think your motivations for learning Chinese are good ones, and it will definitely be worthwhile for both you and your family to develop your Chinese skills - regardless of whether you visit China regularly or not. Being able to communicate with your wife in her native language, and to take part in your daughter's Chinese life are both great reasons. The trick is to remember that ultimately, the responsibility and motivation for learning needs to come from you and not your wife/Chinese family. They'll be there to help you if you have specific questions, but don't expect them to provide the structure or to do the driving.

If you log onto Chinese pod and try Advanced you will get a shock

And if you try something actually advanced, you'll get an even bigger shock

[katyjo]

It nice that you want to learn Chinese but does a working man have time and energy? A wife might want you to concentrate on making more money for the family. She may not care so much that you learn Chinese only that you support your child in learning Chinese such as agreeing to pay for bilingual school, trips to Asia, etc.

Learn Chinese for fun. If it comes, it comes. Don't give yourself too much pressure. Enjoy Chinese movies together (w/subtitles). Enjoy Chinese foods together. I'm sure your effort in learning Chinese is very much appreciated by your wife and her family.

[renzhe]

I also like the challenge and feel it enriches our relationship if I cross that bridge and speak her language to.

This is by far the best reason to learn, actually.

It's not just the communication, you will get exposed to the culture in a way that is simply not possible if you don't understand the language. By understanding the language, you'll be able to understand your partner, her family, and her background much better in the long run.