My Next Steps

[Stephen Gardner]

Hi Guys,

I am new to this forum so apologies for any mistakes that I make.

I have just finished a beginners Mandarin Chinese (Pinyin) book for beginners and wanted to move forward to the next level.

The question I have is; do I need to learn Mandarin Chinese characters or am I just learning Pinyin, what happens if I need to read anything in Chinese? Am I right in assuming that Pinyin is to help the pronunciation and you don't actually read books, papers or magazines in Pinyin?

I can speak fluent Spanish but this is a slightly different adventure.

Help appreciated

Regards

Stephen

[Singe]

I guess it all depends on what you want to get out of learning Mandarin. If you want to take your Mandarin far you really need to jump in and start learning the characters. You'll find that as you progress, pinyin will be used less and less. The more you learn how to write the characters and the rules you need to follow, the easier it will come. Character writing is one of the most worthwhile experiences of your whole journey in my opinion.

Best wishes in your studies.

[Sobria-Ebritas]

Hola Stephen,

If you don´t learn the characters (or, better, words written with characters), you won´t be able to read Chinese. Reading can help you learn a language, as you probably know from your experience with Spanish. I don´t know whether "Pinyin is to help the pronunciation", but I think you are right in saying that "you don't actually read books, papers or magazines in Pinyin". When Chinese children start to learn to read, pinyin is used as a help (obviously, they have the advantage over you and me of being able to assocciate the sounds of words to their meanings).

¡Buena suerte!

[Sam Fairhall 92]

You are correct, you wouldn't read a newspaper article in pinyin. Alot of Chinese people can't even read pinyin!. Its mainly used, as you say, to help people with pronunciation - especially people whose primary language uses the roman alphabet.

I'm fairly new to learning chinese aswell and I havn't started learning the characters yet. Its my aim to go to China in a years time, which is when i intend to start aggressively learning them. When you start learning the Characters is entirely up to you, your goals and your study plan. One thing is for certain, you will need to learn the Characters.

[耳耳语语]

If your goal is only spoken language, and if auditive methods fits your memory, you may use podcasts.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8195-best-of-chinese-study-tools-studying-chinese-online-and-off/

If you want to read :

- You may find a few books with characters+pinyin, but that's only for children or beginners (Graded readers).

- You can find tools to convert texts from chinese characters to pinyin (online translation like google). But it's seems hard to read long texts in pinyin, due to the lot of homophonics. That's why chinese use characters . The first step to learn them is to learn the radicals.

[耳耳语语]

Also discussed in a precedent topic :

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/41532-learning-chinese-without-chinese-characters/

And opposed to this one ;)

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/41600-do-i-have-to-learn-the-pinyin/

[Stephen Gardner]

Thank you all for your help.

I'm sure I'll be hear again very soon.

Stephen

[liuzhou]

Its mainly used, as you say, to help people with pronunciation - especially people whose primary language uses the roman alphabet.

No. It's primarily used to teach Chinese children Chinese. It wasn't invented for foreigners.

[淨土極樂]

Yes, but I'd like to add that not just 'Chinese', but Putonghua precisely. Pretty much every place in China has their own dialect/accented speech, so the country really needed a good system to teach everyone standard pronunciation. Pinyin is used exactly for this purpose.

[Johnny20270]

so the country really needed a good system to teach everyone standard pronunciation. Pinyin is used exactly for this purpose.

, it was a very admirable task (politics aside) by the Chinese government, in my opinion!

[Johnny20270]

I'm fairly new to learning chinese aswell and I havn't started learning the characters yet. Its my aim to go to China in a years time, which is when i intend to start aggressively learning them

as a beginner too (1 - 2 years) I would just add that I do think its important to start learning the characters earlier rather than later. I don't mean just dive in but general understanding of how / why they are created and recognising them is useful and interesting.

Flashcard system like ANKI make it a LOT easier. Perhaps make it 10% - 20% of your study time. I delayed learning characters until a few months ago but in hindsight I think it would have been better to start earlier. For example, I am going through a Yips book "Basic Chinese Grammar", for a 2nd time but whereas previously I would just look at the pinyin, now I read the hanzi. Reading the Hanzi is not just a distinction a and separate task, it also reinforces the grammar patterns

Another issue I see is that time just needs to pass (irrespective of how many Hanzi reviews you perform) until it seeps into your long term memory. I used to think that if I learn 5 a day averaging over a year, then I would know ~1800 characters in a year, great! The problem is that all these are easily forgettable and 'young' characters.

Of course its each to their own!

[anonymoose]

I'm fairly new to learning chinese aswell and I havn't started learning the characters yet. Its my aim to go to China in a years time, which is when i intend to start aggressively learning them.

Regardless of how "aggressively" you intend to learn characters, its something that takes a long time. If I were you, I'd start learning now. You didn't say how long you'd be in China for, but really you want to get your Chinese to a usable level by the time you arrive, rather than reach that level just as you are about to leave China. One reason for doing this is that learning characters takes a lot of time and practice, but is mainly bookwork. This is something you can easily do in your own country when you don't have the chinese environment around you. On the other hand, once you are in China, it would be a pity to spend hours by yourself practicing characters when you could be out actually using your Chinese. And also, a lot will pass you by until you get a grasp on the characters. On the other hand, if you already know say, the 1000 most commonly used characters, you'll already be able to appreciate much more from your surroundings, and thus learn much faster, right from day 1.

Same advice to the thread starter.

[Sam Fairhall 92]

@anonymoose

You have a very good point! My intention is to go to China for, roughly, 4 years. I want my Chinese to be good enough to use on a Business level. Thanks for your advice, any books you can recommend?

[Singe]

Anonymoose gives you some excellent advice there. Regarding books, there are a good many threads on this site, search for 'Book recommendations' at the top, perhaps starting with this one http://www.chinese-f...e-grammar-book/

I started with You Can Speak Mandarin and loved it but I'm not sure about its availability now, and the original Practical Chinese Reader. You can't go far wrong with the newer version of Practical Chinese Reader. Tuttle do a title 'The First 100 Chinese characters' which give an A4 page for you to practise each character on. You Can Speak Mandarin (Philip Yungkin Lee) came with a 300 character Character Companion Book which was well presented so if you can get your hands on that I'd recommend.

[anonymoose]

I learnt characters initially just by working through a grammar book (I started with Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip and Rimmington) and eventually reading any materials I could get my hands on. I didn't follow any structured course specifically for learning characters. A structured course may be better in the sense that you will learn the most frequently used characters first, and are thus able to reach a certain level of competency in a relatively short time, which is good for motivation, but on the other hand, if you are planning to continue to an advanced level, almost any character you come across in the media is likely to be worth knowing eventually anyway, so you could just practice with anything that interests you, and learn new characters as and when you come across them.

If you are just starting out with Chinese, then I recommend the grammar book mentioned above anyway. A firm foundation in the grammar will stand you in good stead for using your Chinese later on.

[Johnny20270]

I recommend the grammar book mentioned above anyway

I second that, a very good and concise book with huge amount of exercise. Chapters are bite size 6 – 8 pages each

[roddy]

Removed a post. Can I remind everyone of the T&C's (linked below the reply box) and in particular the bits about pirated Chinese learning materials.

[tysond]

Agree with Anonymoose - I learned 1000 characters before I came to Beijing and it was highly valuable. I wish I had learned more before arriving. You can learn completely from books and it's still quite good. Don't really have to even know how to pronounce them correctly, as long as you can recognize them they will fall into place quickly (e.g. via subtitles or people reading out loud).

[Stephen Gardner]

Hi Guys,

I wanted to thank everyone for their input, the advice has been great all round.

My actual reason for learning another language is for these purposes; I am about to start a degree as a mature student (46) in International Relations and Spanish. (I want to qualify as a teacher in the next 3 to 4 years)

However, I have always wanted to be able to speak Mandarin Chinese and plan to learn this over the next 3 years as I am doing my degree. (I already have fluent Spanish in the bag so to speak) Having spoken to a few teachers this would make me more 'marketable'.

I have learnt beginners Chinese via a book by Dorling Kindersley called 'Easy Peasy Chinese', Mandarin Chinese for beginners. (I hope advertising this book isn't against the rules here)

Can someone advise me on what 'Character Book' to get so I can learn this in conjunction with speaking?

All advice appreciated again.

Many thanks

Stephen

[Singe]

If you want to learn the characters without necessarily knowing how to write them, then one of the standard exercise books will suffice to get you started e.g. New Chinese Practical Reader. If you are keen on learning stroke order and how to write the characters correctly then a reasonable staring point is 250 Essential Chinese Characters, Volume 1, as well as others recommended above. Again, there are a few good threads on this site about this topic and they can viewed with help from the search facility.