Why Chinese?

[朱真明]

My first interest was in Japanese and I was always planning on studying it one day. But certain things happened in my life which lead me to study Chinese medicine instead. Over time the more interested I became in Chinese medicine the more I wanted to study it more academically. From there it was easy to see why learning Chinese language would be necessary, that is because over 95% of the literature on Chinese medicine (especially the good stuff) is in Chinese. So I put Japanese on hold and began Chinese. After about 1 year and a couple of months studying Chinese I have grown quite fond of it which lead me to decide to become a Translator.

Now i'm studying Chinese professionally at university whilst studying Japanese through Chinese. My main focus at the moment is improving my Chinese, English and Japanese so that I can translate between them at a later date.

[The_]

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[Chris Two Times]

 

白酒 (white wine)

 

That is most definitely a misleading translation!  

 

I like to translate 白酒 as "white lightning".

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[hannafit]

I've been fascinated with the Chinese culture since a young age. I didn't start taking the language until college, after I was already fluent in German. I never could have guessed I would enjoy the Chinese language and culture so much. I would spend up to 10 hours a day studying Chinese during my first semester. All of my hard work on practicing speaking and identifying tones and studying has totally paid off. I absolutely love the language and have a gift for it. I have received two awards from my university in Chinese and am currently a CSC scholarship winner. I will be headed to China this summer for a year for my scholarship and I CANNOT WAIT to expand my knowledge and proficiency level in Mandarin...and most of all EXPERIENCE CHINA!!       

[ShelbyR]

I was doing a Nintendo DS Brain age game to help my memory. I'd been doing it about a month, and one day decided, at the age of 56, that it was a waste of time to play games to help my memory as I age, why not just learn- Chinese.  So, my journey started 5 years ago, was mostly a self taught with online resources thing, and I'm now here in Kunming for 3 weeks studying with private lessons at a school.  Last year I was able to spend a month in Beijing having lessons.  I've also just finished my first year of Chinese night classes at the community college and start my second year next month.

 

I took a ton of French in middle school and high school, and went to college and majored in Russian.  My college had an excellent Chinese department, and I had absolutely no desire to study it.  I kick myself over that occasionally, but at the time it was the right choice.

 

I still have trouble in restaurants as I spent no time studying foods and haven't emphasized characters as I prefer speaking to people and local interaction.  I'll get around to restaurant stuff this trip, and this coming year we're doing New Practical Chinese reader (which I already did on my own, but it will still be a good jump start to getting more serious about characters).

[Demonic_Duck]

I was doing a Nintendo DS Brain age game to help my memory. I'd been doing it about a month, and one day decided, at the age of 56, that it was a waste of time to play games to help my memory as I age, why not just learn- Chinese.

 

Good decision.

[2bwo]

Hi to everyone, I am new here. Looks like all of you are fluent (or near fluent) already and this makes me sad, considering I'm just a beginner who has studied for a month

I had a relationship with a chinese girl. A short relationship I have to say, but enough to make me interested in the language, especially thanks to dramas and music.

I still don't know if I want to make chinese the goal or the tool of my life, but I just know it's a beautiful language and learn it is the best choice for me at the moment.

[Shelley]

@2bwo Welcome to the forums.

 

Looks like all of you are fluent (or near fluent) already and this makes me sad

 

This is not true   most of us are still learning, in fact learning chinese is an on going thing, there never really comes a time when you close the text books and say "Right, that's it, I have now learnt chinese".

 

Don't get despondent, you have found a wonderful resource here on Chinese Forums.

 

It doesn't matter that you are a beginner, all levels and all questions, no matter how easy you might think they are, are all very welcome.

 

You can only learn by studying and asking questions.

 

I hope your studies go well.

[Mati1]

Hey there!

 

As mentioned in my post in the weekly challenge thread http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/50838-weekly-intermediate-study-updates-join-in/?p=401985 I started learning Chinese out of curiosity about the characters and the spoken language (si, zi anyone?).

Actually I had decided to start learning Korean and if I liked it continue for at least two years. However, where I live learning East Asian languages is very uncommon, so I thought to myself I might as well try Chinese at the same time. I started with Chinese first out of fear that I would skip it altogether if I would really get into Korean and like it too much in comparison. Unfortunately learning characters is the main problem (for me at least) and it ate away the time and motivation I was willing to put into those two languages (While I also made another mistake: Refraining from reading level one graded readers for far too long.), so I ended up barely looking into Korean at all; it's a weird double motivation situation. I have Korean learning material ready at hand and will definetely look into it more often.

 

@2bwo:

Welcome! I am also new here on Chinese-forums. I haven't reached the intermediate level yet and love reading graded readers.

I recommend you dig into the basics of Chinese, maybe with a good beginner textbook (anyone?), until you can (mostly) read the easiest graded readers (novels): Chinese Breeze and Mandarin Companion level one. (Mandarin Companion as an e-book makes looking up the pinyin easier.)

[kdjupdal]

Hi!

I just registered to this forum.

I don´t know any chinese, but I have just started learning. I am interested in languages in general, and chinese is a really fascinating language because of the sounds and the tones. And of course the infamous characters.

 

I haven´t been to china yet, but would like to go as a tourist one day. I plan to learn a little chinese that travelling will be easier and more interesting.

[JosephCTM]

Hi everyone, I have been searching for an online resource and community to learn chinese and I am very happy to be part of this.

Why Chinese?

I was working in London, UK for about 5 years during which I Chinese person whom soon after became my wife. Unfortunately she could not stay in the UK with me after she completed her post graduate and had to return to mainland China. I made a decision to migrate to China and have been struggling to learn Chinese ever since. I'm now based in ChangZhou, a Tier 3 City in Jiangsu province.

 

I am a qualified accountant and having worked in financial services it has been a real challenge for me to pick up the chinese language and the financial terms used in business. Till this day I have not been able to find a financial vocabulary list to use as part of my daily learning process. I hope that someone in this community would be able to build a financial vocabulary list together with me to help other foreigners to adapt quickly in China.

 

Feel free to drop me messages I am looking to build learning relationships to create a effective environment for learning.

 

 

[艾墨本]

@JosephCTM

 

Not sure what level of vocabulary you are looking for since you list yourself at HSK 2. Before diving into technical words, it might be best to focus on basic daily communication. That is to say, first try to get your Chinese high enough to discuss the coffee machine, before you try to discuss accounting in Chinese.

 

That said, I tried searching these forums for "accounting" and came up on this thread. Unfortunately, the links seem too old so I tried searching for the mentioned file on google with "Chinese english financial glossary" and came upon a glossary put out by the Hong Kong Exchange (香港交易所) .

 

Best of luck with your Chinese.

[JosephCTM]

@YiMoBen, (that's what my translator showed up as)

 

Thanks so much! The links you provided were amazing! I haven't passed any HSK exams but I've been using the study guides for HSK level 2 and 3. Still struggling to memorize the characters. It's so difficult!

 

Cheers mate

[FelixNau]

Hi

 

I am new here on the forum. I started reading chinese webnovels last year. Because of this i want to learn more about the culture and the language. TThere i will start a course next semester at my college.

 

Cheers Felix

[SahaliyanUla]

Moments lost to time.

Which is to say that I have a hundred thousand reasons for wanting to learn about China. Cultural, historical, personal...
And every time I think I've escaped them from a bit, something happens to rekindle it.
A friend sends me pictures of a winter in Kunming, I hear a song I like, or it just comes over me...

But the strongest is definitely a mix of literary pursuits, and my own undying interest in Northeastern China.
I'm not sure how long anyone wants to hear a stranger ramble on, but, well, there's a lot I could ramble on about.
And at the end of the day, any one reason is enough; to have more than that is rather fantastic...

Or so I console myself. ; )

[歪果仁]

I started because I thought it would be interesting and would enrich me as a person. I continue because I started and I am a stubborn person. Would I have started if I knew what it was really like? I don't know. Certainly when people ask I can give them some detailed advice about the pros and cons...

[thechamp]

On my undergraduate degree I really enjoyed a writer called Ezra Pound. He translated a lot of classical Chinese poems in a collection called 'Cathay'. I kind of got into the literature before the language, but that got me to go to China to work for a while. I then fell in love with the lifestyle and traveling. It's pretty easy to make enough as a foreigner by teaching English or doing 'hired foreigner' jobs....I kind of started like that. 4 years of China and Taiwan I took the HSK 5. Learning Chinese was great and really taught me that everything is about just persistence....you can teach yourself anything given time.

[Sandro]

Hi everybody,

this is my first post in this forum. I look forward to having many insightful talks and discussions afterwards.

I'm Sandro from Germany and have studied Chinese for about 5 and a half years now.

So why and how did I start learning Chinese?

I had been rather vaguely interested in Asia, martial arts and aesthetic aspects of Asian cultures throughout my childhood. I would trace this interest to being exposed to Japanese Anime, video games, all sorts of martial arts movies and the like from very early on. But I only started my martial arts training when I was 15 years old.

My teacher defined himself as Vietnamese, even though his grandfather was what we would consider 华人 . Much of what he taught his students however clearly showed Chinese influence, be it the martial arts style itself or be it the philosophical teachings that were based on Laozi, Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism mainly. The time in his Kungfu school was very influential for my young adulthood and layed the foundation for my increased interest in Chinese culture and also the language as such. My interest in linguistics and language learning as such then did the rest.

So when I was finished with high school I decided to give linguistics a try but after one semester switched the city, the university and the major and began to study Sinology.

This is how I got really engaged with the Chinese language. Having studied the language for more than 5 years now, I have a certain feeling of accomplishment, however also feel that there is a long path before me.

I passed HSK Level 5 this year with a score of 272 points and will maybe attempt the level 6 in 2017. Anyone looking for study advice for levels 5 and below, please feel free to ask me!

Enough for my first posting so far, nice to meet you!

[Ruckele]

Why Chinese? 

I live in China and need it for daily communication. I might need it for future work opportunities.

Years ago, I wanted to get into learning, teaching and translating foreign languages. Chinese was one of my top choices in doing so.

[Not Nicky]

I started studying French in university for a number of reasons, one being that my major was International Relations; I thought I could aim to land a job in diplomacy eventually or at least translating/interpreting. In my third year at uni, I noticed so much of our classes kept referring to China. I was also keen to take on a new challenge as far as language learning goes, finding French really interesting but also not being so challenging at that stage. I'd been to China twice before for school/holiday, and did pretty well just using a Lonely Planet phrasebook (seriously, don't underestimate it). So I wasn't so intimated by the impression of Mandarin being such a hard language to learn. I think that may have, in fact, spurred me to take the challenge. 
I kept doing one or two classes, three or four hours a week, for about two years, at which point I'd graduated. I messed around for a few months, then in June 2014 took a job teaching English here in Guangzhou. 
My Chinese is alright now, though my study is inconsistent (just trying to maintain it through revising sentences on Memrise and learning new characters on Skritter). I'm about to start work on the HSK 5.
I'm planning to ask for some feedback on my self-study plans for HSK 5. Once I've got into/almost finished that, I'm planning on trying Glossika (potentially try out the Mandarin + Cantonese triangulation???!!!!). I'd also really like to do a semester of Chinese at a university here (maybe 中大 or 华师 in 广州, maybe 南大 or 南师, maybe BLCU.......???!??).