How is my Mandarin Chinese?

[Pokarface]

I've been studying for a month, but I speak a little bit almost everyday.

I usually repeat many things 2 or 3 times before I'm fully understood. 

I don't usually wave my hand like I did in this video, lol.

 

Me trying to speak Mandarin

[tysond]

I'm no expert and not a native speaker, but as you've been brave enough to post a video, here's some feedback.  :-) 

 

I can sort of understand what you are saying.  A Chinese teacher would get it too. But a native speaker would probably find it harder because they wouldn't necessarily know the beginner sentences we all learn.  

 

For a month of learning by yourself, it's pretty good (although I have no idea what a month means in terms of hours). 

You'd probably benefit a lot from small classes or a tutor to improve your pronunciation.  

 

Your "x" and "zh" need work, they are very unclear at times (xianzai and xibanya were tough - I couldn't understand what you were saying with these initial sounds).  Xiexie was much better.  "c" was pretty good for a beginner.

 

You are making a good effort on the tones, but unfortunately there's still quite a few mistakes in them (wrong tone) and they aren't very natural sounding yet - but at least you are not speaking in a monotone fashion.  3rd tone is probably the one that needs the most work - it's really a low tone, yours ends quite high and sounds like 2nd tone as a result. 

 

Quite a few vowels not quite there either.  For example, Neng sounds like Naan.  Shuo sounds like Shou (or Shore).  Shu1 sounds like Shi and then Shu4.   Good to pay attention to these and try to imitate the sounds more closely.

 

Grammar (word order) is sometimes not right - e.g. should say time words before verbs, and objects after verbs.

So:  Wo changchang shuo.  Wo xiangyao qu Zhongguo.

 

Just my opinions and there are many experts here who are welcome to correct me :-)

 

Good luck on your further studies!

[Lu]

Not bad at all for a month of study!

I agree with Tysond that your pronunciation needs some work. 'book' is shu not shi, and a few other mistakes. Perhaps you can ask your co-workers for help, but then they need to really tell you where you can improve and not, like Chinese sometimes tend to do, tell you that your pronunciation is amazing as soon as you get it halfway right. A tutor would work too, irl or on skype.

You're clearly paying a lot of attention to tones, which is great! A few you seem to have remembered wrongly: 'English' should be Yīngwén not Yīngwèn. And yes you need to loose the gesticulating at some point, but no need to worry about that :-)

All in all, good work, keep it up!

[Pokarface]

Thank you very much! I get some additional training using WeChat. I like to send and receive voice mesages, that way I can hear them over and over. I sometimes forget to curl my tounge while pronouncing my zh, and even if I do it, I don't know if I'm doing it right.

I can make a lot of small comments during chit-chat conversations, but I need to practice my listening skills :-p

[Pokarface]

I think the best way to get feedback from Chinese-Americans is to simply keep talking Chinese. If they look at you funny, you are making mistakes x-D

Other than that I also tell some Chinese speakers, ni(3) ke(3)yi(3) shuo(1) Pu(3)tong(1)hua gen(1) wo(3).

That way I force someone to talk to me in Mandarin. Many Chinese-Americans reply to me in English, but I don't want that =-p

[roddy]

1) gen(1) wo(3) isn't in the right place

2) You really need Pinyinput.

Impressive first contribution, look forward to more...

[Lu]

Should be Nǐ kěyǐ gēn wǒ shuō Pǔtōnghuà. Or Qǐng gēn wǒ jiǎng Pǔtōnghuà.

I've only read like four of your posts and you already strike me as a very upbeat guy who's going to have a lot of fun with this and come out speaking impressive Chinese. Jiāyóu!

[Pokarface]

This is great! I use a pinyin to Chinese software (the one with the big S icon), but since I don't know how to read/write, I don't know if I'm saying the right things.

I think being able to type pinyin and Characters will be useful that way I start learning the written system almost unconsciously haha. Thank you very much, I'm glad I found this website 

[陳德聰]

I think I will subscribe to your channel if you continue to post your Mandarin progress

 

One thing about your /z/ and /zh/, you are not pronouncing the affricates in most cases. Tysond mentioned it, but a simple way to get closer to the correct sound would be to make sure you are starting these sounds with a "d" (technically IPA [t]). So far your /z/ sound like . But if you put a "d" in front of that, you'll get it at least close enough to be understandable. I am hesitant to tell you to put a "t" because I think that as an American you'll have a tendency to aspirate that and it will end up sound like /c/.

[Pokarface]

Thanks! I have to open a new youtube channel just for language progress because I have everything mixed in that one s-=

[歐博思]

Pretty terrible.

 

 

 

 

Just kidding. Like #7 said, you seem like an upbeat talkative guy, kind of like Benny, so I imagine you'll make fast progress into the future.

 

I'd start learning characters and especially radicals too, since they really help you see connections among vocab which helps your speaking.

 

In my preamble, I'm trolling any tl;dr people, but trust me, once you've been studying for a while and heard everyone praise you to the hills 27 million times, you'll value more any person who flat out tells you you suck and why.

[lechuan]

Nice work for a month!

 

Recommend dropping the hand tone gestures ASAP. It can be tough to uncouple gestures later on once you've deeply coupled them with your speaking. It took me a couple months of deliberate practice to uncouple my eyebrows from my tones after someone pointed that out.

 

You are sometimes gesturing the right tone and saying the wrong tone. Since your brain knows what the right tone is, channel that into saying it instead of motioning it. Maybe you're using your hand gestures as a feedback loop (ie. Oops, I saw that I just gestured 4th tone there, but I realized it should have been 2nd tone); instead, use your audio recordings as a feedback loop, which you can listen to and correct.

[Pokarface]

Thank you Lechuan. Of course I'll do that ASAP, I'm learning Mandarin, not Italian! lol. They Say that Italians wave their hands a lot. I have not been to Italy though.

 

欧博思, Thanks for your tips. I don't even know what radicals are s-=

I actually watch  Laoshu50500 and Steve Kaufmann youtube channel. I also read The third ear by Chris Lonsdale, I related to him a lot since he is an American learning Mandarin when everyone thinks it's something impossible to accomplish, later on he learned Cantonese and some Japanese. I have some experience learning languages since I actually had to learn English at school & the community, I learned Esperanto for fun, Portuguese because I used to talk with some friends and later on got some books and CDs, and finally I'm actually a Native Spanish speaker =-)

 

FYI: Yes, there are many Americans that don't speak English very well; hence, I first learned Spanish =-p

[贝恩睿]

From my personal experience, no one says 中国话 (zhōng guó huà). At least not in Mainland China. Taiwan might be different, though. Most people I've talked with just say 中文(zhōng wén) or 汉语 (hàn yǔ). BTW, 泰国人 (tái guó rén) means Thai (people), not Taiwanese. You want to say 台湾人 (tái wán rén).

A more natural way to say "I also like food" is to use a verb-object-verb, for example "I also like to eat food" / 我也喜欢吃饭 (wǒ yě xǐhuān chī fàn) (specifically 中国菜 (zhōng guó cài) if you want to say Chinese cuisine). Esperanto is 世界语 (shì jiè yǔ) (literally meaning "the language of the world"). "I have to go" is a very useful phrase to learn, 我得走了 (wǒ děi zǒu le).

BTW, Chinese has two main ways to express ability. One is for learned skills (like to speak a language, play soccer, etc) and then you should use 会 (huì). If you use 能 (néng), you're talking more about being able to do something physically (like drink 10 pints of beer or walk through a door).

 

I think you've done good with the amount you've learned in a month! My suggestion would be to ask some native Chinese people record themselves speaking what you said in your video and listen to it a couple of time and try to focus on getting the whole sentences sounding as natural as possible. You will soon discover that Chinese people are quite liberal with their tones. Not in a way that they would change a third tone into a fourth, but more in a way of them 'melting' together.

 

Good luck! 加油！

[imron]

泰国人 (tái guó rén)

tài

 

台湾人 (tái wán rén).

wān

[贝恩睿]

My bad! Thanks for the correction. Was obviously typing to much pinyin and mixed it all together.

[Vivi MENG]

Your hand gestures are really cute! Hahahaha! It's a good start, especially for a self-learner. 

Keep going!

你的手势真是太可爱了。哈哈哈！这对自学者是一个好的开始。加油！

[Pokarface]

Wow, thanks. I keep learning and discovering new things as I go along. Once you start learning a language, you can't stop learning the language. There are also many Vietnamese in my city, so my ear is getting sharp in order to distinguish Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese. It's not like they sound the same, it's just that I'm still getting used to the sounds of the language.

[Pokarface]

Hello, I decided to open a thread with my progress videos. I'd like to record a Chinese conversation in the future using QQ, Wechat, or in real life! So stay tuned!

 

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/44848-my-chinese-progress-log-videos/