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Can I learn Oral Chinese without learning the characters?


Jing Xi

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I sort of did this. Your most likely going to get some nay-sayers who say its an in-proper way, and there will be some humps in the road when you do finally start with charachters, but I am glad i did it this way.  Also I've heard that this is the way Chinese children are taught, they gain a foundation in speaking/listening before attempting anything to do with characters (not sure if true though).

 

Anyhow Rosetta Stone is the easiest answer to your question, you can chose pinyin, pinyin + characters or just characters. In addition to this you could get a personal tutor, and just say what you want. Finally the majority of beginner text books have pinyin + characters and its quite easy just to ignore the hanzi.

 

As for semi fluency in 6 months, it depends how you define fluency, but I would suggest highly unlikely. 

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There's this online course called 8 belts ( http://www.8belts.com/ ) that claims you will speak Chinese in eight months. It doesn't teach characters at all. It's aimed at Spanish speakers, though.

I would recommend this approach only to people who don't want to learn Chinese but must reach a survival speaking level in a short amount of time. If you want to be fluent, or really learn the language, I wouldn't do it.

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Children everywhere learn to speak before they can read and write. I think with a lot of dedication it is definitely possible to reach limited conversational fluency in 6 months but I think only with a tutor and with many lessons a week. A native speaker is basically indispensable because you don't want to develop any bad habits in these early stages that will be very hard to overcome at a later date. At the very least look for a language partner, www.italki.com is a good place to look for a tutor and/or a language partner.

I agree with Geiko that if you are looking to master the language one day then learning characters from the start is probably a better idea, it helps in the long run and true mastery takes so long that 5-6 months of delay learning characters at the same time is negligible, however, if you aren't then I agree that there's no point learning them now. You may come across people telling you not to pay attention to the tones and just focus on speaking, in conversation this is basically good advice, in order to develop speaking you have to sacrifice tonal and grammatical accuracy a bit. BUT, in your private study and with tutors it is essential to remember that tones are, for lack of a better word, essential to Chinese. You can get by as a tourist by ignoring them but if you are aiming for something better then you simply cannot do without them.

 

My advice:

One-to-one tuition (gold standard)

language partner (silver, not bad but you have to be willing to share and share alike)

Rosetta stone and other software methods (bronze, still good and useful for quick practise in your spare time but not likely to reach your goal with these alone)

 

This all depends on the money you have to spare, a combination of methods is best. Remember that a little bit every day is better than a lot in one sitting. 

 

Good luck!

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That's the oldest question in the book, and also the most controversial one in any Chinese-learning community (outside of political bickering).

My answer is: yes, it is possible to reach some sort of conversational level without learning characters, but fluency is an elusive concept. Some online polyglots got to a B1 level in about 5 months (minimal character learning), which is a reasonable achievement. If you are not really after a good, deep understanding of Chinese and are only after simple conversations (ordering food, basic chit-chat as a tourist and the like), then this might be the right thing to do.

It is also my opinion (and experience) that learning characters is a much faster method for learning Chinese if you are aiming for anything but the most basic skills. After you pick all the low-hanging fruit (and there isn't much of it), you will hit a wall and it will be near-impossible to navigate all the near-homophones and nuances using pinyin alone. By avoiding the characters, you are avoiding one difficult aspect of the language, but the price is an increased confusion in your brain, which will stop being efficient as soon as your vocabulary passes a few hundred words.

People will say: but children, but illiterate natives, but blind people, and all that. My answer to that is: in 15-odd years of exploring the Chinese language and culture, I have met hundreds of adults learning Chinese. Without exception: those who spoke good Chinese were avid readers with great knowledge of characters, and those who spent years with innovative learning methods on how to avoid characters had elementary Chinese at best and stopped progressing shortly after beginning.

The major reason, in my opinion, is that people who go where it hurts and do the unpleasant work tend to be more successful in general than people who look for shortcuts, and this is especially true for Chinese.

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Yes. Agree you can learn semi conversational mandarin in six months. As said, just do an insane amount of listening, speaking and communicating

 

I listen to chinese radio for 30-60 minutes a day and lessons for six months. I was struggling a bit. After visiting China for 4 days and practically everything around was in Mandarin, my next lesson was a lot better and my fluency had improved much better. Funny thing was, during that trip I didn't actually speak that much but paid much more attention to use of the language around me. Didn't even pay much attention to the characters on the signs around me.

 

I am rather doubtful of whether a software package can actually provide that sort of environment to that goal. YMMV

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Just put your opinions aside for 1 second, and go and have a look at the actual studies.

I will believe it when I actually meet somebody who managed this.

I agree with you that you don't have to start characters in the first second of starting with Chinese. Pinyin, basic listening and tone drills are much much more important early on. But after a few months (6 if you wish), you should be thinking about learning characters. You'll have to do it sooner or later unless your goal is to be illiterate.

I try to be careful with general statements about language learning, because everyone learns differently, but I'm a reasonably successful language learner, and the "learning without characters", "talk to native speakers a lot", "pinyin is enough, characters and tones are not necessary" ideas took years of my life away, years I will never get back. The moment I started learning characters, my language skills started improved exponentially. Now, I look back at my pinyin scribbles from 15 years ago, and I wonder "what was I thinking?"

^ Upvoting Bad Cao Cao not because I necessarily agree with the conclusions, but because the studies are interesting and informative.

Yes, I did the same. Good sources are always welcome.
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^ Upvoting Bad Cao Cao not because I necessarily agree with the conclusions, but because the studies are interesting and informative.

 

I think what you have to bear in mind is that what may be true in an idealised world isn't necessarily going to be the case in practice. Yes, in an ideal world, (or at least ideal for the learner hoping for quick results,) there would be massive amounts of high-quality learning material available with only pinyin, and they would provide for learning up to a high level of spoken Chinese. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Typically, learning materials above bare-bones survival level which will teach you via pinyin alone are very thin on the ground. So, if only for this reason and no other, pinyin is unlikely to get you very far beyond that bare-bones survival level (unless you also have a great tutor who is willing to help you out and spend lots of their time creating/adapting their own materials).

 

If anyone knows of counter-examples (i.e. good quality, high-level learning materials which only use pinyin), I'd be very interested to hear.

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It is also my opinion (and experience) that learning characters is a much faster method for learning Chinese if you are aiming for anything but the most basic skills. After you pick all the low-hanging fruit (and there isn't much of it), you will hit a wall and it will be near-impossible to navigate all the near-homophones and nuances using pinyin alone. By avoiding the characters, you are avoiding one difficult aspect of the language, but the price is an increased confusion in your brain, which will stop being efficient as soon as your vocabulary passes a few hundred words.

 

I agree with this.  I have many friends who were conversational after living 1-2 years in China, but their Chinese plateaued early due to their illiteracy.  I would argue that illiteracy also limits one's understanding of Chinese culture, whereas literacy is a ticket to "eavesdrop" on what Chinese really think of themselves and the outside world. Written works tend to assume a Chinese audience, and Chinese share with each other what they would not share with Westerners. 

 

As far as homophones are concerned, just type "shi" or "ji" into an IME and see how many options you get!

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I'd also vote for starting character study sooner not later.

 

Some reasons not mentioned above:

 

• Reading is an important and efficient way to broaden and reinforce your Chinese. Normal conversation only covers so much ground.

 

• It stokes your interest in Chinese and manifests your commitment to the language. Memorizing Pinyin lists of vocabulary can hold your attention only so long.

 

• Study Pinyin-only for two years and no matter how well you master characters later, you'll always "see" Pinyin when you speak.

 

• If you don't start learning characters when you're blush with initial enthusiasm for Chinese, you'll probably never do so. It'll become some well-intentioned goal you'll never quite get around to.

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I studied Chinese for about six months before starting to learn any characters and everything worked out fine. It actually made it really easy to learn the Characters in dialogues and such because I already had knowledge of the grammar and words, I just needed to correlate them with a Chinese character. I used a book called, Basic Spoken Chinese. It is entirely in Pinyin and the dialogues are very fast and natural compared (there are slowed down versions and even break downs of each dialogue too) to any other beginner text I have ever encountered. They also introduce many different accents from the very beginning, so it is excellent for listening comprehension when starting out. I would highly recommend it.

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The simple answer to your question is Rosetta Stone and lots of practicing, the complex answer is what everyone has already said.

 

You (the OP) have not said why this is what you want to do. Are you going to need to speak semi-fluent Chinese in 6 months for a short amount of time ( eg: a few weeks) and then never use Chinese again or is this the start of learning Chinese long term.

 

if it is the former then go with Rosetta Stone and lots of listening and speaking.

 

If it is the latter then i would suggest characters from the start, the argument that Chinese children don't learn characters till they are 5 or 6 doesn't really apply because you are not a Chinese child. You are an adult with the learning ability to take on characters from the start. Learning characters helps differentiate the homophones and can be a good aide de memoir.

 

 

 

 

 

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I agree with this.  I have many friends who were conversational after living 1-2 years in China, but their Chinese plateaued early due to their illiteracy. 

 

Definitely. 

 

You should focus on the spoken language and pinyin, I completely agree with what Bad Cao Cao said. However, unfortunately, the largest percentage of written Chinese is written down in Chinese characters. If you don't learn any characters, you will be illiterate and your vocabulary will be limited. 

 

You have six months, learn spoken Chinese, learn how to read and write Chinese using pinyin, learn how to recognize basic characters without spending that much time on it, and learn how to type using a pinyin-based input method. Don't forget the tones! 

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