200 Words to Talk About Everyday Things

[rayne]

Hello! I'm a new member here. My fiance will be moving to Qingdao in December and I'll be joining him in March of next year.

 

Consequently, I have started self-studying Mandarin Chinese to get ready!

 

I found this the other day on tumblr:

 

http://funwithlanguages.tumblr.com/post/105572981908/you-only-need-200-words-to-talk-about-everyday

 

Here are some snippets of the post:

 

 

 

If you learn just 200 well-chosen words in your target language, then you can talk about most everyday things

 

 

Note 1: Being able to speak doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately be able to listen to and understand the language.

 

 

Note 2: You should really think of this as a list of concepts. Your goal isn’t to translate each word to a word in your target language, but to figure out how to express that concept in your target language.

 

 

The list of 200 words are in the link.

 

In another post by this tumblr blogger, s/he said most language learned textbooks start off with "What's your name? What do you major in? What is your job? This is an apple," and all that and I think that is okay for someone taking a class but for someone who plans to go to the country of origin they may have different conversational needs. 

 

What do you guys think of this idea? I read some of the comments and there are of course some disagreements and I assume that many members here might be skeptical but I still want to give this idea a shot. 

 

I literally just started researching on Chinese language learning resources so I can't translate the 200 words. If anyone is willing to do that, it would be so great!!

 

 

 

[Demonic_Duck]

As a first post, this looks suspiciously like self-promotion. But leaving that aside, a few scattered thoughts:

• The idea of successful communication in a foreign language with very limited vocabulary is something that I find very interesting. I feel like 200 words is going to be too few for this purpose in any language, but you can actually describe quite involved concepts with, say, a 1,000 word vocabulary. See this comic for an illustration of that. The side effect, of course, is that your attempt at communciation ends up looking very childlike, and you have to circumlocute an awful lot.
• I don't think the list the author gives is fit for purpose, because it simply doesn't include enough of those circumlocution words. You certainly wouldn't be able to keep a diary in it. If you want to convey the thought "I ate an apple for breakfast this morning", not only are you deprived of the word "apple", but also "green", "red", "circle", "fruit", "ball", "sweet", "sugar", "eat", "put", "mouth", "face" or "hole". So you can't even make a sentence like "early today breakfast, I put green red sweet food ball in face hole" (which might just about be decipherable to a discerning reader/listener). The best you can do is something like "early today, I do something breakfast", which doesn't describe the activity at all.
• Also, a large number words on this list aren't directly translateable into Chinese, and can only be translated with a large number of caveats. For example, there is no translation for "of", the best you can do is “的”, but then you have to switch the word order of the possessor and the possessed. That's simple enough, but it becomes a more serious problem when you try to translate words like "to be", "yes" or "no", which don't really have a translation at all in Chinese.

[Silent]

 

What do you guys think of this idea? I read some of the comments and there are of course some disagreements and I assume that many members here might be skeptical but I still want to give this idea a shot.

I did not read the article, but I think "Talking about most everyday things"  is not very well defined. What is a everyday thing and what is talking about? Even if you can talk about it, can you do so in a meaningful way? It's a bit pointless to be able to point out the obvious. Nevertheless I think the idea, learn key vocabulary rather then 'glue words' and grammar particles and get your message across without attempting correct language use has it's merits. In the past I've been thinking about what language wise is needed to get around while traveling. And really, for the bare essentials, that's not too much.

 

The real question is what is your goal? If it's primarily survival you're after, a few hunderd words, a little grammar and no shame to use it and make errors go a long way. So, in your case the concept may make sense. Based on a quick scan I would however disagree on the list. Admittedly I look at it from a survival point of view, not from the point of view that you want to be able to talk about 'everything' as in my perspective it's utterly nonsense that you can have a real _meaningful_ conversation about many subjects with only a couple of hunderd words.  E.g. I think that the list contains too many adverbs and adjectives while it lacks counting, imho one of the most important things for survival.

[rayne]

This is not self-promotion! I'm not that person!

 

My main goal will be survival, I think. I will most likely becoming and English teacher when I get to China, as I am currently an English teacher in Korea. Now, I am required to speak only English at work even though I am self-studying Korean. I have lived in Korea for roughly three years and studied multiple textbooks. The textbooks are quite good but more or less useless (vocabulary-wise) because of the stuff I wrote before - asking about name, age, what the other person is majoring in or what they do as a job. These were one-time questions that I can never use on the same person again and it was useless because all my coworkers had similar majors and we were all teachers so I didn't ask about their jobs... 

 

And outside my work, I was useless when out shopping or anything. The only useful thing was "Where are the ______?" (eg. women's clothes, fruits, etc.). 

 

It wasn't until I started studying the level 2/3 books (which was just this year) where I could see I could use the vocabulary and grammar for talking about my day and experiences.

 

I just want to try a new method and when I saw this I wanted to try it. And since Chinese grammar structures are close to English I thought this would work. Should I not bother? I couldn't even make a list myself anyways since I haven't even started learning Chinese yet. 

[Shelley]

To start, I suggest memorizing the infinitive form of these verbs and their present and past tense “I” conjugations.

 

As this doesn't really apply in Chinese, its not much use.

 

I don't think this was done with Chinese in mind, it mentions languages with non roman alphabets but doesn't mention characters or similar.

 

I think this method is not a very good idea for Chinese.

 

Start with a proper text book, try New Practical Chinese Reader, it has text books, workbooks, audio. There is video available on YouTube.

 

Get a Skype language partner to practice speaking with, or something similar.

 

There is no shortcut when it comes to learning Chinese.

 

I don't want to scare you off but you need to realise this will not be something you can do without putting in some hard work.

 

It will be an interesting and rewarding process if a bit slow to start with.

 

Learning Chinese is an exciting journey and as you take your first steps remember it will be worth it in the end.

 

Remember this should be something enjoyable, yes there will be times you feel you are not making progress and it all seems to not be sinking in but this passes and you will make progress and understand.

 

Also remember that you have found one of the best Chinese language learning resources, this forum. You will find people here very helpful, give as much information about your questions and your attempts at an answer and you are sure to get some helpful replies.

 

Hope your Chinese language adventure goes well for you and that your time in China is the best it could be.

[edelweis]

Regarding the counting thing, in Western countries hand gestures are more or less the same for counting, perhaps that's why it's not in the list (?)

Of course, hand gestures for counting in China are rather different.

Chinese language and Chinese culture are very, very different from European languages and cultures.

So I agree that this method does not seem readily applicable to survival Chinese.

 

A lot of things which are applicable to being understood in European languages (when you're a native speaking of another European language) are not applicable to learning Chinese...

[Bigdumogre]

Like stated get your hands on a new practical Chinese reader textbook with audio and same with workbook. They have helped me so much.

Another great thing I use daily is pimsluers audio. I got mine from the library and just download to phone and listen to lessons whenever I commute to and from work.

Chinese-tools.com also has some good lessons to get started

[LiMo]

We've had some rather involved discussions about the relative merits of learning characters right from the start or just sticking to pinyin. I'm not going to get into that here, but if you're actually going to be in China then there's no question that you will want to at least learn a handful, if only to stop you walking into the wrong bathroom, stuff like that.

 

If you're looking to get a good grasp of characters one day then I suggest memrise.com. They start you off with character components and gradually build up. This seems counter intuitive because you will often be learning things that aren't common words or phrases, but it's very useful in the long run for being able to learn characters properly. I've found that the characters I learned at the start, when I couldn't break them down and recognise components, are some of my weakest. But that's just a little digression. If it's just for survival this may not be too important.

[Silent]

 

Regarding the counting thing, in Western countries hand gestures are more or less the same for counting, perhaps that's why it's not in the list (?)

 

Counting with hands is fine up to ten or so, but then it gets harder and more confusing. Depending on the currency this is insufficient for asking the price of many things. Also telling time without numbers is at best confusing. I think the only 'valid' reason not to include them is that written down they're pretty universal. I guess the motivation for not including them is that the list is aimed at chatting about daily subjects, not at survival. And of course counting, despite the regularities it has,  in most languages requires 15-20 or so words which is a lot compared to the 200 proposed

[Shelley]

I would be very careful what you take from chinese-tools.com.

 

Here they have a page with the Chinese alphabet   http://www.chinese-tools.com/characters/alphabet.html

 

Any thing that tries to tell you there is the equivalent of the the 26 letters of the English alphabet needs very careful scrutiny.

 

There are good resources out there but be careful.

[Bigdumogre]

I would be very careful what you take from chinese-tools.com.

Here they have a page with the Chinese alphabet http://www.chinese-tools.com/characters/alphabet.html

Any thing that tries to tell you there is the equivalent of the the 26 letters of the English alphabet needs very careful scrutiny.

There are good resources out there but be careful.

Never saw that page and totally agree. I have done the first few starter lessons a year ago and thought they were helpful.

I won't recommend that anymore thanks. Don't want to confuse people.

[ChTTay]

For the OP, probably not a good idea to base the begining of your Chinese learning on some random tumblr blog (?!!). As Shelley suggests, best to get a solid text book and go from there. Personally, I'd recommend Integrated Chinese if you are an absolute beginner. I believe many U.S universities use them on their Chinese courses. I started out with them and they have useful dialogues and excellent grammar explanations/exercises.

 

As for chinese-tools ... I'm fairly sure that the 'alphabet' page is meant as joke. I say this as they've included a HUGE laughing smiley underneath it. I wouldn't stop using that site just because of that. If in doubt, email them to ask, but i'm sure it's just a joke.

[rayne]

I think my post was supposed to be approving moderation but I saw it on 'auto-saved' content so if I'm re-posting, sorry!

 

 

---

 

This is not self-promotion! I'm not that person!

 

My main goal will be survival, I think. I will most likely becoming and English teacher when I get to China, as I am currently an English teacher in Korea. Now, I am required to speak only English at work even though I am self-studying Korean. I have lived in Korea for roughly three years and studied multiple textbooks. The textbooks are quite good but more or less useless (vocabulary-wise) because of the stuff I wrote before - asking about name, age, what the other person is majoring in or what they do as a job. These were one-time questions that I can never use on the same person again and it was useless because all my coworkers had similar majors and we were all teachers so I didn't ask about their jobs... 

 

And outside my work, I was useless when out shopping or anything. The only useful thing was "Where are the ______?" (eg. women's clothes, fruits, etc.). 

 

It wasn't until I started studying the level 2/3 books (which was just this year) where I could see I could use the vocabulary and grammar for talking about my day and experiences.

 

I just want to try a new method and when I saw this I wanted to try it. And since Chinese grammar structures are close to English I thought this would work. Should I not bother? I couldn't even make a list myself anyways since I haven't even started learning Chinese yet. 

 

---

 

In the other languages I've learnt there were alphabets and Chinese doesn't have an alphabet. So I feel like it wouldn't be a huge leap from asking about one's name to talking about every day things. The sentences may be longer but the Chinese characters probably aren't significantly difficult. Even 'simple' words have a lot of strokes. That's why I want to forgo that part and just jump to more useful words. 

 

I got my copy of Integrated Chinese today. It looks good. To be honest I'm dreading learning a new language. I'm actually very interested in learning Chinese but I have been focusing on Korean for so long and have FINALLY felt like I've made headway when we suddenly made plans to move to China. 

[Demonic_Duck]

Re: chinese-tools "alphabet" page:

 

Yes, surely a joke, as it starts with "in the Chinese alphabet, small letters are written like capital letters, and vice versa."

 

That said, it could still be misleading, as it could lead people to believe Chinese folks actually pronounce the alphabet like that. Some of the phonetic approximations are good enough, but I've never heard a Chinese person pronounce e.g. "M" like “艾马” or "L" like “艾勒”, more like “艾姆” and “艾尔” respectively.

 

Possibly it's based on Taiwanese people's pronunciations instead?

[Lu]

The thing with those two hunderd words is that it assumes other languages can be mapped one-to-one to English. The first sentence of the English example paragraph is, in the original: 'I have had a good run, producing more films than virtually anyone else.' The blogger 'translates' that to 'I have done well and made more films than almost all other people.' But to say even that simplifed sentence in Chinese you need a working knowledge of 得 and you need to know how comparisons work in Chinese, both of which take quite a bit more studying than just learning those 200 words.

 

In the other languages I've learnt there were alphabets and Chinese doesn't have an alphabet. So I feel like it wouldn't be a huge leap from asking about one's name to talking about every day things.

While it's true that Chinese doesn't have an alphabet, and 'I am American' is not much easier to write than 'Elephants are mammals', Chinese does have another thing that makes it hard and that is pronunciation. This is something you need to drill and drill well, or you won't be understood. So you still need to first spend some time on learning mā-má-mǎ-mà and zhi-chi-shi-ri before you can start saying anything meaningful.

 

In other words, as Shelley said: there are no shortcuts.

[rayne]

I'm not looking for a shortcut, I hope that's not what's coming across here.

 

I just, personally, think that it's not necessary to start at "What's your name?" when it comes to Chinese. Like what both you and I said about Chinese characters not being significantly more difficult to write in relation to English words.

 

So instead of starting there, I wanted to find a different method. 

[Demonic_Duck]

This is not self-promotion! I'm not that person!

Fair enough, that wasn't meant as an accusation, just a hunch. If you stick around and become a regular poster I'll certainly eat my words.

 

And since Chinese grammar structures are close to English I thought this would work.

 

Unfortunately, that's a common misconception. Despite also having SVO word order , Chinese is actually grammatically very different from English in other ways. It's also very common that you will encounter words that do not directly map to English. I don't have any proper data on this, but my purely subjective feeling is that this is true for around half of words, of which many are almost identical in meaning and differing only in some particular nuance of usage, whilst others are wildly different to the extent of being very difficult to translate properly.

 

It sounds like the textbook you were using for Korean was just a bad textbook. I'd suggest that the best solution is not to scrap textbook learning entirely, but to make sure you start out with one that will give you a good, solid foundation whilst also teaching you in a way that's practical for your needs. If you're finding it's lacking in some aspect (as you certainly will at some point - even the best textbook can never be perfectly tailored to you), that's where you can supplement with other materials and study methods.

 

I'd suggest finding a language exchange partner and meeting, say, once a week. It's almost certain that their English will be better than your Chinese to start with, but you can actually use this to your advantage: bring them a list of words/phrases in English that you want to know how to say in Chinese. Maybe it's a list of words and phrases you know you'll need in every day life - grocery shopping, etc.; or maybe it's a list of words related to your specialist subject, area of interest or hobby - exactly the kind of stuff your textbook is unlikely to have. Then try making a dialogue using them. Afterwards, try to use them as soon as you get the opportunity in real life.

 

Also, download Pleco onto your phone and play around with it for a while to get a feel for the features available. You won't regret it. A word of caution, though: even the best dictionary, if used naïvely, will lead to miscommunication. Make sure you pay close attention to sample sentences where they're available, and don't assume that the presence of a certain English word in a Chinese entry means it's a good translation of that word.

[Shelley]

Re: chinese-tools "alphabet" page:

 

Yes, surely a joke, as it starts with "in the Chinese alphabet, small letters are written like capital letters, and vice versa."

 

To people who know, this is obviously a joke, but as it also says

 

The chinese alphabet finally revealed.

 

And it does not explicitly say this is a joke and is not true, I could see some awful tattoos and things done because of this.

 

I just felt it is slightly irresponsible of a "educational" site to include this.

 

i hope the OP does get a good text book and as mentioned, a copy of Pleco and starts to do some real study and enjoys it.

[Shelley]

Chinese characters not being significantly more difficult to write in relation to English words.

 

Wish this was true

[Demonic_Duck]

And it does not explicitly say this is a joke and is not true, I could see some awful tattoos and things done because of this.

 

They doubtless already have. Although if the only research you do before getting permanently inked is to check one dubious-looking page on one website, you kinda deserve it. And at least it makes slightly more sense than the famous gibberish "Chinese" font.

 

If you want to get the admins of chinese-tools back for their prank with one of your own, you could always just photoshop a picture of someone with a tattoo using their "alphabet" and drop them an email thanking them for helping you out with your sick new tat.