speaking chinese without seeing the characters?

[889]

"Yeah but nothing screams third tone for 馬 (or 马) quite like the pinyin does LOL."

Myself, I don't think Pinyin is very effective for remembering tones because I think most learners primarily register letters, not the marks. Especially native English speakers, since diacritical marks aren't used in English.

To really scream the tones you need a system like Gwoyeu Romatzyh, in which spelling indicates the tones, making it clear that mā and mǎ are completely different words. So we have mha ma maa mah instead.

[Gharial]

In the wiki page for GR, a 1997 study is cited that came to the conclusion that "The results clearly indicated that GR did not lead to significantly greater accuracy in tonal production. Indeed, the use of GR reflected slightly lower rates of tonal production accuracy for native speakers of both American English and Japanese" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_Romatzyh#cite_note-6 ). This would appear to contradict the claims of proponents of GR, would it not?

 

Quite apart from all that however is that it looks a comparatively chaotic spelling system, certainly to the untrained eye (see the example passage that the wiki page gives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_Romatzyh#Example ). I dread to think of the mess that broadcasters and the like (to allude to my Wonkey Donkey thread LOL) would make if they had to decipher GR rather than Pinyin (not that Pinyin is perfect or without its own problems), and the fact remains that Pinyin is, and indeed has been for quite a while now (since 1982), the international standard. "Competing" systems are thus no longer of much more than historical interest, even if the odd educator or learner here and there swears by if not quite uses them still.

[Gharial]

Regarding the active versus passive distinction, that may indeed be the OP's problem (hard to be sure), but a lot would depend on the value (general applicability) of the topics and specific lexis in question each time.

 

Although it isn't a particularly good example, one thing that's just popped into my head is the fact that the Longman Language Activator says it doesn't include the word 'rottweiler' (though you'll doubtless find it in larger, somewhat more reception- than necessarily production-oriented dictionaries such as the LDOCE).

 

Now that might be an interesting word to learn in Chinese from the POV of possible translations or transliterations, and I'm guessing that I could at least recognize the word in context if not remember it afterwards, but (and you can now call me a very lazy or too uninquisitive a learner) I'm not too concerned about looking it up or quite committing it to memory. I'd need to have a productive reason to, say when trying to paraphrase along the lines of 'Rottweiler, you know, that big black-brown dog, like in Omen III' (and then the problem would probably be more how to say Omen III and/or knowing its Chinese title LOL - again, not anything I was anticipating saying). I'd have even less reason to be going on about dog-breeding or Crufts or whatever (though there is this: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2omlba (Ren and Stimpy, 'Dog Show' episode)).

 

Yes, the fact that certain words may have been used in an article does show they sometimes find a use for writers at least, but whether they are of enough import or lasting interest for a foreign student to fret over them is ultimately a personal guess or choice. I take my hat off though to people who keep ploughing through texts, as it must pay at least a general dividend over time...but then, one could survey general words easier in the more concentrated form of well-designed courses, decent (reasonably large, frequency-based, example-crammed) dictionaries etc, which leads me back to my first reply in this thread, and to ask again what sort of foundation the OP has, and if he or she has been trying to pick Chinese up from ambitiously diving into reading hanzi perhaps too soon.

 

Somewhat related, and similarly a quasi-rant LOL: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/31625-problems-on-speaking-and-creating-sentences/?p=242558

[JustSaying]

thnx for the replies guys need to read all this stuff asap

[Gharial]

You don't need to read everything I say or link to, as I can go on a bit. I was hoping that you'd at least answer the question regarding what sort of foundation you have in Chinese though. Have you completed any textbook courses? If so, which?

[Pandarollroll]

OP, you sound pretty similar to me. I first started learning Chinese many years ago, but I quit a few times and have been pretty passive about the whole process. I mostly learned by browsing Chinese websites, reading books, and watching movies while staring at the subtitles. As a result, I am absolutely terrible at forming sentences on my own, so my speaking level (my accent is fine/good though) is probably around A1, but I consider my reading level to be advanced.

 

Since recently I started feeling incredibly embarrassed about this, I've been trying to remedy the problem by forcing myself to speak with native speakers online, which is often awkward for me because I take long pauses or sometimes I just have no idea how to reply. In addition to this, I'm also practicing dialogues with myself. BUT, I figure if I keep doing these things multiple times a week for months, I should be able to eventually get my speaking on par with my reading.

 

So in short, I think for people like us, the most important thing to do is to just force ourselves to keep talking every day (whether it's to natives or to yourself aloud). Find a patient native speaker and work your way up from the basics. 

[laogui]

Funnily enough I have quite the opposite problem.  Using flashcards or Anki I find it difficult to recall, but when I see characters in context, it is a piece of cake (well slight exaggeration)  Out of context I have recognition difficulty.  I think it is necessary to combine the two.  I would prefer to see flashcards with sentences.

[Qiaonansen]

What I hear you saying is that you don't have the vocabulary at the ready when you want to speak or are in conversation with someone. In other words, your reading vocabulary is higher than your speaking vocabulary. This is common and true for most learners of any language. Of course, the lame clique advice is to speak more... duh! Do you have any native speaker friends? That's the best way.

 

In this thread here I share a method that I used and teach to my students. Pay attention at around 7 minutes as there are possible glitches with the method.

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/53657-what-chinese-study-resource-do-you-wish-you-had-now/

 

It is quite hard. When I lived in Shijiazhuang, I had a Taiwanese girlfriend for nearly a year who couldn't speak a word of English. Needless to say, that relationship was invaluable to my spoken Chinese... yet the point I want to make is that even under those conditions, speaking progress was slow.

 

See if the Google Translate method at the above link works for you. That method also helped me tremendously and you don't need to depend on anyone else. It's a great way to train yourself to get stock phrases to roll of your tongue without thinking.

 

Good luck!