Do any Chinese-specific learning tips and tricks really exist?

[Zeppa]

Sorry for the abbreviation, iekkim. Have a look at Wikipedia on Indo-European languages. I think it's easier for us to learn Hindi, Bengali and Punjabi than Hungarian or Turkish. I did try Turkish, but it would take a lot of practice to get used to putting an M in the middle of a long word to make it negative and to hear it when someone else does that.

[Zeppa]

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Quote

 

I don't know that many IE languages, and I read their forums way less (heck, I don't even know if, say, a German Chinese learners forum exists), but from what I see, problems of English speakers are most widely described. Probably a self-induced perception filter. And luckily, my native language is Russian  

 

 

I think you're right - there is massively more English written on the Internet. I don't know about a German forum either. I do sometimes look at German sites, for instance the Heidelberg University site, to see if they know something I don't. 

http://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/sinologie/

I am a British English native speaker but I lived in Germany for 30 years, and in the mid-1970s I went to university classes in Bonn (the foreign ministry was there so they taught contemporary Beijing Communist Chinese) and Cologne (classical Chinese poetry chanted by a teacher from Taiwan) - I started Chinese in 1969, longer than Shelley but I have forgotten more and am constantly trying to get a foothold again. But whenever I want a forum for language and non-language matters, medical for instance, I usually find it in the USA, and even when there is a German one, it tends to be more cautious and pussy-footing.

 

Something you wrote in another thread I found odd: you said Russian speakers pick up all the declensions so it is odd (maybe not the word you used) that foreign grammars are full of all these things. To quote Wikipedia again, about Russian:

 

Quote

 

Grammatical cases:

• Accusative case
• Dative case
• Genitive case
• Instrumental case
• Locative case
• Nominative case
• Prepositional case
• Vocative case

 

Just because you picked these things up at home does not mean they don't exist - they are part of the description of the language. Not only does the case of a noun change, but the emphasis changes so it sounds quite different.

 

So personally I don't have any problems with the fact that we non-Chinese describe Chinese grammar in our terms. The main problem is that when I started learning Chinese, we were told there is 'no grammar', which isn't true, but there is usually no plural marker and no change of the word which is a verb to indicate tense, so I agree, it's demanding to describe it. But I don't think that many grammar books were on the market in the 1970s - they've all been developed later, haven't they? (Anyone?)

[Shelley]

11 hours ago, werewitt said:

I'm sorry, I don't do requests

I think you have misunderstood, i was asking for examples of tricks and tips for learning any language so that I could understand what you were asking.

 

I also think from this comment and others you have made shows that you have not understood the point of Chinese Forums.

 

An excerpt from dictionary definition

"forum

ˈfɔːrəm/

noun

noun: forum; plural noun: forums; plural noun: fora

1.

a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged."

 

 

This is a forum for discussion and exchange of ideas.

[889]

I really really hope we can maintain the long tradition here of talking about Chinese, not other posters. It never ends well, otherwise.

[werewitt]

2 hours ago, Shelley said:

I think you have misunderstood, i was asking for examples of tricks and tips for learning any language so that I could understand what you were asking.

Maybe read my thread starting post past the title before arguing against it? Just for giggles?

 

3 hours ago, Zeppa said:

Something you wrote in another thread I found odd: you said Russian speakers pick up all the declensions so it is odd (maybe not the word you used) that foreign grammars are full of all these things.

Hm, if you provide the quote you're referring to, I can clarify. Otherwise it doesn't ring a bell, sorry. Re Chinese grammar my point was that most if not all existing English-language explanations torture it into a procrustean bed of mostly Indo-European notions and do not attempt to describe it in notions more suitable to a non-IE language. Notions derived from that language and not imposed onto it. The first grammar of Chinese (马建忠's) was based on Latin grammars, gosh!

[Guest realmayo]

23 hours ago, 889 said:

I really really hope we can maintain the long tradition here of talking about Chinese, not other posters. It never ends well, otherwise.

 

If you hover over a user name you get an "ignore user" option, which can make matters suddenly more agreeable.

[Shelley]

1 hour ago, werewitt said:

Maybe read my thread starting post past the title before arguing against it

I did actually read it.

 

On 25/05/2017 at 8:35 AM, werewitt said:

On 25/05/2017 at 8:32 AM, Lu said:

have you read the rest of the thread?

14 pages of relatively random thoughts? Nope, this is Internet

 

Maybe because this is what you think, you assume no one else reads posts.

I think I am now going to leave this discussion. Maybe other people will be able to help with your question.

 

 

[Zeppa]

@werewitt - In the 'Sane grammar of Chinese thread":

 

Quote

OTOH grammatical studies of languages distant from the researcher's native one were always a bit of a losing battle. A while ago, I looked at a couple of Russian grammars written by the English, and got traumatised for life - the amount of declensions, conjugations, and exceptions are about an order of magnitude bigger than what we were taught at school as native speakers (just 3 declensions and 2 conjugations, and a handful of exceptions; the rest is absorbed as part of being a native speaker). I doubt such scientific grammars were for learning purposes anyway.

 

I don't see how you can describe Russian without the declensions and conjugations, is all I was saying.

 

About Latin: even the earliest English grammar was written on the basis of Latin, and it will be the same for other languages. We have left that stage.  But I don't get that impression from the Chinese grammars I see nowadays. I see things like complement, passive structures, progressive and continuous aspect, even dative - but these are all labels I find helpful once I've read a set of examples.

 

But I don't want to take this any further, because I'm digressing from the topic. I mean, you could say you find it unhelpful to use the term 'passive', but that is your right!

[miss-kapa]

To learn new words you can create cards (write a character on one side, and a pinyin on another) and try to guess every time you open a new card.  But of course...you should learn new words while reading texts (this is effective)... not just a list of words - it's harder.

[Lu]

Quote

To learn new words you can create cards (write a character on one side, and a pinyin on another) and try to guess every time you open a new card.

This is a very good way of learning new words, and fortunately not only for Chinese. It's how I learned much of my secondary school English, German, French, Latin and Greek. For learning Chinese, the downside is that a card only has two sides, while you really need three for character-pinyin-translation.

[werewitt]

14 hours ago, realmayo said:

If you hover over a user name you get an "ignore user" option, which can makes matters suddenly more agreeable.

Yes please, all easily offended people please filter themselves out! 

 

13 hours ago, Zeppa said:

I don't see how you can describe Russian without the declensions and conjugations, is all I was saying.

Oh my point in that snippet was that native speakers learn about 3 declensions with "exceptions" (mostly sound changes) perceived by them as completely natural small variations, while a foreigner-written grammar describes over a dozen declensions! E.g. 3 "declension types" vs the gory details in http://www.study-languages-online.com/russian-nouns-declension.html. Once again, in natives' minds there are only 3 declensions with a few words that don't decline entirely routinely, not 20 () different variants.

So with Mandarin, I was looking for a description of the same granularity - a grammar that describes reasonably high-level and distinct from each other phenomena in just enough detail, and does not splitt hairs to the degree of becoming one vast sea of exceptions. I'm hoping/guessing that many of those exceptions are caused by wrong IE-inspired categorisation. The 地 quote was an example of a completely unacceptable approach.

 

6 hours ago, Lu said:

For learning Chinese, the downside is that a card only has two sides, while you really need three for character-pinyin-translation.

If you don't insist on paper cards, Anki is infinitely customisable - you can have many "cards" (a card is essentially a front-back flip with different parts of the same note) for one "note" (a record with many fields) eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/3x58fb/what_is_the_difference_between_a_card_and_a_note/cy24fr7/

My current setup for words in Anki has "characters to English", "characters to pronunciation/pinyin" and "English to Chinese (I care about production of some sort on that one)" cards for each note. In Anki, you need to create "cards" only once for a "model" (models are even higher level than decks). Not much work, if you know how to use Anki. Learning to use it would take an average person maybe an hour.

[Flickserve]

3 hours ago, werewitt said:

Learning to use it would take an average person maybe an hour.

 

That is complete rubbish. If so simple, there wouldn't be an anki forum to help people. 

[werewitt]

1 hour ago, Flickserve said:

That is complete rubbish. If so simple, there wouldn't be an anki forum to help people. 

I apologise, I keep forgetting that majority of people on the Internet, (even in any relatively small but representative segment of it), are not smart at all. Call that optimism.

[Flickserve]

2 hours ago, werewitt said:

3 hours ago, Flickserve said:

 

I apologise, I keep forgetting that majority of people on the Internet, (even in any relatively small but representative segment of it), are not smart at all. Call that optimism.

 

It's ok. I forgive you.

[艾墨本]

23 hours ago, werewitt said:

Maybe read my thread starting post past the title before arguing against it? Just for giggles?

 

From the thread on the blogger:

On 5/25/2017 at 3:35 PM, werewitt said:

 

On 5/25/2017 at 3:32 PM, Lu said:

have you read the rest of the thread?

14 pages of relatively random thoughts? Nope, this is Internet

 

 

 

.......

 

23 hours ago, realmayo said:

If you hover over a user name you get an "ignore user" option, which can makes matters suddenly more agreeable.

Thank you for sharing.

 

-Edit (gosh this was a pain to get added)-

 

On 5/26/2017 at 7:29 PM, 889 said:

 

I really really hope we can maintain the long tradition here of talking about Chinese, not other posters. It never ends well, otherwise.

 

 

 

You make a good point.

 

Sorry for all the editing weirdness. Deleted this section since I ended up creating a new post since the edit was going through on my screen but apparently, it did go through when I came back 20 mins later so now I'm deleting it since the post below has some edits.

[Chris Two Times]

(t)rolling in the deep?

[艾墨本]

The topic of this thread seems to essentially get at the core of a whole field of research: language acquisition. But I don't know too much about that, so I'll mostly speak from my limited experience.

 

Here, the target is specifically acquisition of Chinese. In my observation, what Chinese people think of Chinese is very different than what a language learner does. For example, I've noticed that if I ask what the tone of a word is, the native speaker will repeat it to themselves several times and extract that information. This is in stark contrast to how many learn words with the tone being a separate aspect requiring memorization. For me, this is a necessity. I tried the whole "naturally acquiring tones" and was unimpressed by merit of how my teacher taught them. I ended up back peddling after three years and having to relearn a lot. 

 

My tones didn't drastically start improving until I dug into the mechanics of it. Not just knowing that third tone sandhi exists, but learning about what that means. I learned this through picking up a Putonghua training book for native Chinese speakers to prepare for their college Putonghua tests. Perhaps this is what you are looking for, @werewitt  I need this additional information to scaffold my own pronunciation learning process.

 

For grammar, I like to read books that teach 对外汉语 teachers how to teach grammar. I find the information more in depth and as such I'm able to use my more in-depth knowledge of English grammar to set up posts of relativity. Whether or not this is the most effective, it is the process that keeps me motivated to learn grammar, a topic I dread. 

 

After diving in deep to a subject, I return to extensive learning with less worry about the specifics and more concern with quantity. Now that I'm able to access native contence, extensive learning is far more fun. 

 

But this is all my learning style. I know I need extra information to do something more basic because the extra information gives me confidence in my decisions and, furthermore, keeps me entertained (a very important aspect of learning any language). I need to be able to justify why I chose one word over the other. Unlike many friends who are more fluent in Chinese, I can't rely on a 语言感 to lead me. While this has made the learning process slower for me, it's also made it more interesting.

 

I do firmly believe ("believe" because this is rooted in my experience and not empirical data beyond anecdotes) that the best way to learn Chinese, as you seem to be hoping to get to with this thread, won't be found unless you better understand what it is you need as a language learner. Beyond this, I've also found that I'm studying Chinese as much as for the pleasure of learning Chinese as I am to reach some ephemeral level of fluency.

[werewitt]

46 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

I learned this through picking up a Putonghua training book for native Chinese speakers to prepare for their college Putonghua tests. Perhaps this is what you are looking for, @werewitt 

Perhaps, although my current level of Mandarin (~2000 unspecialised words, ~1000 chars) doesn't allow me to read those easily. So I'd rather an English (or Russian!) book, if such a book exists. PS I found a potentially good Russian book on the Interwebs (Горелов В.И. Теоретическая грамматика китайского языка), I'm a bit scared off by the word "theoretical" in its title.

[werewitt]

49 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

In my observation, what Chinese people think of Chinese is very different than what a language learner does.

I'd love to find out what they think about "grammar". My questioning of natives produced "nope, we don't study any kind of grammar of the modern language at school, only a bit of 文言文‘s“

[zander1]

9 minutes ago, werewitt said:

we don't study any kind of grammar of the modern language at school, only a bit of 文言文‘s“

 

To be fair I received very little formal education in terms of grammar for English (in England).