Only listening to one person?

[Strawberries513]

ok so, I am a beginner/low intermediate in Mandarin. Since I live in Ohio, there isnt exactly a ton of Chinese people to talk to. The only person that I can talk with is my boyfriend, from Beijing. But if he is the only one I hear, will i get so used to the way that he speaks i wont be able to understand anyone else? I have already noticed that understanding others is more difficult. partly because they use words that i dont know, while my bf knows what i know so he uses that. So any advice on whether just speaking to him is a good idea or not?

[kudra]

there is lots of audio on the web.

If you are beginner/intermediate you might be ok with David and Helen audio.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ealac/zhang/dh/dh_audioclips.htm

The books are worth paying for in my opinion, but if you want vocab in tab separated UTF8 text format see this post.

Or check out the thread http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/6236-trashy-soap-opera-of-the-month-club

and start watching Chinese Style Divorce.

Probably other 1st or 2nd year texts listed here have audio (I know roddy frowns on self promotion).

There are simple videos at

http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/Chinese/lessons.htm

http://unclp.org/oneword/xin1/1-1.htm

Also see the Sticky thread on Best Learning resources, which probably has other suggestions.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8195-best-of-chinese-study-tools-studying-chinese-online-and-off

Best bet is watching Chinese Style Divorce with your boyfriend, then he can teach you all the stuff you won't find in text books.

[WoAiJolinTsai]

www.chinesepod.com

learningmandarinpod.blogspot.com

[heifeng]

If you have thick skin go chat up people at the local Chinese restaurant. They may or may not even be Chinese, or may or may not speak mandarin, but it doesn't hurt to find out and make some friends - they might be interested in a language exchange with you to improve their English. Also, there is usually a higher concentration of Chinese people near universities, if you are near one you can email the local Chinese student association. Of course you and your bf's one on one tutorials probably aren't hurting much and since you are a beginner it's good he is from Beijing and probably has standard Chinese....

[DrZero]

When I first started learning Chinese, I learned "standard" Mandarin and was around people from Beijing. Now that I am married to a woman who's from farther south in China, I've found that all the "er"s are kind of unwelcome when we go to her city. So I had to stop saying them ... for example, I say "yidian," not "yidianr."

I imagine it's kind of like somebody from Boston going to Tennessee ... the Northern accent sort of rubs them the wrong way because it's thought that Yankees perceive themselves as more sophisticated and look down on southerners. Same thing in China.

So I'd say your boyfriend's Beijing sound if fine if you plan to go to northern China. From China southward, though, you may get on people's nerves.

[kudra]

So I'd say your boyfriend's Beijing sound if fine if you plan to go to northern China. From China southward, though, you may get on people's nerves.

What is she supposed to do? Limit the extent to which she acquires her boyfriend's accent? Strawberries513 will probably have an extremely accurate Beijing accent. I just can't see worrying about getting on people's nerves becuase of it. I'd say make the most of the opportunity, acquire as much language, including the accent, as possible from your boyfriend.

I could be wrong, but I suspect if it sounds authentic, it will be more accepted than a half way acquired Beijing accent got off of tapes, and self study without a native speaking boyfriend or girlfriend. In any case IMO Strawberries513's optimal approach should be to absorb as much as possible, and not worry about pissing off some hypothetical Southerner down the line.

[heifeng]

Turning on and turning off the "er hua" isn't really that hard! Decent language learners can learn to mimic people's pronunciation pretty easily. I can turn off the er hua and make all my zh ch shi sound like z c s if I want to blend in with my friends way of speaking, but when I went to my University classes in the US and was the only non-native speaker taking Chinese along with the student's who grew up in Taiwan and taking Chinese classes for an easy A, no one said crap to me if I wanted to add a lil' er hua!

The more experience Strawberries513 gains in the language the more she can alter her way of speaking to fit her environment. Her speaking is probably much more standard than many of my Chinese friends! Once she gets to study at a University she'll have more exposure to this, but I don't think it's a huge issue or problem right now.

What usually get's on Chinese people's nerves more, or will cause a Chinese person to say something a little bit directly concerning language ability (probably the only time they will directly criticize someone) is if someone is a (insert country here)BC who can't speak decent Chinese. Usually not many Chinese people will randomly nitpik on non-Chinese who are trying to learn Chinese, or not until they have a good relationship where they can do this openly....

[Toffeeliz]

I love 儿话 ! BUt thats not really the point. Personally, southern repetion, eg. 一点儿 becomes 一点点 made me feel like a kid. I've never been to beijing or northern China (and seeing as most chinese in the UK are southerners it doesn;t really matter any road) and i prefer the er sound.

However, I don't think the accent she'll be using herself is the big matter here. Strawberry is afraid she'll not be able to understand anyone but her boyfriend beucase of the vocab. they use together.

My advice? Practice with as many people a) so that you expend vocab and b)so that you get used to accents and c)cos your boyfriend wont always be surgically attatched to your hip.

Beisdes, practice makes pefect and perfection makes it all that eaiser to read 包子 recipes !

[DrZero]

It's up to her. If she figures she will spend more time around northern people, then a Beijing accent is probably best.

In my case, I use my Chinese with my wife's family, sitting around dinner tables in a more southern part of China (but not all that southern). I would feel awkward using a lot of "er" sounds -- it would feel put-on.

However, I do maintain the "zh," "ch," and "sh" sounds, which my wife and her family often do not do. I do this because not to maintain those sounds is to eliminate some of the information you're imparting, and as a non-native I figure it's most important to be understood. I have even seen Chinese people run into misunderstandings among each other because of not making the distinction ... for example when discussing place names or street names.

[Long Zhiren]

Listening/speaking to one person is better than nothing. If the one person is not a native speaker, the two of you may be liable to reinforce each others' weaknesses. It's not the end of the world and it's not that hard to work out. It just seems difficult if you're at a beginning language stage.

Of course, listening/speaking with more is better.

How about picking up some IMAX documentary DVDs that have multiple language audio selections? I like that method of staying in tune.

Where in Ohio are you? Dayton/Cincinnati seem to have a lot of Chinese. Toledo has a small Mandarin speaking community. Canton/Akron has a few. Cleveland (where I often go) seems to have no Chinese--one Chinese restaurant has Morroccan waitstaff--I speak to them in French! Amazingly, it seems harder to find Cantonese speakers than Mandarin speakers in Ohio. In more rural areas, you're a bit out of luck.

[DrZero]

You said in another post that you know about 1,500 words? That's a good amount ... better than me I think. It sounds like, for basic conversations, your trouble isn't that you don't know the words, but that you aren't able to identify what you do know. It seems to me that you may be having trouble distinguishing similar sounds, like x and sh, or that you may not be catching some of the tones.

Maybe you could have your boyfriend help you with tone drills and things like that. Also drills with similar-sounding (to an American) words, having you determine which one he actually said.

My listening is probably better than my speaking because I always hear my wife talking on the phone to friends at night, and of course when her friends come over I hear them. So, maybe you could try to spend a lot of time with your boyfriend and bring his friends along.