I'm a beginner in Chinese and having a hard time finding out where to start. What would you recommend?
@defendthechibi: mmmmdamn. ok, so Chinese is not a lang I approached on my own, I started in a class, but with that said here’s some combination of how that went down and what I would suggest (if you are a self-learner of Chinese pls do add):
1. Get a fucking fantastic foundation in pinyin and tones. I cannot emphasize this enough—start good habits now or it’ll be really terrible to find out no one understands you because you were like “tone, I’ll come back to that!” Here is a very nice pinyin chart with literally every syllable combination recorded with every tone. Here’s a pinyin practice game. If you can get someone who already speaks Mandarin to help that’s of course ideal, especially for the retroflex sounds, but not essential. Either way make sure you practice speaking aloud. Here’s a funny tone explanation that’s secretly great.
2. Pick a book and stick with it. So this is not Mandarin-specific, but I find that self-learners (myself included) have a habit of starting like three different texts for one language and it’s a mess. Decide if you wanna start with traditional or simplified characters, then pick a textbook, it wont be perfect because nothing is, and maybe just a grammar book for reference. We used Integrated Chinese in class, but I don’t know that I’d recommended it for soloing, Practice Makes Perfect has great other books I’ve used and seems like a better choice. This series is good grammar help, and so is Modern Mandarin Chinese grammar (pdf). When looking for textbooks I recommend reading reviews and also taking into consideration the time/pace you want to work at. Learning a language is a lifetime thing so really you just gotta start somewhere and plow ahead. (also check what the library has!)
2.5 Don’t buy those damn books of character lists. I’m sure you’ve seen them, “memorizing hanzi!” “500 common characters!” whaaaatever. Whatever textbook yr using will tell you what characters you need right then, and if that’s not enough there are plenty of frequency lists online. More importantly, do learn the radicals. When it comes to actually getting characters into your brain it’s some combination of mnemonic device (which works better if you make it up, not if some rando writer does anyway) and rote muscle memory—so all you need is paper. Get square/grid paper and pay attention to proportions or if you must get a book, get one that has practice space. Skritter is amazing and wonderful and I cannot praise it enough but also it is not free. But like if yr really serious you’ll probably have to put some money down somewhere. Whatever you do, do not buy Chineasy it is a plague upon our language learning household. (note: some people suggest not learning characters until after awhile of studying spoken. That sounds sort of terrible to me, and it also means you won’t be able to engage with anything Chinese online. But it is a thing, and sites like Yabla, FluentU, and ChinesePod could be a way to go [and are good anyway])
3. Practice, practice, practice! Ok cool you started doing some stuff! Check you out! If you want to get feedback start posting snippets on Lang-8, you can even meet people to skype with. Or if you want (and have a smart phone) you can get a chat buddy on hellotalk. Maybe there’s a meetup group in your area who knows. Make yourself/download an Anki deck, etc. etc. Just try to always do a little something everyday. I think because of characters Chinese has a particularly steep learning curve—I still can’t open a webpage and just like read it—so it might be better to focus on practicing what you know rather than trying to engage too much with “actual” Chinese. That said….
4. Don’t loose hope, find fun things in Chinese. Even if it’s not actively practicing your language skills, find ways to enjoy Chinese that don’t drain you like too much studying will. Listen to music, read about idioms, watch movies, or if you’re a nerd like me, read about Chinese linguistics! If you have a hobby, you can find stuff on your hobby in Chinese. e.g. here is a whole cooking channel that is also subbed in English. DramaFever has, duh, lots of dramas, but is not free.
I hope that sounds like a setup for success! Here’s some dictionaries: MDGB, HanziCraft, lineDict (let’s you draw characters). If you have a smartphone get Pleco. Here’s a thing that annotates text & has rollover translation: MandarinSpot (maybe get a plug-in if yr into those). Here are general help sites: SayJACK & Chinese Grammar Wiki. There are so so so many other resources out there, but rather than stockpile them all right now I think it’s better to focus on whatever textbook/system you chose and just start moving. Once you have a little more of a base then look for cool blogs or whatever works well for YOU.
If there was something more specific you wanted just throw that @ me. If people have suggestions you can send them in and I’ll compile them so we don’t have to reblog this massive thing くコ:彡 くコ:彡 くコ:彡
