Chinese is a tonal language, so you start by learning the tones. Then you learn to speak. Then you learn to read.
If you want to learn Chinese for world-communication, learn Mandarin as that is the "official" Chinese dialect and most ethnic Chinese know at least a bit of it. Otherwise, learn what is most common within your region. (Cantonese is most common in the U.S.) As with any other language, if you don't practice it, you will forget it.
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I see, so instead of learning how to read/write at the same time I learn words; like (well at least I) usually do, I need to learn first vocabulary and then how to write/read it?
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Each word in Chinese has it's own character, and there is no help for it but to memorize them. One. At. A. Time.
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Exactly. You learn the word for "fish," and then you learn the character for "fish." Fortunately, written Chinese is the same for every Chinese dialect, so all that is required for basic reading and writing is to memorize the approximately 20,000 characters which are most commonly used.
(Unsurprisingly, many Chinese speakers do not know how to read and write the language.)
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Good point about practicing language. I wonder if anyone else here managed to forget their first language, like I did.
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Tones are the basic component of Chinese but still there are hundreds of Pinyin. It needs a lot of memorization from the start. It reminds me how English is easy for language learning beginners.
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Tones are the basic component of Chinese but still there are hundreds of them.
Mandarin has four. Cantonese has six. There are a great many Chinese dialects, however, so perhaps that is the source of your "hundreds?"
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The latter part is about Pinyin. Sorry for being confusing. Now fixed.
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Learning Chinese involves a lot of memorization. There's not a logical system like there apparently is in Korean. Lots of memorizing. Keep in mind the radicals, which give some indication of what the character means ... and, I could be wrong, but I think sometimes the radicals can hint at which of the four tones should be applied.
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Radicals are so hard to learn. It's included in Japanese as well, and it's ridiculously elaborate. I'm far from even beginner at Kanji because of it.
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First, it's not called Chinese, starting from there helps, generally, you want to learn Cantonese or Mandarin as the common ones people learn to my understanding.
I have used many apps to learn Japanese myself, thus far DuoLingo is the best experience, though I've learned things in numerous ones, Memrise is also very good, both teach languages from China. Both have ads, and in app purchases. DuoLingo is far better on the website imo if you can use a computer for it. I do most of my learning while working though, so i'm on my phone.
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Well, the language as a whole is called Chinese, there are difference between them tho.. I like Cantonese the most but afaik, Mandarin is more spoken worldwide
That's interesting, did Duolingo add Japanese? Last time I used it it only had romance languages and I used it to practice my French
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There actually isn't even a place called China lol It's a name Europeans gave it, as is Japan, it's called Nihon, China is actually called Zhōngguó, though China was called something else when it was given the name China.
Yes though. I have no idea when they added Japanese, I only started using it recently. It's taught me more in a few days than I've learned in months though.
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I know, but that doesn't remove the fact that in English (and in many other languages) the geographic location is called China.. And the languages in there are called Chinese.. Just because they are called in other way in their respective language, doesn't mean they aren't called China/Chinese in the other ones :/
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I'd disagree, in most languages, it's considered racist to do this, and yet for the eastern nations, it isn't for no apparent reason. Seemingly because they don't whine enough. I'll call them by their actual names personally, as it's far more accurate.
Also, in professional environments, interpreters never call it Chinese. I've worked where I've had to deal with interpreters a great deal.
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Its considered racist if you, speaking Chinese, call it Chinese in the middle of the sentence instead of 中文, but if you are speaking any other language in which, it is called Chinese, then it is not racist and people can't get mad at it because, that's how language developed
If you want to say Europeans took it on their hands and called it how they wanted it to be, yes.. But that doesn't mean while you talking in another language, you should say it in the native one
Is like, talking in English and randomly saying "I want to go to España" instead of Spain.. Sure, España is the real name, but, in English it is called Spain, thus is the correct way to say it (in English), same thing applies to Chinese and any other country which name has been changed; only thing is there are many Chinese languages and you should state which one you are referring to, but they all share the same roots
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You still do not seem to understand. I will try to explain.
You are from Venezuela, and that place is part of South America. Imagine, for a moment, that all of the different countries in South America have different languages. One country cannot understand the language of another, but one of the languages (Espanol) is spoken a bit in every country in South America. Now, imagine that some foreigners come along and declare that "This land is now called South America, and you are all South Americans. The languages you all speak are all hereafter called South American (language)."
Do you begin to see how bizarre that is?
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Don't get me wrong, as I said, if you want to call it Europeans being dumb (or not knowing how to pronounce the stuffs) is ok.. But that doesn't change the fact that in English (and many other languages), that zone is called China, and that language is called Chinese
Racism? Not really, that's just how those languages evolved.. Would it be weird if I speak "South American" instead of my own language? Sure.. Would I think about it as "racism"? No, that is just the name it was given in that particular language
Edit: For example, Christopher Columbus thought he came to the Indias and he called them "indios".. Do I feel that is racist? Not at all, is just what he thought.. Europeans thought for some reason or another, they were all Chinese in China, and the word stayed in all the languages, is just the way to denote people from that region, speak that kind of language.. Sure China is HUGEE and there are differences, but that is just how languages evolved
I don't get why people get oversensitive about everything and say "it is racism".. When its not
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Population of Cantonese speaker is way more than Mandarin's worldwide.
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没错，从拼音开始就对了。粤语其实也不需学，现在中国只流行普通话。
另外，中国人学习日文和韩文比英文还难。
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Wait, why? Why is easier to learn English for Chinese people than learn Japanese??
I see, so I'll start learning it with pinyin; I know but after listening a native Cantonese friend talk (in both, Cantonese and Mandarin) I really liked the first the most.. Even tho she said Cantonese has harder pronunciation
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She is correct. To the foreign ear, Cantonese often sounds more "musical" than Mandarin.
(I believe the sound of spoken English has been described as "a dog being squeezed.")
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Yes, that's what I liked about Cantonese, it sounds way better to the ears than the weird mashup from Mandarin (imo)
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Because 5k years of Chinese culture used Cantonese in speaking and Traditional Chinese in writings (that's also the reason it's called Traditional). Poetry of the Tang Dynasty was written in Trad. Chinese and was recited with Cantonese which
rhymes, differ from Mandarin which does not. From year 1927 Civil War, the Communist Rule invented Mandarin and Simplified Chinese to reinforce their power.
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He/she is bullshitting. People from southeast China region aka GuangDong and Taiwan can easily learn Korean and Japanese (I'm from Macau and that's the truth I can see), English is forced to be learnt in schools. Learning Cantonese is more important if you are talking to people in Chinatown worldwide because most of them are migrants from GuangDong who speak Cantonese. People who speaks Cantonese can speak Mandarin without problems cuz Mandarin is easier than Cantonese.
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你錯了，中國五千多年歷史裏面，都是用白話文和寫繁體字。唐詩都是以白話文來寫的，用白話來讀誦詩句才會押韻。到了中華文國時期，北方政權為了鞏固自己的地位與權力才發明簡體字和普通話，因為北方人不會、讀不出白話的聲調。簡體字失去了中國五千多年文化的精髓，簡體字的愛（即「爱」）裏面沒有（心），沒有心怎能去愛？還有極大量的例字。
另外廣東地區包括台灣在內，學習英、日、韓文都比北方人來得容易。
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Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin, if ya wanna learn Chinese, ya be better off learning Mandarin first or you’ll be very confused. But yeah, hanyupinyin is pretty much what you need to start with, it’s not a easy language, if you are focusing more of speaking wise, it’s still decent, but the reading and writing is difficult as each character is different, another issue you need to take note is there is traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese, make sure you choose one of them to learn, because they’re not the same, similar but not the same, you’ll end up confused if you try to learn one and then switch over, of course, if you love languages, traditional Chinese is much more fun, because of the history of the words and how each word is actually meaningful and tells a story, but it’s much harder, simplified is used more often though. You can do itt, give us updates yeahh?:)
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Yes I've been told about the simplified and traditional, but afaik if I learn traditional I can easily understand/read simplified, is it true?
Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin? Wasn't Cantonese from Canton and Mandarin from Beijing?
Thanks :) I've always been interested in Chinese and the more I learn about Japanese and Korean, the more I want to learn Chinese hahaha
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Cantonese is just a spoken dialect, reading wise is unaffected, the problem is that the pronunciation of every word is different, if learn normal Mandarin, it has the correct pronunciation of every word in pinyin, however the Cantonese dialect is spoken and the pinyin would not work for that, also like an entirely different language. However, should you learn Mandarin, Cantonese can be understood. Cuz eg for me (I know some Cantonese, but our base is Chinese aka Mandarin), for me Cantonese just sounds like some mispronunciation of Mandarin, but if you only know Cantonese, you likely wouldn’t be able to understand the spoken Mandarin. The pronunciation of all words in pinyin is taught in standard Mandarin as well so I think learning Mandarin is more feasible.
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I see, and what about the differences between traditional and simplified? If I go with traditional, will I be able to read/understand (and speak? I guess spoken language is the same) simplified if I ever find it?
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You could just google Traditional vs Simplified and see which you prefer, traditional may look daunting but it's more meaningful, if you're good, you can tell read both no matter which you learn, and if you traditional you'll def know simplified, but if you only know simplified, may be diff to understand traditional at timess
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Nah.. I once tried learning Polish because my family is from there and I wanted to know
And just wow, with all the declension it has it was hard af.. I was able to understand a few, but too many stuffs just for a language hahaha
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Use Apps for kanji and voice chat with Chinese people and that's it.. it gonna take like 3 years is self taught..
Well I'm currently learning Japanese in the college and the kanji is so hard to memorize.. I was thinking about learning Chinese as a second language but I'll get to memorize even more kanji tho..
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If you want a serious answer, buy a kindergarten/primary school level Chinese learning book, and an empty square paper notebook (to practise writing Chinese characters in).
Each square is for one Chinese character. So find an exercise book with a square size you're comfortable with.
Then write the character, meaning of the word and the pinyin (English pronounciation) of the word, then proceed to write that character at least six times (or more). This is how we learned Chinese in school, short phrases by short phrases.
If you have a Friend that knows Chinese, you can ask them to help you check if you've written it correctly.
Or if you have the money, sign up for a community Chinese class.
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Hi there, so I was wondering.. I've learned some languages because I enjoy them.. Atm I'm learning Japanese the most (as I want to read stuffs without waiting translations and what not) and I even made a post a few weeks ago so people would help me learn Kanji... Which made me think
I learnt the kanas in Japanese and (when I'm a little bored) I practice the Hangul, just to be able to read Korean (don't know any words atm, I just do it to take my head out of Japanese).. But that made me think, I learned both syllabary/alphabets, and all the languages I've learnt I have always do it starting with the alphabet.. How does someone learn Chinese if there is no alphabet and everything is in Hanzi? Do you start with the most basic ones? Or do they have radicals like Japanese (I'm guessing so, since Kanji is based on Hanzi)
Would be really cool if a native Chinese or someone that studied Chinese (doesn't matter which one; although I prefer Cantonese, if I end up learning them I'll probably try learning Cantonese and Mandarin) could explain me how they started? Or do you learn everything with pinyin and eventually learn each Hanzi for each word? I really don't know how does someone start on Chinese
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