Learning a new language is not an easy task, especially when it comes to learning Chinese. But, if you have the motivation to do it, it is definitely possible. Chinese is known as the most spoken language in the whole world, with nearly 1.2 billion people speaking it as their first language, so you are making the right decision to learn it, since you will have quite a lot of people to communicate with you after you become a fluent speaker.
Before you start learning, be 100% sure you want to embark in this new journey. Many people will try to make you change your mind about learning such a difficult language, while some others will give you their full support, but remember, you are the one who is going to be doing it, so it is up to you and only you to give your all when starting to learn it. Since it can be quite challenging to learn a new language, I’m going to provide you 7 tips on learning Chinese.

1. Go to where the language is spoken

The best way, when it comes to learning any language, is to be in an environment where it is spoken. Why? Because you can practice, practice, practice. Not only speaking, but also listening to other people’s conversations will help you improve your Chinese a lot. So, if you happen to have the opportunity to travel to China, Taiwan, or Singapore (countries which have Mandarin Chinese as their official language) I strongly suggest you to do it. Even if it is only for a short period of time, you can learn a lot from traveling to these countries. The more time you spend in the country, the better your Chinese will get. You can either, sign up for classes at a language center or just learn by going out on the streets and speaking to strangers, which leads me to the next tip… (Don’t worry if you don’t have the opportunity to travel to another country, try finding a Chinese community in your country or a few restaurants/shops where you know there are native speakers for you to practice with.)

2. Make new friends

Making new friends is not really that difficult, especially when you are in a foreign country. You will call people’s attention, because you are different. And whether it’s through food, dance, or just being aware of body language, there are many different ways to bond with people abroad. Try joining language exchange programs with students who wish to practice your mother tongue in return for help on your Chinese. You can also learn unusual local phrases that not many foreigners or tourists would know, believe me, you can’t beat the excitement of surprising a local with a phrase they wouldn’t expect a foreigner to know. People will always be very friendly and compliment you when you speak their language to them. Dating a native speaker is also a great idea.

3. Let technology help you

Technology is one of the best resources to learn a new language, with its help you can now have access to authentic material and native speakers at any time. There are many apps and websites that can help you practice and improve your Chinese. You can just explore the web and discover what works for you and what doesn’t. As you become more familiar with these resources, you’ll find opportunities to improve your language skills that go well beyond what is offered in the traditional textbook. Also, your phone, computer, or tablet might come in handy. If you are actively trying to learn a new language, changing your settings gives you the opportunity to use this new language to complete tasks that you are already doing anyway.

4. Practice regularly

Be sure to make some time on your busy schedule to learn the language, even if it means doing it on your own. If you don’t practice regularly, there’s no chance you will get better at it. Set some time for practicing and stick with it so that you have a dedicated amount of time for learning. Don’t try biting off more than you can chew for the sake of advancing faster. Try learning a few words every day and making sentences with them. By learning phrases that contain vocabulary, you will help yourself to make your communication understood by context. Even 30 minutes a day of review can make a big difference in your progress.

5. Watch Movies and TV Shows

It is no surprise that watching movies and TV shows in a language you are learning is a great way to get the authentic listening practice needed to improve your proficiency. These are excellent ways for listening to native speakers and how a language sounds. You can imitate what you hear to help you remember words. You can also use subtitles to help you, in this way you are more likely to understand the video and learn from it. There are loads of fascinating, exciting and unusual Mandarin movies from China, and by watching them you could also get insight into another way of life.

6. Embrace mistakes

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery” – James Joyce. This quote couldn’t be more accurate. Learning Chinese is one of those pursuits in which mistakes are inevitable. There are literally hundreds of things you can do wrong, but fear not my fellow language learner, because making mistakes is not your worst problem, but the best indication that you are actually making progress. Don’t let fear overcome you, it is okay to make mistakes, you’ll learn from them. The more you fear making mistakes, the more likely you will self-sabotage your efforts of learning. So, embrace your mistakes for a better language learning experience. Move through your fear, focus on the process, welcome change and be patient, because Rome wasn’t built in a day.

7. Set goals

Learning Chinese well and effectively involves and great deal of effort and hard work. Make your goals and objectives realistic. Remember that language learning requires some patience, particularly after accepting it as a journey, not just an end result. Try to relate your goals to actual language functions rather than grammatical functions. Set goals for yourself over short periods of time so that you have a little something to keep you motivated. Don’t forget to check back on your goals often to make sure that you are on course and update them if you don’t find them realistic. The more concrete and specific you are, the easier it will be to see when you have achieved your goal.

Image resource: www.imandarin.net | crayoncrisis.com | content.time.com

For most western people, Chinese is not really an easy language to learn because of its writing system and pronunciation with different tones. However, there are still plenty of people who would like to take on the challenge and try to conquer the Chinese language.

The motivation to learn Chinese

For some foreigners, learning Chinese is about their passion or curiosity about the mysterious and fascinating Far Eastern culture of China. It may also be because of their interest in Chinese martial arts and Chinese literature that leads them to learn Chinese in order for them to understand them better.

On the other hand, China has also shown great change and rapid growth this past decade. Now, it is the second largest economy in the world. With a population of over one and a half billion, people have realized that if they want to conduct more business with them, it’s better to understand their language. For career purposes, it is an advantage to show that you can speak the Chinese language.

In the UK, the government even plans to train more than 1,200 teachers to teach Chinese by 2020 since learning Chinese has became the trendy language in recent years. Lately, UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech, saying “I want Britain linked up to the world’s fast-growing economies and that includes our young people learning the languages to seal tomorrow’s business deals.”

The difficulties in learning Chinese

For most foreigners who are learning Chinese, they find it difficult to distinguish the tones when it comes to listening, especially with the second and the third tone. It is not easy for them to recognize the difference. It is funny to hear some of them say that speaking Chinese sounds like singing.

To read Modern Standard Chinese, you need to commit to about 4,000 – 5,000 Chinese characters to memory. Learning to read and write the Chinese script is particularly challenging because it consists of thousands of complex characters, and each character represents both sound and meaning.

Ways to Learn Chinese

Thanks to technology nowadays, there are so many websites that offer some self-learning materials or online Chinese courses. Recently, a Taiwanese entrepreneur and author, ShaoLan Hsueh, who was born in Taiwan and moved to London, launched a project called “Chineasy” to make it easier and more fun for foreigners to learn Chinese. Using smart phones is another modern way where they can download apps to learn the language on the go, such as Pleco, Skritter, Duolingo and so on.  There are some good ones to help to memorize Chinese characters and improve writing as well.

Apart from these electronic learning methods, some people still like to do it the old school way. Attending courses is an efficient way to learn the language. Through teacher’s professional lecture together with text books and some activities and practicing with other classmates in the class, students comprehend the language more effectively. For some language learners, they may find one-on-one classes to be more comfortable and flexible to learn Chinese.

Due to more and more travelers visiting Asia, some even living and working here, there are language exchange groups who come up with some social events for local people to meet foreigners and the other way around. Through these meetings, you can practice more natural and conversational Chinese.

Although English is still the major language to do business and communicate internationally for other purposes, the future may gradually turn to Asia since we can see how fast China has grown economically. As Mandela once said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.'” No matter what reasons you may have to learn Chinese, I wish you all the best in learning it.

Greetings from Hangzhou

My name is Gentile and I’m a Mandarin teacher currently living in Hangzhou. My husband is also a teacher and it was out of this passion for languages and education that our love for each other grew.

We have been recently married and currently we own and operate a language school in the beautiful city of Hangzhou together. Our school is unique in that it offers English courses to Chinese students and Mandarin classes for foreigners. I wanted to take some time today to talk about my experiences teaching Mandarin to foreigners. Perhaps these insights can help you if you’re also on this quest to learn Mandarin.

My Approach to Teaching Mandarin

It’s an interesting thing to be teaching your own language to foreigners. It really makes one stop and think, to be introspective and think about your own culture and language in a unique way. I began to ask myself “What is the best way to relate this language to foreigners?” Should I be using a professional focus? Or a humorous one? My first realization is that while foreigners studying Chinese may be fewer in number, actually they are far more persistent in their studies than their Chinese counterparts studying English.

I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s just because I’m teaching foreigners who are already living in China and therefore have so much more invested in the language.

The Challenges of a Tonal Language

The truth is that Mandarin is a very difficult language for foreigners to learn. The syntax is so different and even with the help of “pinyin” it is still hard to communicate the accurate pronunciation of the tones. For those of you that don’t know, Chinese has four tones: “ā”, “á”, “ǎ”, “à”, and the pronunciation rules into the figure below, where the red line demonstrates the rise and fall of the intonation of your voice when saying the word:

“Wǒ ài nǐ.” “③ ④ ③” “I love you.”

Generally speaking ② and ③ are relatively difficult to pronounce for foreign students. But actually it isn’t difficult to master individual syllables based on icons and teacher guidance. Like anything else the mastery of the 2nd and 3rd tone just takes practice, practice, practice!

In addition to the rules of these 4 tones there are also a lot of subtle rules , such as “a” (yi) and “no” (bu) and so on.

If you really want to understand the tones and how they work you really need the help of a native speaker (or just ask me).

Writing Chinese Characters

Many non-Chinese students living in China tend to be proficient in spoken Chinese, but then they know nothing about the characters and how to write them. Kanji is one of the world’s oldest unique texts. For Westerners, it is very difficult to understand and learn to how to write Chinese characters properly. However, once you start learning to write and you can understand the meaning behind the Chinese characters, you’ll find that the composition of Chinese characters is actually very interesting.

Each Chinese character has both a pictograph and a Phonogram and this is usually very interesting for students to learn. For example, did you know that the Chinese character “mountain” and “wood” originate from a pictograph? You can see the similarity compared to the character used today from the pictures below:

I’d recommended that for students starting to learn Mandarin, the best thing they can do is really try to understand the Chinese characters, this is after all the essence of Chinese language and culture.

And How About Chinese Grammar

Regarding grammar and syntax, many people feel that Mandarin is relatively simple, even my husband told me so, too. I guess when compared to English or French grammar with all of the changes in tenses it is actually not so hard for Westerners to pick-up quickly.

However, the difficulty lies in the diversification of Chinese semantics, often the same sentence can express a completely different meaning. For example: “能穿多少穿多少” (lit: Can wear more or less, wear more or less). In Chinese, this same sentence can be used to express “wear as much as you can”, or “wear as little as possible”. Same sentence, but completely different meanings (or as they say in Thailand “same, same, but different!”)

So in closing, learning Mandarin is a challenging task, but as JFK said when wanting to put a man on the moon, we should be doing these things not because they are easy but because they are difficult! So 加油! (jia you = add oil).

For more information feel free to visit our website or contact me directly.

Zhou, Yindan (Gentile)
Shantz Language Services
zhou@shantzservices.com
www.shantzservices.com

My relationship with Mandarin Chinese is similar to a twisted love affair that is often the subject of books and films, and if like me, you’ve also embarked on this sometimes masochistic journey, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the language because it’s so complex, rich in history and best of all, when I’m back home and shopping around Chinatown my friends have complete admiration that I can pull out a few words of “pu tong hua” when ordering at a restaurant. I’m currently living in Hangzhou, have just married a Chinese girl and we’ve decided to open a language school together. So, for better or worse it seems like I’m past the point of no return with this language of strokes and tones.

Starting out

Like many foreigners living in China, I started learning Mandarin more out of necessity than anything else.  It was 2010 and I had moved to Taiwan to take on a job teaching English to kids.  8 months had gone by with me learning about 5 words (and not pronouncing any of them properly).  A fellow teacher, who had incredible Mandarin was watching me order dinner by flapping my arms like a chicken and started laughing uncontrollably.  He made the comment that they call it “survival Mandarin” because it was the basic amount needed to survive literally.  Since it seemed that an expanded vocabulary was the only way I was going to eat that night, his words took on a deeper significance!

The next day I signed up for Mandarin classes with my friend, the two of us were the only two students in the class, and I felt so sorry for our poor Mandarin teacher who had to listen to us laugh each time we made a sentence with “给” (gei = to give).  This word is in 3^rd tone, which means you really have to emphasize the vowel “ay” sound to pronounce it correctly. To practice, after class we’d make jokes to each other: “Tim, you are so gaaaaaay”.

Present day

That was 3 years ago and today my Mandarin is “还好”(hai hao = ok, not great) at best.  What I’ve found interesting is that there are certain areas of the language that I’m really good at.  I know all the relevant vocabulary, I can speak with confidence and I can even muster adequate tones without getting the “WTF are you saying?” look from the Chinese listener.

Other areas of the language are still a complete mystery to me, not to mention having to decipher all the local dialects and vocabulary.   They say that you’ll learn the areas of the language that either you like the most or need to use the most.  Something about people’s brains needing to know that this information is important to remember it.   So after 3 years I can confidently say that I have developed a real good working knowledge in the following areas:

1)       Eating

2)       Talking to girls

3)       Telling a taxi where to go

4)       Swearing

I’m not sure what that says about me as a person and my values?

On the flipside, areas that I still have no idea about:

1)       Anything to do with the government or paperwork

2)       Anything to do with the government

3)       Government paperwork

Perhaps I’m using some selective ignorance here.  Once in Taiwan I was riding home on my “摩托车 (mo tuo che = motorike) and was stopped by a police officer, I was freaking out in because I had left my license at home.   The officer spoke in perfect English and asked “May I see your driver’s license please?”  Not sure what to do, I figured I’d give them that same “WTF?” look they always give me when I speak Mandarin.

Saying nothing, I picked a spot on his forehead and stared at it like it was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.  He repeated himself and I countered by intensifying my stare and keeping my silence.  Then a laughter broke out, his fellow officer was bantering at him in Chinese saying “你不会说英文” (ni bu hui shuo ying wen – you can’t speak English).  Totally embarrassed, the officer motioned at me to go ahead and I was able to drive home.

Road to improvement

All kidding aside, in my 3 years here, I have realized that learning Mandarin is probably the single biggest thing foreigners can do to adjust to life in China.  All the doors seem to open up once you can speak even a little.  Making friends is easier, finding places and just understanding all those weird Chinese culturalisms.  This is part of the reason our school also wants to offer Chinese classes for foreigners as well as English for Chinese people.  Having gone through those experiences with the language and wanting to help other foreigners learn as well I think is a great way to give back.  We’re making sure that our Mandarin classes are suited to people with different levels and abilities, that the teachers and well qualified and also have a good command of English to explain concepts when needed, and most importantly, just being patient, as patient as possible.

Our office is in Bingjiang (并将) which is in Hangzhou (south of the river).  If you’re in the area and would like to join us for our Mandarin classes, we’d be happy to have you.  If you don’t live in Hangzhou, we do also offer online classes either one-on-one or in groups.

For more information feel free to visit our website or contact me directly, and if you find me in your class, please don’t laugh at my tones, I’m doing my best.

Happy studying and 加油!!

Paul Shantz has lived and taught in South Korea, Taiwan and most recently China. He is now CEO and director of Shantz Language Services, which provides face to face and online Mandarin Chinese classes.