5 ms·

From a pragmatic point of view Chinese would be much more useful, but there are a tons of good resources for that already, so dunno. Congratulations anyway. I'v

by _hao 9y ago

From a pragmatic point of view Chinese would be much more useful, but there are a tons of good resources for that already, so dunno. Congratulations anyway. I've used Duolingo to refresh my German some time back.

baby 9y ago
I still wish Duolingo would make a course on Chinese :( Currently my favorite app is "Decipher Chinese". I read one story a day, save words I want to remember and get quizzed on them periodically.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > I still wish Duolingo would make a course on Chinese :( What kind of Chinese? Mandarin? Linguistically Chinese is not a language, but a family of languages that is united by a (mostly) common writing system. The reason that these Chinese languages are called "dialects" is mostly political. A language geek I know, who taught himself various Chinese dialects and in particular Cantonese up to a very high level told me that Mandarin, though referred to as the "official" Chinese language that is used in TV, it is in his opinion rather an artificial language (he compared it with Esperanto). So when learning some of the Chinese languages he recommended that at least after some time learning the ropes (writing system, tones, common words), one should really consider for what purpose one is learning Chinese and learn the appropriate language of the respective province (he was really into electronics, so he continued his study in particular into Cantonese).
  - sswezey 9y ago
    Honestly, when people say they want to learn Chinese, they usually mean Mandarin Chinese. If they don't, they'll probably refer to the specific dialect they'd like to learn. Also, without any Chinese exposure, learning anything other than Mandarin is harder since their are so fewer resources. Calling Mandarin an artificial language is bogus, it is the native dialect around the Beijing area, and that is the reason it became the official dialect of Chinese. There are many people in China who only speak Mandarin.
    - accountyaccount 9y ago
      Being the 'official' language, is this also true for Chinese business — or is that dependent on the dialect of where an office may be located?
      - baby 9y ago
        I think by law they must speak in Mandarin. Check the law here and grep for "putonghua" http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-09/19/content_64906.htm http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-09/19/content_64906.htm If you travel in regions where Mandarin is not as predominant as it usually is, you will often see signs telling you "please speak in mandarin". The only exception really is Hong Kong.
        accountyaccount 9y ago
        Interesting. So it seems like if someone wanted to do business with, or work in, China (not HK) — learning Mandarin would definitely be the most useful?
        zhengyi13 9y ago
        Generally, yes. There's still places liked Shanghai where there's a very strong local language culture, but Mandarin should always suffice. I've travelled in parts of China (Xishuangbanna in particular comes to mind, in southernmost Yunnan) where they have truckloads of non-Han minorities, and Mandarin was the lingua franca, and got me around, but I frequently spoke it better than anyone around me on the street. OTOH, if you travel out to say, Xinjiang, I'm told you might be better off speaking Russian - the people out there are not Han, and really don't want to be part of China. Speaking the language of the empire out in the colonies might not make you many friends :)
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      > Calling Mandarin an artificial language is bogus, it is the native dialect around the Beijing area, Read https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mandarin_Chinese&oldid=779342675#Koin.C3.A9_of_the_Late_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mandarin_Chinese&...: Mandarin is a Koiné language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language) of various Chinese dialects (as I wrote above: What is called "Chinese dialects" is rather "different languages"), which has been standardized "artificially" (just as Zamenhof took words from various European languages and created a new artificial language (Esperanto) out of them).
  - baby 9y ago
    > What kind of Chinese? Mandarin? The official Chinese language yes. Your story is really not representative of China, Mandarin is nothing like Esperanto. It's a real dialect and it became the official language of China a long time ago. People speak Mandarin everywhere now (except maybe HK).
- TACIXAT 9y ago
  I have Du Chinese and I like it a little more than Decipher. I'm always excited when I get a notification for a newbie or elementary lesson. Chinese Skill and Hello Chinese are lesson quiz format and pretty interchangeable. Line Dictionary is cool cause you can draw in it. I also have Pleco for the Outliers dictionary which shows etymology, but it's still in development. HSK Magic is another one that looks decent, flash card style learning.
- _hao 9y ago
  The closest thing I've found to Duolingo for Chinese is an app called ChineseSkill (Android and iOS). It's pretty good for the most part. My learning stack so to speak consists of HSK textbooks, Skritter, ChineseSkill and recently I've added ClozeMaster. This is all for Mandarin btw.
- xiaomai 9y ago
  I also use and enjoy Decipher Chinese. Another thing I would recommend is reading the books posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/chinesebookclub/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chinesebookclub/. It's really difficult at first but I find that reading actual Chinese books (with frequent word lookups in Pleco) has helped me improve my Chinese rapidly. (I don't get through the books in a month... I'm actually only 70% through the first one I picked up several months ago).
  - xiaomai 9y ago
    Actually another service I would recommend if you want to work on your listening comprehension is http://www.fluentu.com/ http://www.fluentu.com/. They take various clips (music videos / dramas / youtube shows) and subtitle them in a slick player (you can add vocab words straight from the videos).
  - baby 9y ago
    The problem with actual book reading is that looking up words is too slow. I really wish there was an application like Decipher Chinese for longer texts, and also a bit better on the translations. I found this one on the web, but it is pretty limited http://justlearnchinese.com/chinese-reader-for-adult-learners-wan-jun-%e5%a9%89%e5%90%9b-1-elementary-to-intermediate/ http://justlearnchinese.com/chinese-reader-for-adult-learner...
garou 9y ago
The usefulness of a language depends if you are going to use. I got your point, China is HUGE and extremely important at the moment and future. But at the same time japanese can be seen as very useful because: - its a very important ally of the USA; - introduce you to the ideographic writing system; - be very similar to korean grammar (and particle system).
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  Another thing with Chinese is that even though the writing system is universal the dialects very so much that someone from Hong Kong might not be able to understand someone from Beijing, Shenzhen, or Shanghai(not familiar with what dialects are spoken where). That said they're all fairly similar and can be picked up more easily once you already know one.

by _hao 9y ago

baby 9y ago

I still wish Duolingo would make a course on Chinese :( Currently my favorite app is "Decipher Chinese". I read one story a day, save words I want to remember and get quizzed on them periodically.

wolfgke 9y ago
> I still wish Duolingo would make a course on Chinese :( What kind of Chinese? Mandarin? Linguistically Chinese is not a language, but a family of languages that is united by a (mostly) common writing system. The reason that these Chinese languages are called "dialects" is mostly political. A language geek I know, who taught himself various Chinese dialects and in particular Cantonese up to a very high level told me that Mandarin, though referred to as the "official" Chinese language that is used in TV, it is in his opinion rather an artificial language (he compared it with Esperanto). So when learning some of the Chinese languages he recommended that at least after some time learning the ropes (writing system, tones, common words), one should really consider for what purpose one is learning Chinese and learn the appropriate language of the respective province (he was really into electronics, so he continued his study in particular into Cantonese).
- sswezey 9y ago
  Honestly, when people say they want to learn Chinese, they usually mean Mandarin Chinese. If they don't, they'll probably refer to the specific dialect they'd like to learn. Also, without any Chinese exposure, learning anything other than Mandarin is harder since their are so fewer resources. Calling Mandarin an artificial language is bogus, it is the native dialect around the Beijing area, and that is the reason it became the official dialect of Chinese. There are many people in China who only speak Mandarin.
  - accountyaccount 9y ago
    Being the 'official' language, is this also true for Chinese business — or is that dependent on the dialect of where an office may be located?
    - baby 9y ago
      I think by law they must speak in Mandarin. Check the law here and grep for "putonghua" http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-09/19/content_64906.htm http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-09/19/content_64906.htm If you travel in regions where Mandarin is not as predominant as it usually is, you will often see signs telling you "please speak in mandarin". The only exception really is Hong Kong.
      - accountyaccount 9y ago
        Interesting. So it seems like if someone wanted to do business with, or work in, China (not HK) — learning Mandarin would definitely be the most useful?
        zhengyi13 9y ago
        Generally, yes. There's still places liked Shanghai where there's a very strong local language culture, but Mandarin should always suffice. I've travelled in parts of China (Xishuangbanna in particular comes to mind, in southernmost Yunnan) where they have truckloads of non-Han minorities, and Mandarin was the lingua franca, and got me around, but I frequently spoke it better than anyone around me on the street. OTOH, if you travel out to say, Xinjiang, I'm told you might be better off speaking Russian - the people out there are not Han, and really don't want to be part of China. Speaking the language of the empire out in the colonies might not make you many friends :)
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > Calling Mandarin an artificial language is bogus, it is the native dialect around the Beijing area, Read https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mandarin_Chinese&oldid=779342675#Koin.C3.A9_of_the_Late_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mandarin_Chinese&...: Mandarin is a Koiné language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language) of various Chinese dialects (as I wrote above: What is called "Chinese dialects" is rather "different languages"), which has been standardized "artificially" (just as Zamenhof took words from various European languages and created a new artificial language (Esperanto) out of them).
- baby 9y ago
  > What kind of Chinese? Mandarin? The official Chinese language yes. Your story is really not representative of China, Mandarin is nothing like Esperanto. It's a real dialect and it became the official language of China a long time ago. People speak Mandarin everywhere now (except maybe HK).
TACIXAT 9y ago
I have Du Chinese and I like it a little more than Decipher. I'm always excited when I get a notification for a newbie or elementary lesson. Chinese Skill and Hello Chinese are lesson quiz format and pretty interchangeable. Line Dictionary is cool cause you can draw in it. I also have Pleco for the Outliers dictionary which shows etymology, but it's still in development. HSK Magic is another one that looks decent, flash card style learning.
_hao 9y ago
The closest thing I've found to Duolingo for Chinese is an app called ChineseSkill (Android and iOS). It's pretty good for the most part. My learning stack so to speak consists of HSK textbooks, Skritter, ChineseSkill and recently I've added ClozeMaster. This is all for Mandarin btw.
xiaomai 9y ago
I also use and enjoy Decipher Chinese. Another thing I would recommend is reading the books posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/chinesebookclub/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chinesebookclub/. It's really difficult at first but I find that reading actual Chinese books (with frequent word lookups in Pleco) has helped me improve my Chinese rapidly. (I don't get through the books in a month... I'm actually only 70% through the first one I picked up several months ago).
- xiaomai 9y ago
  Actually another service I would recommend if you want to work on your listening comprehension is http://www.fluentu.com/ http://www.fluentu.com/. They take various clips (music videos / dramas / youtube shows) and subtitle them in a slick player (you can add vocab words straight from the videos).
- baby 9y ago
  The problem with actual book reading is that looking up words is too slow. I really wish there was an application like Decipher Chinese for longer texts, and also a bit better on the translations. I found this one on the web, but it is pretty limited http://justlearnchinese.com/chinese-reader-for-adult-learners-wan-jun-%e5%a9%89%e5%90%9b-1-elementary-to-intermediate/ http://justlearnchinese.com/chinese-reader-for-adult-learner...

garou 9y ago

The usefulness of a language depends if you are going to use. I got your point, China is HUGE and extremely important at the moment and future. But at the same time japanese can be seen as very useful because: - its a very important ally of the USA; - introduce you to the ideographic writing system; - be very similar to korean grammar (and particle system).

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
Another thing with Chinese is that even though the writing system is universal the dialects very so much that someone from Hong Kong might not be able to understand someone from Beijing, Shenzhen, or Shanghai(not familiar with what dialects are spoken where). That said they're all fairly similar and can be picked up more easily once you already know one.