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I started much this same way. I started at a local college taking just Mandarin I. I bought a bunch of books. I spent 2 months in China too. This was really wor

I started much this same way. I started at a local college taking just Mandarin I. I bought a bunch of books. I spent 2 months in China too. This was really worth it. I do practice for an hour each day writing in Chinese. I also keep my day planner in Chinese and make notes in Chinese. I mean physically writing characters out. WeChat is great. Pleco is a great dictionary. I have it open all day long. Google Translate is good. WeChat Translate and Google Translate differ on translations quite a bit. Bonus that translate.google.com is available while inside China. Take a look at the "Chineasy" books. I found them great for gaining history of characters and therefore an understanding of why the characters are the way they are. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA There is a good TED Talk - 3,500 characters vs 26 letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LvhjgW9zh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LvhjgW9zh0 I actually was going to start a Discourse forum for learning Chinese. I have it ready to do basically just need to get a domain name. Edit: Added YT link.

alexeldeib 8y ago
Did you have any prior background? I only ask because many commenters either were familiar with Cantonese or have Chinese heritage. I'm primarily familiar with Romance languages + German (i.e., never learned a new alphabet, no Arabic/Russian) and I'm curious about the impression of someone after diving in.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  I would totally avoid the writing system if learning Chinese fresh. Study the language for a year, and if you want to stick with it at that point, then start learning characters. Otherwise it is just a futile waste of memory and time
  - jason_slack 8y ago
    It’s not a waste. You would learn the radicals which helps you understand a words origin among other things.
    - FabHK 8y ago
      It depends on the purpose. If your goal is to communicate with people, then focusing on the spoken language makes a lot of sense, given how laborious the writing system is and how divorced from the spoken language written Chinese is.
      - jason_slack 8y ago
        Yup, I do agree you should focus where you need to. My focus was reading and writing mostly but I can speak (tones need work as expected)
    - oh_sigh 8y ago
      Not a waste, but an inefficient use of a beginners time.
- jhedwards 8y ago
  It really depends on the person, for me learning pronunciation is easy, I have the talent to be able imitate to other people's speech pretty accurately. On the other hand, I have a terrible handicap with learning grammar. It just feels like rote memorization of meaningless rules and it never sticks. So for me personally Mandarin was like a dream come true because there's barely any grammar at all. I just have to speak the words in the correct order "you want with me eat food?" "you eat finished?" "tomorrow we together go climb mountain?". relatively speaking. There's grammar of course and it's interesting and subtle, but it's much less than romance languages and there are basically no exceptions. The closest thing to the exception I can think of is the "ill-thought out sentence" （没想好的句子）, which is an exception to word order where you forget to say the beginning of the sentence and instead put it at the end: "go see movie? ...you tomorrow"
  - FabHK 8y ago
    I think that's a common misconception, as you've already alluded to - there is grammar, and it's easy to speak incorrectly if you don't study. There's just no inflection (do/does/did/done, der Mann/des Mannes/dem Manne/den Mann, hablas/hablaste/hablabas/hablaras/etc.)
    - jhedwards 8y ago
      Yes that's more accurate, it's really just the lack of inflection, which despite being a massive thing by itself, is by no means the entirety of grammar. I love Chinese grammar: the particles, the verb aspect markers, the resultative complements, they all feel really logical to me.
- jason_slack 8y ago
  No prior background except Chinese coworkers.

alexeldeib 8y ago

Did you have any prior background? I only ask because many commenters either were familiar with Cantonese or have Chinese heritage. I'm primarily familiar with Romance languages + German (i.e., never learned a new alphabet, no Arabic/Russian) and I'm curious about the impression of someone after diving in.

oh_sigh 8y ago
I would totally avoid the writing system if learning Chinese fresh. Study the language for a year, and if you want to stick with it at that point, then start learning characters. Otherwise it is just a futile waste of memory and time
- jason_slack 8y ago
  It’s not a waste. You would learn the radicals which helps you understand a words origin among other things.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    It depends on the purpose. If your goal is to communicate with people, then focusing on the spoken language makes a lot of sense, given how laborious the writing system is and how divorced from the spoken language written Chinese is.
    - jason_slack 8y ago
      Yup, I do agree you should focus where you need to. My focus was reading and writing mostly but I can speak (tones need work as expected)
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Not a waste, but an inefficient use of a beginners time.
jhedwards 8y ago
It really depends on the person, for me learning pronunciation is easy, I have the talent to be able imitate to other people's speech pretty accurately. On the other hand, I have a terrible handicap with learning grammar. It just feels like rote memorization of meaningless rules and it never sticks. So for me personally Mandarin was like a dream come true because there's barely any grammar at all. I just have to speak the words in the correct order "you want with me eat food?" "you eat finished?" "tomorrow we together go climb mountain?". relatively speaking. There's grammar of course and it's interesting and subtle, but it's much less than romance languages and there are basically no exceptions. The closest thing to the exception I can think of is the "ill-thought out sentence" （没想好的句子）, which is an exception to word order where you forget to say the beginning of the sentence and instead put it at the end: "go see movie? ...you tomorrow"
- FabHK 8y ago
  I think that's a common misconception, as you've already alluded to - there is grammar, and it's easy to speak incorrectly if you don't study. There's just no inflection (do/does/did/done, der Mann/des Mannes/dem Manne/den Mann, hablas/hablaste/hablabas/hablaras/etc.)
  - jhedwards 8y ago
    Yes that's more accurate, it's really just the lack of inflection, which despite being a massive thing by itself, is by no means the entirety of grammar. I love Chinese grammar: the particles, the verb aspect markers, the resultative complements, they all feel really logical to me.
jason_slack 8y ago
No prior background except Chinese coworkers.