Learning Chinese

Mandarin or Cantonese?
I know nothing of either, but I did do a year of Japanese - and that was great fun. We used an Austrailian teaching method for the characters - I don't know if this exists for Chinese too but it made remembering the sounds they made very straightforwards - by turning each symbol into a picture. So, the symbol pronounced "Shi" was turned into a picture of a girl and "She wears her hair like that".

good luck!
i'm having a hard enough time learning Japanese.

also does Mandarin or Cantonese uses the same character set and different pronouncinations or are they both just completely separate languages?

i would suggest a college course in Chinese.
but i'll look for some sites for ya [smile]

I intend to learn mandarin, im just going to a school to learn it tho, then my mum can help me practice it

at least they have a very simple grammar...
i'm learning chinese too. the pronunciation is weird for the first lessons but after a while one gets used to it. the writing is teh evil but i guess if you learn one character/word a day you can at least read a chinese kiddie-book in a few years :P
i dont know a good site to learn chinese but please post it here if you find one.
i found learning cds very helpful because you can hear the pronunciation. also get a book which has both pinjin and the normal characters.
and the last very good thing is:
know some girls from china and get skype to chat with them.
there are also lots of chinese students at my university and i plan to ask one of them for a knowledge exchange (german/chinese). i guess they will also be eager to learn another language so why not help each other.

edit:
i have some pdf files with the characters on one side and the pinyin/german expressions on the other... i could email them to you or upload them somewhere if you want (1.8mb rar file).
ok, its german but i'm sure you could translate every word with a dictionary like leo.org : best ger/eng dictionary evar!!1!one

edit2:
pm me if you want them... i dont know if i'll remember posting this and the lounge topics move very fast into oblivion..

[Edited by - BiGF00T on October 30, 2004 5:30:52 AM]

Quote:

Original post by Alpha_ProgDes also does Mandarin or Cantonese uses the same character set and different pronouncinations or are they both just completely separate languages?

Same writing system, but spoken differently. It's kinda like the differences between English and French. We use the same alphabet, but we can't necessarily understand each other.

"早" - Morning. Pronounce: Zao3
"安" - Safe. Pronounce: An1
"早安" - Good morning.

There are other dialects too, like woo. Learning Mandarin is your best bet since most Chinese know it.

Hello - NiHou (knee - how, emphasis on the first syllable) -litteraly 'You good.'
Goodbye - SaiJin (Sigh - Gin, emphasis on the first)
Good Meal (important) - HouChir (how - cher, emphasis on the first) -litteraly 'good eat.'

Quote:

Hello - NiHou (knee - how, emphasis on the first syllable) -litteraly 'You good.' Goodbye - SaiJin (Sigh - Gin, emphasis on the first) Good Meal (important) - HouChir (how - cher, emphasis on the first) -litteraly 'good eat.'

Goodbye is more like zai gen.

Chinese is not too difficult to learn - if you have dedication and don't give up. Just like any other language.

Chinese does have grammar, and it is complex. It is very irregular.
As for characters, you might want to learn how to write simplified, but be able to read traditional and simplified. It makes things a little easier in the beginning (when you are more likely to give up).

Finally, I recommend NJSTAR for your computer typing needs.

Quote:

Original post by zer0wolf Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes also does Mandarin or Cantonese uses the same character set and different pronouncinations or are they both just completely separate languages? Same writing system, but spoken differently. It's kinda like the differences between English and French. We use the same alphabet, but we can't necessarily understand each other.

Actually, no. Chinese can all read and write (or at least they can if they are literate) using the same script. It's not like English vs. French, because English and French has different grammars.

I'm getting ready to learn chinese as well (since it's the country that my style of martial arts originates from). I'm surprised no one has linked this site yet.

BBC has a small guide to Chinese.

Quote:

Original post by Drakkcon There are other dialects too, like woo. Learning Mandarin is your best bet since most Chinese know it. Hello - NiHou (knee - how, emphasis on the first syllable) -litteraly 'You good.' Goodbye - SaiJin (Sigh - Gin, emphasis on the first) Good Meal (important) - HouChir (how - cher, emphasis on the first) -litteraly 'good eat.'

Chinese characters - PinYin pronunciation, Meaning

"你好" - Ni3 Hao3, Hello
"你" - Ni3, You
"好" - Hao3, Good
"再见" - Zai4 Jian4, See you again
"见" - Jian4, See
"再" - Zai4, Again
"好吃" - Hao3 Chi1, Delicious
"吃" - Chi1, Eat


The number behind each pronunciation means:
1 - Soft. Like choir "ah...". (denote as a '-' hanging glyph)
2 - A slight ascending tone. Like asking a question. (denote as a '/' hanging glyph)
3 - Deep tone. (denote as a 'v' haing glyph)
4 - Fast and furious. Like say the F**K in 'WTF!' (denote as a '\' hanging glyph)

While mandarine has 4, cantonese has about 9 of them.


Btw, do remember that the slang varies from China to Taiwan to Singapore.

I was going to make a new post but I just saw this thread. What do I do to learn a widely-spoken Indian language? Ie, I want to be able to chat with one of these foreigners in their native language. I did a little googling and found ~ 10 languages spoken in India and ~ 10 dialects for each. What do I do if I want to learn a language/dialect that is most spoken? I don't know where to start. I have, however, pretty good resources: internet, humungous uni library (ie, what book do I look for?). Kthx.

P.S. I'm in the US so I'm talking about the Indian languages in South-East Asia. And I also want to gain some understanding of the alphabet used, not just English pronunciations.

Well Chinese has a traditional set of hanzi and a simplified form. If you learn the simplified form you are seriously hurting yourself and they just look ugly.

Cantonese has 6 tones while Mandarin has 4. I think Mandarin's tones are pretty easy, it just has rising, falling, fall and a rise and high tone.

With respect to the post about Indian languages. I grabbed this from the CIA Fact Book (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html)

English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language.

I want to learn a Native American language, much like in Dances with Wolves. Unfortunately, I don't think it's likely I'll find enough resources to.

Hindi it is, then.

edit: did some googling and found:
Hindi Lessons (w/ audio, writing styles, etc) {

http://philae.sas.upenn.edu/Hindi/hindi.html
http://www.ncsu.edu/project/hindi_lessons/lessons.html
http://www.ukindia.com/zhin001.htm
http://home.unilang.org/courses/hindi/
http://asianstudies.anu.edu.au/hindi/
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/jishnu/hindi.asp
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/mideast/hindi/

A list of many lessons of other languages as well as some above (Chinese too!):
http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html


[Edited by - temp_ie_cant_thinkof_name on October 30, 2004 2:09:43 AM]

Quote:

Original post by risingdragon3 [...] Finally, I recommend NJSTAR for your computer typing needs.

w00t, that was exactly what i was looking for :) thx

Alot, if not all Hongkong movies are cantonese....

Quote:

Original post by johnnyBravo Alot, if not all Hongkong movies are cantonese....

does anyone know how hard it is to learn cantonese if you know mandarin? is it like learning english/spanish/french for a german (which is easy)?