by 24 people |
Given the rise of Chinese business in the global economy, it's not surprising that many people are interested in learning the language. There are many dialects of Chinese, but the one most useful for conducting business in mainland China is Mandarin.
From the "Western" perspective, there are two tricky things about learning Mandarin: the intonations and the characters. Mandarin has the property that the tone of pronunciation is used to distinguish between several different homophones. In addition, written Chinese has thousands of different symbols to learn.
On the other hand, some people say that Chinese grammar is easier to learn than that of romance languages such as French, as it has fewer exceptions and special cases.
I started researching this topic because I decided to start learning Mandarin myself this year, and I thought I might as well share my research on the topic with others using Squidoo.
This lens will point you to several useful resources to help you get started in learning Mandarin Chinese.
Online discussions about learning Mandarin
- Ask Metafilter: Help me learn Chinese!
- Users of the MetaFilter online community give advice about learning Chinese.
- Ask Metafilter: Anyone have experience learning Chinese?
- Another Metafilter conversation about learning Mandarin.
Blogs about learning Mandarin
- 343 Days to Go
- This blog, which began on Feb. 2, 2005, chronicles the author's progress in learning enough Mandarin to hold an hourlong conversation in one year. Paulie's progress is very inspirational, as is his dedication. He lived in China for the year and most of his waking hours studying. It seems to have paid off.
- Gaijin
- This blog chronicles the first 5 classes of a Vancouverite learning Mandarin. Only a few posts, presumably because it was a short class, but they're well-written and introspective about the experience of learning Chinese in North America.
My current study plan
(1) Listen to Pimsleur Mandarin "tapes" on my iPod during my commute to work, for pronunciation and grammar practice.
(2) Use Wenlin software on my computers for learning characters and handwriting, using the character curriculum from the "Reading and Writing Chinese" book.
(3) Take an introductory Mandarin class through my employer, for individual coaching and to tie everything together. (This hasn't started yet.)
So far, I'm pleasantly surprised with the Pimsleur tapes--they do a great job of teaching you new words bit by bit while constantly going back to make sure you're retaining the things you learned before. My only gripe is that they don't provide a written version of the words they're teaching you, so it can be hard to know where to start when you're trying to look up a word like "yidianr", which means "a little". However, Google and the Wenlin software are very handy when puzzling those things out.
Speaking of Wenlin, it's a fantastic piece of software, well worth the $200 I paid for it on Amazon. It's a pretty good Chinese-English dictionary, and you can also use it to edit Chinese text files. My favorite feature, though, is the handwriting recognition. I use it both on my Thinkpad X41 tablet PC and on my Powerbook using a Wacom Graphire tablet; the Thinkpad gets bogged down when I'm writing characters, but the Powerbook is smooth as silk. In any case, the handwriting recognition and the stroke order animations are a great help in learning the right way to write all the characters.
I usually use Wenlin in "flashcard" mode, which lets you add a few characters at a time to your repertoire, and then repeatedly drills you on everything you've learned so far. I find it a lot less boring than writing the characters down on paper over and over, and the audio pronunciations are very helpful.
Hopefully I'll be able to learn from a live instructor soon; I'm sure that it'll help me learn grammar rules (a weak point of my current materials) and help generally tie everything together.
Wikipedia Articles
- Standard Mandarin
- This is a Wikipedia article about Standard Mandarin, the official language of China.
- Vernacular Chinese Writing
- Information about the modern systems of Chinese writing.
- Chinese Grammar
- A brief overview of Chinese grammar.
- Measure Words
- This is a great list of the measure words you're likely to encounter in traditional and simplified forms along with pinyin.
Useful Websites
- Zhongwen
- Zhongwhen is an interactive guide to Chinese characters.
- Character Page at USC Chinese Department
- This page has animations to show you the drawing order for characters and audio clips so you can hear how they're pronounced.
- University of Maine Chinese English Center
- This site contains handy practice games, a Chinese-English dictionary, and other useful language tools.
- Hello-Han
- This site has a very nice page showing the syllables for each letter in each different tone, as well as a "word of the day" feature that shows you how to draw and pronounce one word.
Chinese language learning products on Amazon.com
Chinese (Mandarin) I
Amazon reviewers think highly of this series of audio CDs, but bemoan the lack of accompanying books. Note that they do come with booklets, but those cover only cultural aspects, not the language lessons themselves.
Amazon Price: $264.52 (as of 12/28/2009) 
Mandarin II
Amazon Price: $264.52 (as of 12/28/2009)
![Chinese (Mandarin) III (Compr.) [CD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ABAD3D6TL._SL75_.jpg)
Chinese (Mandarin) III (Compr.) [CD]
Amazon Price: $264.52 (as of 12/28/2009)
Reading & Writing Chinese Traditional Character Edition
This is supposed to be a good guide to Chinese characters (especially traditional ones). It apparently shows you how the more complex characters are built up from simpler ones, which could make them easier to remember. This isn't a dictionary or a tutor
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/28/2009)
Wenlin 3.0
This tutorial/reference program is pricey, but judging from the demo (see link in Software section), it may well be worth it. Runs on both Windows and Mac, and supports tablet input of characters.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/28/2009)
Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar
Many people seem to like this guide to Chinese Grammar
Amazon Price: (as of 12/28/2009)
Chinese Level 1 & 2 Win/Mac Personal Edition [Old Version]
This tutorial software package gets mixed reviews on Amazon, but one reviewer praised the pronunciation of the speakers. Note that it covers only pinyin, the phonetic spelling, of Mandarin--to learn the written language, you'll need to look elsewhere.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/28/2009)
Chinese in a Flash, Vol. 1 (Tuttle Flash Cards)
This is part one of a two-part set of Chinese character flash cards. (Many people find that flash cards are helpful when trying to memorize all the characters.) These flash cards give usage usage examples for each character, but do not show the stroke o
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 12/28/2009)
Chinese in a Flash Volume 2 (Tuttle Flash Cards)
The second half of the Chinese in a Flash character flashcard set.
Amazon Price: $17.79 (as of 12/28/2009)
Chinese Character Flashcards 888
This set of flash cards shows the stroke order for writing characters, among other useful things.
Amazon Price: $32.95 (as of 12/28/2009)
Power Chinese (DVD Case)
This relatively inexpensive Windows software is well-regarded among Amazon reviewers.
Amazon Price: $39.95 (as of 12/28/2009)
The Starter Oxford Chinese Dictionary
Amazon Price: (as of 12/28/2009)
Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary
This is a more comprehensive Chinese-English dictionary that Amazon users seem to like.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/28/2009)
Easy Chinese Tutor I (Mandarin) (CD-ROM)
An interactive Mandarin tutorial for Windows that's affordable but has relatively low production values.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/28/2009)
Software
- Wenlin
- Wenlin is a comprehensive electronic Chinese-English dictionary that runs on Windows and Mac--many students of Chinese swear by it. It can show you definitions, radicals, stroke orders, and usages samples for a character, as well as playing pronunciations for you. It also allows you to input characters using a pen tablet. It lists for $250 but is available for $200 through the Amazon link above. You can take it for a spin by downloading a limited demo from the site.
- Clavis Sinica
- This is an interactive dictionary for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux which allows you to easily look up meanings and Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters. It's a promising program, but for a long time the demo version (which is based on the previous release of the program) was unfortunately rather buggy. They've posted a time-limited trial of the newest version of the software, which likely fixes some of the issues I experienced before.
- Euro Asia Software
- Offers several programs for students learning Chinese, including a free talking Chinese dictionary for Windows. The install process was relatively arduous and long, and I didn't find the payoff to be high.
- Yazi
- Yazi is a free Asian character dictionary for Mac OS X and above. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's free and relatively simple to install.
- DimSum
- This free grab-bag of Chinese writing and cultural tools is written in Java, so it'll run on Windows, Mac, or Linux. The amount of functionality here is impressive for a free program--there's even a simple handwriting recognizer! Unfortunately, the flashcard part (which was what I was most interested in) uses a preselected set of words, rather than letting you specify your own.
- ZDT
- ZDT is an open-source Chinese flashcard program written in Java, so it should run on anything. I haven't tried it out personally, though.
Pimsleur Discounters
- Lingo Shop
- This is the first low-cost Pimsleur retailer I came across, recommended by Paulie of the "343 Days to Go" blog mentioned above.
- The Ultimate Language Store
- This retailer is based in Texas and claims to have a low-price guarantee.
- Used Pimsleur
- This site resells used Pimsleur courses--presumably ones which were bought back by Cheap Pimsleur above.
by incrementalist
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