Ask HN: Best Way to Learn Chinese?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34054798

by holistio • 4 years ago

5 8 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have a good reason for asking this here.

I'm not really interested in the quick wins way of learning offered by Duolingo, but also don't really want to go through a traditional course.

I want to go deep, learn about the cultural contexts, the nuances, and so on.

I know there is no preset for doing this, but if anyone knows of a good collection of resources which I can follow until I know enough where to look next - I'd really appreciate it.

I speak three languages (HU, RO, EN) fluently, another (DE) at a "can conduct business" level, and another two (FR, RU) at the basic conversational level. I also read the Cyrillic alphabet without issues, although I know the shift to Chinese characters is bigger.

Thanks for any guidance!

theandrewbailey• 4 years ago

It might be helpful to know if you want to specifically learn Mandarin Chinese, or another dialect (like Cantonese).

holistio• 4 years ago

I refer to Mandarin here mostly.

abudabi123• 4 years ago

I don't know the best Way. For that maybe you need a dedicated tutor who sings the Classics. The New Books Network podcast on Asia Study has interesting interviews.

There are documents on the construction of Mandarin from before the civil war that may interest.

At the moment I am reading the entry on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neiye

and clipping parts from the Mawangdui silk to help as a memory aid as I go looking for characters from, for example

https://apod.tw

https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?wo...

https://ctext.org/searchbooks.pl?if=en&searchu=說文解字

If you take up a cultural activity such as Taiqi or Calligraphy you will get to practise the living language, the ideal would be at an institute that pre-dates the civil war, such as, the China Institute where Ezra Vogel use to present insight.

Other education institutions have open courseware. I started at EdX.

082349872349872• 4 years ago

I understand it used to be traditional to start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Character_Classic , which looks as if it offers plenty of opportunities to dive into cultural references.

hayst4ck• 4 years ago

Why do you want to learn Chinese? Your goals inform a lot of the advice. If you desire to work with the PRC, then learning Chinese in Taiwan, which is a very comfortable country for a westerner, will probably greatly harm your prospects and literally put you in harms way if you go to China. People I have met have first hand told me of threats to revoke visas (trapping a person in China) and literally imprisonment for saying the wrong thing, requiring action from the US State department. That was before China went full fascism on Hong Kong.

My low quality advice from someone who has done minimal research but who also has a desire to learn Chinese:

Go to Taiwan and take classes. Learn traditional Mandarin in Taiwan.

Why should you take classes even though you don't want to? Chinese is tonal which is completely different from the languages you already know. I don't know how you will get tonal feedback, training, or practice without classes. The writing system is different than the languages you already know and will likely require different strategies to learn as well.

Additionally Taiwan frequently uses bopomofo rather than pinyin. I am convinced (not through first hand experience) that it is better to attach meaning to completely new symbols rather than bring in legacy phonetic associations from the western alphabets.

The US state department defines Chinese languages as category 4, meaning they expect learning it, on average, to take on the order of 2 years of 30 hour weeks to become business proficient and that is with traditional training.

As far as culture and literature, when I asked a similar question to a well educated Chinese person, they suggested the four classic Chinese novels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels) and specifically said romance of the three kingdoms has become a somewhat apocryphal history of China.

scombridae• 4 years ago

If you had a six-figure job, would you bother getting a college diploma?

Similarly if you had a Chinese girlfriend, would you bother studying Mandarin?

Be honest with what you really want before wasting time.

justinram11• 4 years ago

As someone who has very casually self-studied Chinese over the past 6-7 years and gotten to an "intermediate plateau" (started as a digital nomad in PCR, then Taiwan, and then married my Taiwanese wife).

Since you've already learned many languages I'm assuming you are already familiar with what works for you -- for me I really resonated with the "fluent in 3 months approach" of basically just forcing yourself to consume as much content and use as much of it as you can (which I was able to do in Taiwan, starting with ordering coffee and working your way past the "where are you from" conversations).

I've always struggled with Chinese characters, however (I also struggled quite a bit with English spelling). I picked up https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/products/how-to-learn-ch... over black friday and have really been enjoying it. I'm not sure if it will resonate as much for a complete beginner, but with my limited experience it's actually making characters "make sense" for me.

ChinesePod has been fantastic for listening comprehension, and is also highly recommended.

MathMonkeyMan• 4 years ago

A former coworker (Chinese) said "Chinese girlfriend? Six months. Alone? Two years." That was ten years ago.

Ask HN: Best Way to Learn Chinese?

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