I have been studying Mandarin for about 2 years now... and I want to share my personal experiences as to what has worked for me and what hasn't and how I have managed to improve my Mandarin. I'm hoping this will help people who don't really know where to start... or at least get another point of view on it.
<To get to the actual info about tools to help you, skip to the next post!!!! I don't want to bore you to death!>
First a bit about me...
1) I'm 25, male, student, caucasian.
2) I took 2 semesters of Mandarin at college level learning simplified characters and really didn't take the course seriously at all, but still managed to do okay... I learned how to write about 500 characters and basic grammar. It was by no means complicated at all.
3) I have never lived in any Mandarin speaking countries (does Vancouver, B.C. count?).
4) I have Taiwanese and Chinese friends (easy to find in Vancouver) that I text with daily which is also good practice.
5) Being in sciences or even at a college or university in Vancouver, you will hear mandarin more than you hear English (at least in my experience in science courses like chem or math).
6) I also dated someone who was Taiwanese for almost a year and a half which did help immensely as we would speak everyday and text everyday in Chinese characters.
7) I plan to go to Taiwan, so I am learning traditional characters.
Anyways, MY POINT IS my exposure to Mandarin is so-so. Maybe a lot more than some, but I don't really think about it too much.
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So, you've decided to learn Mandarin... You must hate yourself...
Okay... well not really. But you better love Chinese culture and Chinese people and Chinese food (mmm 好吃）and Chinese EVERYTHING, because if you're going to be learning MANDARIN you're going to need ways to study/practice and people to speak with.
I've done online research into learning Mandarin and have come up with a few interesting things to know.
A) Mandarin uses the "right side of the brain" (I'm left handed so I'm hoping this helps me...)
English first language people out there, what this means is that if you grew up speaking English (like I did), your English started out on the right side of the brain when you were a child and over time has learned almost skip the right side altogether and be processed through the left hemisphere for speech.
From what I've read, it means that waking up the right hemisphere may take a bit of extra work (in my own personal understanding... it's my blog and I will write what I want to...). I will try to find the link for that article, it was really interesting.
B) Studies have been done that show Mandarin first language speakers think about time vertically, compared to how English first language speakers think about time horizontally. If you haven't started studying Mandarin, this point may not make sense to you, but for those of you who have, this may help you think about time in Chinese by making it easier to picture and understand (it has helped me anyways).
English we say "last week" or "next week"
Mandarin say "shang(4) zhou(1) 上周" = last week
"xia(4) zhou(1) 下周" = next week
With these two I always think as 上周 as above the current week (last week) when I picture a calendar in my head.
下周 I think of as under the current week we are in now (next week).
Anyways... I just thought it was an interesting point since I never think of using above or below when thinking about weeks in English.
C) Mandarin is 3-5 times harder than learning a language like French, Spanish, Italian...etc. It will take more time or effort or both... (both is the correct answer)
D) People wonder how long it takes to become fluent and that really is up to the person. I study everyday for an hour or two which isn't much, but considering my schedule, its good for me. Speaking and reading can take much less time than writing (obviously). I have like a 15-20 year plan to become fluent in writing traditional characters (a boy can dream... ). It also depends how much you are using it and how much time you put in and if you are immersed in a Mandarin speaking country.
So this was more of a disclaimer for people... I'm going to write a new post on all the tools I have used to learn Mandarin and some of my advice.
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