hi, im trying to find a good book, or software that i can buy to learn mandarin. But i really want to LEARN it, im not interested in all that "learn mandarin in only 30 days or your money back" crap (which apparantly is the only type of language books all borders and barnes and nobles sell). If anyone could recommend a moderate priced great way to learn the language (i dont mean just conversational mandarin, but also grammer, reading, writing, pronunciation, etc.)
thanks
-nelson
Mandarin lessons
-
Dierk
Re: Mandarin lessons
Hi, Nelson
start with "Elementary Chinese, Part I and II", published by the Beijing
Language Institute. It is the non plus ultra. As a complement use
"Colloquial Chinese" by P.C.T'ung and D.E.Pollard,Routledge,2nd Edition
1988, another great book. For a dictionary buy the Oxford English/
Chinese,Chinese/English dictionary (paperback). With these cheap books - using the pinyin-transcription - you get more than value for money. But
you will need a teacher for learning the correct pronunciation.
Good luck,
Dierk
start with "Elementary Chinese, Part I and II", published by the Beijing
Language Institute. It is the non plus ultra. As a complement use
"Colloquial Chinese" by P.C.T'ung and D.E.Pollard,Routledge,2nd Edition
1988, another great book. For a dictionary buy the Oxford English/
Chinese,Chinese/English dictionary (paperback). With these cheap books - using the pinyin-transcription - you get more than value for money. But
you will need a teacher for learning the correct pronunciation.
Good luck,
Dierk
-
Henk Schotel
Re: Mandarin lessons
Nelson,
As for multimedia:
Not very well known yet are the fine courses
being developed by the Centre for Teaching Chinese
as a Foreign Language (CTCFL), University of Oxford
(but they are a step beyond the very beginning).
Look here for more info:
http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/mainj.htm
They BTW use simplified characters (SC).
Which characters to learn is an issue.
Many schools teach the traditional characters (TC),
saying it's easier to go from TC to SC then the
other way around. Whatever you choose, it will
be a tremendous amount of work, especially
remembering the writing of characters.
Full time students of Chinese learn about 800
characters a year (leading to knowing a larger
number of words). People choosing Chinese as
a minor (learning just 400 characters) often do that
at the cost of lower grades for the subject they
are majoring in, UNLESS they already know
Cantonese. As you know: 3000 characters
are said to be necessary to read a newspaper.
Very popular in academic circles is "Integrated
Chinese" (IC), the home page of which is:
http://tyao.lll.hawaii.edu/icusers/icwebsites.htm
It comes in TC and SC versions - an extra book
on grammar is recommended IMHO. The tapes
can still be ripped from the Internet if you search
well
Pronunciation of the tones is also hard to learn,
a "language partner" is often sought for this:
learning Chinese from someone in exchange for
teaching English (it often leads to love affairs,
divorces and marriages
The following internet course, created and
maintained by Dr. Tianwei Xie gives a good
impression of the trouble that's coming your way:
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm
This on-line course is even recommended
by Marjori Chan on her pages containing
thousands of links on Chinese:
http://ChinaLinks.osu.edu/c-links3.htm#lang
Anyhow, IMHO: "There is no royal way to Chinese!"
Henk (The Netherlands)
[%sig%]
As for multimedia:
Not very well known yet are the fine courses
being developed by the Centre for Teaching Chinese
as a Foreign Language (CTCFL), University of Oxford
(but they are a step beyond the very beginning).
Look here for more info:
http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/mainj.htm
They BTW use simplified characters (SC).
Which characters to learn is an issue.
Many schools teach the traditional characters (TC),
saying it's easier to go from TC to SC then the
other way around. Whatever you choose, it will
be a tremendous amount of work, especially
remembering the writing of characters.
Full time students of Chinese learn about 800
characters a year (leading to knowing a larger
number of words). People choosing Chinese as
a minor (learning just 400 characters) often do that
at the cost of lower grades for the subject they
are majoring in, UNLESS they already know
Cantonese. As you know: 3000 characters
are said to be necessary to read a newspaper.
Very popular in academic circles is "Integrated
Chinese" (IC), the home page of which is:
http://tyao.lll.hawaii.edu/icusers/icwebsites.htm
It comes in TC and SC versions - an extra book
on grammar is recommended IMHO. The tapes
can still be ripped from the Internet if you search
well
Pronunciation of the tones is also hard to learn,
a "language partner" is often sought for this:
learning Chinese from someone in exchange for
teaching English (it often leads to love affairs,
divorces and marriages
The following internet course, created and
maintained by Dr. Tianwei Xie gives a good
impression of the trouble that's coming your way:
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm
This on-line course is even recommended
by Marjori Chan on her pages containing
thousands of links on Chinese:
http://ChinaLinks.osu.edu/c-links3.htm#lang
Anyhow, IMHO: "There is no royal way to Chinese!"
Henk (The Netherlands)
[%sig%]