Getting-by Mandarin in two weeks and <30min daily?
 

I'm off to Shanghai, Beijing and Xi'an for the 2nd time (for 12 days) and it's coming up fast. I'd like to be able to say more than "how much" and "thank you" when I arrive, but I am also work-busy until my trip.

So, be blunt: is there a 15-30min daily good crunch course in speaking Mandarin? I'm about to pull the trigger and just try Pimsleur but if anyone has used that or something better, please let me know! Cost is not *much* of a factor, up to a point.

Thanks for your answers and for being a wonderful resource in general. (I'm a relative FT newbie but love reading the site!)

Andrea

I don't know any methods much better than Pimsleur for getting comfortable to speak at a reasonable survival level on a time "budget". The best part of Pimsleur is that you really remember what you learn and (most importantly) people can actually understand what you're saying. I've done a few of their courses, and the Mandarin one is one of the better ones. I think there's a store called "Pimsleur Marketplace" which sells used Pimsleur sets and will pay $100 for your old set when you're done with it.

The old US government Foreign Service Institute courses are similar and quite effective but I think the learning curve is harder and they tend to require more of a time investment than Pimsleur. They're available for free online though, and you don't need to wait for any CDs to ship or anything.

I've tried to learn and I've found the tones to be *QUITE* a problem. I've had a lot more practice than the 7 hours you're talking about and I can't get by in Mandarin.

Even when I say it "right" there's only about a 50% chance that I'm understood.

You might look into Chinese Pod at www.chinesepod.com.

Consider a "Subscription" at the Basic level for $14. Then you can choose from the Beginner lessons at your convenience, do it at home, in the car, during lunch break, etc. Just make sure to cancel the subscription if you don't want to continue.

Be realistic though, if you can learn a few phrases and all the numbers with correct tones, you'll be doing well. Have no illusions that you'll be able to "get by" in Mandarin, because you won't.

If you can quickly locate a native Chinese speaker in your area (university student perhaps?) or there is any sort of Chinese social club where they gather, then an hour or so over coffee, lunch, or dinner could help your effort considerably at little cost. Make sure person is from the north (more standard Mandarin pronunciation), and write down the phrases you most want to learn.

My best bet for you is to go to your local library and get some car CD's. If you're too newschool for CD's, get them anyway and put them on your ipod.

Learn Mandarin in Your Car is a great tool.

Chinese pods are good, but help more those who already have a basic level.

While many people complain about the "tones", I feel this excuse to be widely overblown. For Americans, Mandarin phonetics, with a few exceptions, are actually quite easy. Plus, if you default to the first tone (flat) all of the time, people WILL understand you in context. Let's take 城市 (city), and 诚实 (honest), for example. If you want to ask someone where they live, it should be patently obvious that your intention is to use the first word... vice versa also applies.

One nice feature about the spoken Chinese language that those who haven't studied it often don't realize is that the grammar is incredibly simple... predominantly subject-verb-object, with little concern about verb tenses or pluralization.

This means that if you have 100 nouns, 50 verbs, and 50 adjectives (which are often constructed based on nouns) under your belt, you can get by quite well.

That having been said, I don't think 7 hours of study is likely to get most people very far. In fact, I sunk 4 years into the language (high school, mind you) before I ever set foot in China, and found myself grossly unprepared to communicate with the locals (there was a huge disconnect between the stuff in my textbooks and how people actually talked to each other). Basically, all of that fancy grammar they taught us proved to be useless in practice (I never aspired to write Chinese novels).

Agree with moondog. I don't know what the OP expects with "getting by", but unless someone is an extremely gifted individual, 7 hours will probably get you as far as very basic questions and answers. Not to mention the different accents will muddy the waters even more.

I wouldn't sweat it too much. Most people/places will immediately switch to English. The 'students' at Tiannamen Square will be very happy to try and practice English with you, or even humor you with speaking in Mandarin. :eek:

In Guangdong, many people conflate "N" with "L" (very strange to me) so that "Nanjing" becomes "Lanjing" and then there is the "SH/S" conflation that is prominent through much of the south. These are just two examples of many regional issues, but none are all that difficult to decode. You will figure out how to understand them (not their local dialects, but their versions of Mandarin) in short order, and they all understand standard Mandarin (as it's spoken on TV).

They don't understand me. Again and again I've had the experience of saying something, not being understood, my wife repeating what sounds exactly the same to me and she was understood.

Agreed. I see that in how hard it is to explain English grammar to her, especially recognizing word modifications.

I know plenty of well educated Chinese immigrants that have lived here 15 + years.
Often have difficulty understanding what they are saying and definately what they mean in both spoken and written english. Seems like you have to be well versed in riddles.:)

The great thing about Pimsleur is that the tones are easy to identify and the vocabulary is presented in a way which makes it easy to memorise, which is why I suggested it to OP. It'd be a stretch to call Volume 1 as even survival level, but it could be helpful for OP if they want something they can do with 1/2 hour everyday. If they ramped it up to 1 hour a day (which is not recommended by publisher) they could theoretically finish the whole level 1 course in 2 weeks which would give them about 150 words to play with. Then again, when I did Pimsleur Mandarin years ago it wasn't ab-initio so that could have made a difference.

I think a native speaker beats a language tape. I just don't hear the tones properly.

IMO tones are the most difficult part of Chinese. However, once you start getting it you really get it. If you don't, it's difficult.

I second the Pimsluer basic course. It will get you started and they explain the tones and it is very clear how you are to pronounce a word.

There are also people who will tutor you via Skype for something like $15-20 USD for a 30 min session.

Once you get to China you will start to get used to hearing the language spoken which is a big part of learning to speak the language.

As for me, I keep my expectations low.

I can recommend one such person. PM if interested.

Wow, thank you for all of the suggestions. Yes, I am well aware that this is not a "having conversations" kind of level of fluency.

I was hoping to take "thank you" and "how much" up to perhaps a dozen phrases that I can deploy without needing to glance at a book or cheat sheet. So, again, nothing even approaching survival, just slightly more than your average tourist. :D

Now, if I were doing what my brother did 7 years ago and going there for 10 months to work, I'd be looking for something more substantial, but also I'd pick up as I was there, of course. This time I am tourist only.

Andrea

I am going ahead and plugging Diana here because I don't desire more PMs about this sort of thing:

http://blog.sina.com.cn/dianaandchinese

As a back up or refresher to your course, you can find iPhone apps that give you the basic phrases that you need with spoken audio examples.

learn one phrase
 

I spent nine months taking a conversational Mandarin course before my vacation last year. Although I had learned to say a few phrases, ask a few questions, there was no way I could understand what was said to me.

Just memorize this question, with the correct tones:

ni shuo ying wen ma.
Do you speak English?

Worked for me in almost every case.

Nǐ huì shuō yīngwén ma?

If we're going to get real technical it's:

你会说英语吗？

...and 英语 (spoken) is slightly different from 英文 (written).

yingwen is correct in spoken language

yingyu may apply in written language

similar to zhongwen vs putonghua

I don't think so. Since I live in the presence of 1.3 billion Chinese speakers, it would be relatively easy for me to get a judgement on this case, but since I happen to be relaxing at home for the moment (after an exhausting day at the boat show... getting off topic, those guys are way more in tune with the market than the business jet guys... it was like CES), I'm forced to rely upon my own education to date. Based on my experiences, 文 typically refers to the languages in a general sense (but, with an emphasis on reading/writing), whereas 话 and 语 imply spoken words; case in point, speaking classes are often labeled 口语.

I have to agree with moondog's explanation on this yingwen vs yingyu discussion. In the context at hand referring only to "Can you speak English?" (spoken language is the focus), yingyu is better than yingwen, though even with use of the latter, a Chinese listener will understand your meaning.

The best way to express this orally is 你会说英语吗？

Now that Hollywood is selling out to the Chinese they are going to need those mega-yachts. They can buy the Cannes Film Festival and have a big party.

What's going to left here...pretty much nothing.


Entertainment lawyer Schuyler Moore says he has warned clients not to be overly optimistic in dealing with the country, and says it will take a year to see how China implements its new movie policy. Moore believes China's new openness is aimed mainly at boosting its own cultural industries.

"In the long term, it's no different than China trying to make aircraft and cars and everything else. Their goal is to have the expertise so they can displace Hollywood," he says.

However, if asking someone about if they speak Chinese, you can say 普通话， 中文，and 汉语。

I would agree with #3, but I think you have #1 and #2 switched.

Considering how easy it is to get Chinese English teacher to teach you Chinese in their after hours for under 35rmb per hour in person outside the major Chinese cities...

I guess the cost is justifiable as they have to pay for quality internet for skype.

If you want to ask do you speak English in Chinese just ask in English. If you want to learn some Chinese... there are more useful phrases that this.

i've found this program extremely useful http://english.cntv.cn/program/learn...se/index.shtml

Perhaps it is a regional thing, but here in Taiwan, 英文 and 英語 are both perfectly correct in this context.

To be honest, if you say either I'm sure any Chinese person will understand.

All I know is that the Pimsleur course teaches you to say: Nǐ huì shuō yīngwén ma? ;)

The few times I've used it, the person I spoke with understood me.

What is taught in the US and/or in textbooks while may be proper Mandarin (for written), it's often not used verbally in China and you'll get weird looks.

Examples:

1. Mainland Chinese don't call waitresses 小姐
2. They don't use full phrases, for example last night is not 昨天晚上 but 昨晚
3. Same for grammar. For example, you want to say I slept pretty well last night. Proper Chinese is 我昨天晚上睡觉睡得狠不错。 In China you'd just say 昨晚我睡得很不错。

...whereas in Taiwan, this is perfectly acceptable.

I assume you meant 『昨晚我睡得很不错』, right?

These would work.

美女 or 姑娘

Yeah, and in Taiwan, these would sound very strange in this context.

In Taiwan...
 

When I learn English, I also learn that "grammatically correct" English may not be as "English" because the native speakers don't use or say it like that. Same principle applies to Chinese/Mandarin.

Even though contextually both "英文" and "英語" may refer to "English", here in Taiwan, none of the native speakers would say or ask in Mandarin, 你會說英語嗎?. At least I've never heard of it.

When expressed orally with doubt, we always ask, "你會說英文嗎?" or "你會講英文嗎? (do you speak English)?" And we write Traditional Chinese Characters (繁體字) as well. ;)

So far, so good. I agree "文" by itself is more about written forms, as in 語文 or 文字.

But...

The Chinese textbooks we use in grade school are called 國語課本, "國語" being the national/official language, a.k.a. Chinese. As for middle school and beyond, the Chinese textbooks become 國文課本. And no, we don't have speaking classes for Chinese. ;)

So my point is when the reference is made for a specific language, the terms "文" and "語" are not that black and white no more.

Anyway, this line of discussion is way above the pay grade for daily 30-min language learning of 2 weeks. :D

a.k.a. "REAL Chinese" ;)

(Sorry, I just hate simplified characters. I think they're ugly and devoid of soul. :))

Oops, fat fingers. Yes, will correct it.