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.

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.