How to Learn Mandarin Chinese in the Shortest Period Possible?
Mandarin Chinese has approximately 960 million native speakers, and enjoys an official language status in mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore while being widely used in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, and overseas Chinese communities. Backed by the second largest economy in the world and one of the oldest civilisations, Mandarin Chinese is increasingly a popular choice as a second language for students around the world. The problem, however, is that Chinese has a reputation for being difficult. This post aims to break down the difficulties one by one and offer tips on how to tackle them.
Note that when people say ‘Chinese’, they usually mean ‘Mandarin Chinese’. Mandarin is often contrasted with Cantonese (or Yue Chinese), which is used in Hong Kong, Macau, southern mainland China, and overseas Cantonese communities. Generally, Mandarin is more widely spoken and understood by many Cantonese speakers as well.
Difficulty 1 — Chinese characters are not phonetic
Most languages today use a mostly phonetic alphabet. That is to say, when you encounter a new word, with some exceptions, you’ll know how to pronounce it. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Chinese. Chinese characters (漢字, Hànzì, Kanji, Hanja, or Hán tự) are pictograms and ideograms that represent objects and concepts directly with little or no reference to their pronunciations.
Fortunately, there is a very simple Romanisation system called Pīnyīn (拼音). Pīnyīn is mostly used in elementary schools and is present in every decent dictionary. Although the Chinese do not write Pīnyīn outside school, I think every Chinese learner should learn Pīnyīn first, as it only takes a few days and is immensely helpful in terms of learning Chinese characters and practising pronunciation.
As shown above, LingoDream automatically converts Chinese characters into Pīnyīn and displays them on top of the original characters so that you can more easily learn new characters through reading. You can also disable this feature if you are already at a high level in Chinese.
In addition, LingoDream also separates Chinese words with whitespaces (otherwise there is no space in standard written Chinese). All this is done automatically for you every time you import or post an article in Chinese.
Alternatively, you could buy children’s story books that have both Pīnyīn and characters if you prefer reading a physical book. The downside is that it will take you more time and effort looking up new words in a dictionary.
Difficulty 2 — Two versions of written Chinese coexist, Simplified & Traditional
Another pain point for many Chinese learners is that there are two versions of written Chinese, Simplified and Traditional. The history of the simplification of Chinese characters is long and complicated. Basically, what you need to know is that mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia use a simplified subset of Chinese characters whereas Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau still use the traditional characters. Note that Simplified characters only simplified a frequent subset of characters, not all of them. That is to say that many characters are still the same in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
The main difference is that Simplified characters have fewer strokes, and thus take less time to write, whereas Traditional characters are more consistent as they more strictly follow the lexicographic patterns (六書, Six-Fold Classification). This makes them roughly equally hard or easy to learn. I would suggest sticking to either one of them at a time, depending on your purpose for learning Chinese. If you want to take the HSK (汉语水平考试, Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì) and study or work in China, obviously, you will want to stick with Simplified Chinese, at least before you pass the test. In practice, however, most native speakers will recognise the most frequently used characters in both forms. So, they will probably understand your text messages or emails regardless of which version of characters you use.
LingoDream lets you access both Simplified and Traditional articles when you set either one of them as your target language.
Difficulty 3 — Tonal pronunciation
Oh, this is a hard one. Mastering the 5 tones in Mandarin (1st level, 2nd rising, 3rd dipping, 4th falling, & 0th neutral) is no easy feat for native speakers of non-tonal languages. Well, firstly you should count yourself lucky that you are not learning Cantonese, which has 9 tones… Secondly, consider it a phase that you have to go through, a short dark tunnel that leads to an exciting new world. After a month or so, when you get used to it, you’ll think back and say “Hah, I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Somewhat counterintuitively, research shows that the key to mastering pronunciation is listening. You have to be able to hear the nuances in order to make that sound.
LingoDream helps you with Mandarin pronunciation in three ways:
- Automatically converts Chinese characters into the phonetic Pīnyīn as described above.
- Click on any word and instantly get multiple authentic audio pronunciations recorded by native speakers.
- Listen to the high-fidelity and natural sounding text-to-speech audio while reading the text at the same time.
Difficulty 4 — Requires a lot of memorisation
Yet another trouble with Chinese characters is that they tend to require an extra amount of time and effort to memorise, especially with conventional study methods. As I have written in another post, numerous studies on extensive reading now suggest that vocabulary acquisition is best done by reading. That way you know how to use new words in the correct context. By constantly exposing to new words and characters through reading, you will be able to subconsciously pick up the patterns and familiarise yourself with more and more Chinese characters.
In addition, a technique called spaced repetition might come in handy in learning and retaining new characters. To this effect, LingoDream automatically creates context-based vocabulary flash cards for you every time you look up a word. You can also optionally edit them. Based on the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, LingoDream reminds you periodically to review or recall these new words so that you will be able to quickly learn and remember a large vocabulary without resorting to rote memorisation.
Why Chinese is easier than you think
Aforementioned difficulties notwithstanding, Mandarin Chinese is actually surprisingly easy to learn in some regards. For instance, the Chinese grammar is very simple and straightforward. There are no complicated grammatical rules that typically exist in European languages such as feminine vs masculine, singular vs. plural, subjunctive, conditional, cases, conjugations, and declensions. Even the tenses are so simple and flexible that you barely notice them. Grammatical functions are mostly served by syntax (the arrangement of words) rather than changing the form of individual words.
Moreover, since Chinese is an ideographic language, you’ll find Chinese vocabulary very intuitive once you acquire a certain number of Chinese characters. At some point, you’ll be able to reasonably guess what a new word means even if you have never seen it before.
Lastly, Chinese speakers are everywhere, and a staggering amount of web pages are in Chinese. Being a Chinese learner means you’ll have access to tons of materials in Chinese on every possible topic.
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