Multilingual and Polyglot Wannabe Thread MK II

That's definitely a while off

We need to start with the characters! Trust me, it'll be easier.

Aah, I don't think I could afford a tutor, or I don't think it'd be fair to make mother pay for it. I might ask school if there's anything though

Yeah I'm going to ask the school when I'm back. Would quite like tutoring at lunchtimes or something. I will try and get over to taiwan or something in the next year or so.

One thing I really want to do is to embrace the chinese culture and history. I feel the more immersed I am the easier it will be to study it. When you have a genuine interest, studying is so much easier because you feel closer to the culture. It is KINDA how I did so well at history GCSE, I hated American West study but after playing Red Dead Redemption I loved it and got near on 100 :P

I am seriously neglecting mocks revision though and course work. It's christmas and I just want to do what I want to do which is mandarin and gaming. When I do mandarin there is a part of me that says well if I am learning/studying why are you not doing mechanics or english coursework - substituting one bit of work for another, more relevant bit. I get guilty when I'm doing mandarin but not so much when I'm gaming as there is a clearer distinction between play/work :P you get that with anything you do? I'm a big reader also so it happens quite a lot when I'm just reading stuff out of interest. F english coursework man, I need a C this year for an A at A2, cannot be asked!

^ many words there

My AS exam wasn't rehearsed at all! We didn't even know which topics would come up, let alone the questions asked in each one

And I got full marks in that oral so I'm decent ish

How did you do that? I'm doing AS French and German (AQA) and any advice on getting as high a mark as possible on the oral would be much appreciated.

There was this thing that cost a few k, was like a trip to China, experience it all, with three weeks of language lessons.

I'm watching Marco Polo atm, about Khan's and Mongols and China.

Meh, who needs mock revision. And coursework... Well actually I do need to write my expose at some point. Well i procrastinate my own work by doing other work. Like I won't revise for mocks but I'll go learn FP3 or something idk.

I hate reading lol.

The joys of AS, I need like low Cs as well for As

Zhongguo aye, I may have a look at Chinese economics a little more as well, might be a good integration of my interests.

FP3? Nah, leave the boring routine syllabus stuff alone at Christmas, venture off the path a bit

You should read more! It is also what assures me that I am not like the other kids haha. You see those ones one facebook and twitter 24/7 who probably haven't read a full book in their life... disgusting

Ite, so you watch, in one month I will be able to type entirely in pinyin
























or one year

Yeah zhongguo, where they speak zhongwen

It was j an example we actually don't do fp3 in my school

I can't stand it lol, unless it's a really good book, then I finish them in like a day

Haha 6 months is your challenge

Ahh, I'm just learning pinyin at the moment. Speaking is my main focus and then after about 2-3 months of pinyin I may start to do characters. I find pinyin quite easy to learn, just need to really pay attention to the pronunciations! I'm 4 days in and it's going fairly well. Haven't done much today though.

Learning how to say wo de mingzi shi ... and hen guoxing shi ren ni at normal speed is a challenge!

I recommend you learn the characters as you go, but a nice, slow pace. You'll learn them a lot faster than cramming 50 a week, like some people seem to do.

Yes, I found that once you get a tone, it's hard to actually put it next to another different tone. And 'r' in Mandarin is crazy to pronounce.

I recommend you practise tone pairs, where you practise by saying two tones together (even 'ni hao' is a simple but effective one) and that way it makes your intonation flow much better.

What resources are you currently using?

I'm just getting to grips with the 'r'!

My resources are mainly dictionaries, youtube videos like fiona's mandarin made ez ect. and some websites I find when looking for phrases

Cool, YouTube is quite good for Chinese, since it's not as easy to find resources like French or Spanish is.

I recommend a Lonely Planet Phrasebook. It's like a dictionary, but straight to the point with loads of cultural and slang hidden inside.

If you ever want to keep track of your learning/vocabulary, I also recommend Anki. I've managed to learn 10,000s of words in several languages over the past few years thanks to that little program.

do you have to pay?

For Anki? No. Completely free for the PC, and you can download an app on your phone.

Lonely Planet Phrasebook is about £6, but worth it, especially when textbooks are like £30.

Great thanks for the help, how good is your chinese by the way?

I'm at B1 on the CEFR scale. Don't plan to get to B2 for a while however, due to other language commitments.

There is a nice joke in German. A true classic and I hope you understand:

Lehrerin fragt Fritz: "Was habe ich dir über Groß- und Kleinschreibung gesagt?"; "Alles was man anfassen kann, wird großgeschrieben!", antwortet Fritz. Darauf fragte die Lehrerin erneut: "Und warum hast du dann das Wort 'löwe' kleingeschrieben?"; "Haben sie schon einmal versucht einen Löwen anzufassen?"

Translation (if you don't understand):

The teacher asks Fritz: What did I have tell you about upper and lower case?"; "Everything what can be touched is upper case!", asks Fritz. Thereafter the teacher asked again: And why did you have lowercase the word 'lion'?"; "Did you have ever try to touch a lion?"

That's great! Have you any further tips? I want to get to B1/B2 and I am happy to do it slowly. My first goal is to be conversational by next september but I would love to become fluent over time.

I think learning vocabulary and things is straight forward but I am more concerned about word order, grammar and things. I occasionally see 'lai' and 'de' thrown in pinyin, I know the 'ma' and the 'ne' are question particles and things but I am confused why some others are put in.

Also, another problem I can foresee is not being about to understand normal pace speech as chinese tend to rush over words and hardly say them out in full, not to mention tones being all over the place, many of which I see are surprisingly incorrect which causes me confusion. Do most understand bits of sentences and work out the rest based on context or is this beyond B1?

I just have a problem; that being school work and things getting in the way. I want to do an hour a day really but I can't realistically see that happening consistently.

Wonderful!!!

I like German jokes, there's something about them that make them better than English jokes

Wonderful!!!

I like German jokes, there's something about them that make them better than English jokes

Just because the German jokes sound better in English than in German? I am just looking around another ones. Here is a very cynical joke (translated in English):

what were the last words of a sports teacher? - "all spears to me!"