English people who speak/are learning Mandarin Chinese here?

Mate. Its ridiculously hard. Im trying to learn but its sooo difficult. But yeah. Im gonna try and get it under my belt by the time i graduate.

Ni hao?

I'm Chinese and born in England. I speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin though, my mum speaks Mandarin but she's never taught me, well she's tried but I didn't want to learn it :P

I actually applaud anyone willing to learn Mandarin (or Cantonese!) because now that I'm older, I try to learn a bit every now and then. And it's hard. I have a bit of an advantage I guess but it's still hard. Reading and writing especially, I use to be really fluent as a kid but now I can't remember any lol!!

If you're reasonably good with Mandarin already, try watching some Chinese programmes, no I'm serious. This is what I did to pick up Cantonese quicker, watch telly haha! Keep refreshing on the text too but once you can understand Chinese programmes really well then start reading subtitles too and this should help with text (although I've failed to do this yet because my listening/speaking isn't -that- great).

My dad came to England when he was a kid and watched television in Cantonese to learn, so it does work. My mum does the same for Mandarin because it's her second language, Cantonese is her first. So television works wonders for learning a language to a fluent level :'D

You've definitely picked one difficult language! It'll be so useful once you become fluent in it though, good luck!

Thank you :-) Where can I watch Chinese tv programmes, do you know any websites?

Also, why did you learn Cantonese instead of Mandarin? I thought more people speak Mandarin so it would be more beneficial to learn Mandarin.

From what I know, Cantonese looks more difficult than Mandarin. There are only 4 tones in Mandarin (as well as neutral tone), I've heard there are 8 tones in Cantonese. That must be very difficult!

But yes, you are correct, it will be useful when I get good at it. Very few English people have mastered Mandarin, so it certainly makes me stand out to speak it and I hope to master it in the next few years.

I'm learning Mandarin! I do it as a third of my degree and I'm currently in Beijing as part of my year abroad. Chinese is definitely my favourite of the languages I do, oh and it's funny when people tell them you study it they go 'oooh Chinese!'

My tuition at Birmingham hasn't always been that great, we spent the whole of first year with a lady who, although lovely, took us at a very slow pace and so upon arriving at our Chinese uni and meeting other students from Newcastle we realised that we were at rather a lower level than them.

I've found that I've improved so much since coming here- my vocabulary has gone through the roof! I still find it really hard to read it aloud though, it comes out really stilted cos a lot of the characters take a while to process in my head. I'm determined I'm gonna get to a proper conversational standard though and I think I should do by the time I leave Beijing.

If you have Sky, then 785 (Phoenix TV) have Mandarin shows! I don't really know many websites though, you could always try watching your favourite show in a Mandarin dub haha? XD Or rent out some movies in Mandarin (that's what I did for my French GCSE in fact XD)

Both my parents speak Cantonese and whenever we went over to China it was always in Hong Kong or South China in which the majority speak Cantonese. It's just the main language of where my parents come from I guess so they taught it to me. Naturally I find it much easier to speak Cantonese than Mandarin but I'll probably change my mind once I learn more haha!

Best of luck! I guess most English people don't bother with Mandarin because English is the second most-used language anyway, and Chinese text is really hard to master as they don't use the usual abc alphabet! (unless we're talking pingying here, but I find this harder than normal text LOL, that's just me though)

I'm Chinese and living outside of the UK, and I speak both Cantonese and Mandarin quite fluently. I'm far better at Cantonese, and my parents barely understand English, so it was quite easy for me to pick up Cantonese from an early age. But since you can choose, DON'T LEARN CANTONESE. Non native speakers find Cantonese miles harder than Mandarin, and you can only ever really use Cantonese in Hong Kong or the Southern part of China.

The BBC world service do broadcasts in Mandarin, and you can download podcasts from here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/services/podcasts.shtml

Hope this helps, and feel free to PM me.

You're awesome and you have my utmost respect for this. Keep it going, I fully understand what learning Mandarin is like. Do you read Chinese characters or Pinyin?

You will surely get there if you keep up your efforts. I wish I was in Beijing, you're so lucky.

Haha thankyou! Beijing is crazy, it took a bit of getting used to but now I've been here a month and I realise that being here is an opportunity that I'm probably never gonna have again so I'm making the most of it.

In first and second year at Birmingham our textbook had characters with pinyin written just beneath so it was very hard not to just read the pinyin. Now we read exclusively characters which, although hard, is incredibly useful in terms of cementing vocab in your head.

How are you finding tones? I found them really hard to get the hang of at first!

I'm Chinese and living outside of the UK, and I speak both Cantonese and Mandarin quite fluently. I'm far better at Cantonese, and my parents barely understand English, so it was quite easy for me to pick up Cantonese from an early age. But since you can choose, DON'T LEARN CANTONESE. Non native speakers find Cantonese miles harder than Mandarin, and you can only ever really use Cantonese in Hong Kong or the Southern part of China.