PDA

View Full Version : I want to learn Chinese



Inuyasha-the-kid
Jun 20, 2005, 11:15
I want to learn Chinese,Do anybody know a Chinese form?

Jack
Jun 27, 2005, 18:01
I want to learn Chinese,Do anybody know a Chinese form?

woah, i had a dab at learning chinese and it was difficult, with the different tonal systems with the words its really hard i tell you.

"Ni hao" is hello, pronouced "knee how"

thats all i remember.

lexico
Jun 27, 2005, 22:24
Here's one: Chinese Forum (http://www.chinese-forums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9) thanks to Glenn, who got it from MaCherie. There are quite a few people from this forum who's also a member there !
Get the four Mandarin tones down first; then get those corrected by someone who knows the language as early as possible. This should be done by a real person who can hear you and correct you, probably not on line. :relief:

nanda
Jun 30, 2005, 13:50
the most difficult part for me: kanji ..
why do they have over 20,000 characters ? *sigh ...

lexico
Jul 1, 2005, 03:57
A working vocabulary of 20,000 characters would be only found in some of the most erudite, linguistically attuned, perceptive, exceptional individuals because that fairly covers most characters and variants accumulated over more than 2,000 years of continuous use. But in reality very few people would need all that vocabulary, because over half of those 20,000 would be found exclusively in an historical context.

For the majority of the population, around 2,000 would give you no difficulty leading a personal life; around 5,000 would give you full understanding of everything that is happening in modern China and what is written about the world, save certain loans from foreign countries (not that many).

Beginner level Chinese character dictionaries rarely exceed 5,000 chars in number, and a 20,000 character dictionary would be quite sufficient even for light historical reading and literature.

Several dictionaries that include all observed msnuscript styles are kown to have 80,000 characters. Although for the avarage student of hanzi-hanja-kanji, this would be an overkill, such references are essential for the study of epigraphy and script evolution.

nanda
Jul 2, 2005, 16:58
they said there're 2 types of kanji: china's and taiwan's
and taiwanese's kanji is more complicated than china's
what should i learn? i mean, which kanji is commonly used by chinese, or japanese, or taiwanese, well .. by people

alienaxed
Jul 5, 2005, 00:25
there is only one kanji that means all of them :), so semuanya lu musti kuasailah...
simplified chinese is just an extension of traditional chinese. which means you better learn traditional chinese and then put a plugin on to it (the simplified chinese).
Simplified seems easier to write because it has less stroke that traditional chinese, so handwriting seems faster, but it is not truly easier than Traditional because it takes more brainpower to store new radicals created for simplified chinese, because in simplified chinese, all the old radicals from traditional chinese still exists so as a result you have to double your brainpower to learn simplified chinese. At least that was a professor in Chinese Linguistics at NTU in Taipei had reasoned to me last time I came by his office to show him my work on the game to improve kanji retention.

ax

alienaxed
Jul 5, 2005, 00:31
and why worried about the 20,000 Kanji...even the native speakers have to refer to the dictionary from time to time. Just learn what you need to express your ideas and collect all this treasure naturally as you go. If you need my help, pm me, I can give some advise from firsthand experience.

ax

Inuyasha-the-kid
Jul 6, 2005, 11:56
I am sticking with Japanese because that is to hard.

Kara_Nari
Jul 11, 2005, 22:29
Inuyasha-the-kid, I hope I dont offend you by asking this, but what is your native language?
Im always interested... as sometimes you go to the effort of writing posts (terribly I might add) in Korean, sometimes japanese, and yes... sometimes english, but im puzzled as to whether english is actually your native tongue?

harry yang
Jul 15, 2005, 02:36
are you 13 years old and a student?would you like to stay in china for holiday with my family?
i am chinese living in shenzhen city of china.chinese is my native language.i am studying english now.i have a son and he is seven years old.i want him to study english.if you like to stay in china for holiday with my family ,we will teach you chinese while you can teach us english.
if you like to stay in china with my family,you are welcome by my family.
welcome to china to study chinese.

Gaijinian
Jul 15, 2005, 07:51
普通話是樂趣!!中� 是VERY好!我能理解SOME(ediar[不能PinYin。。。LOL])普通話。謝謝!
How is my CHINESE? It is a fun lnguage to speak, despite my minimal knowalage... :bluush:

全然話さんくも使ってみちまった・・・w

梁铠赞
Jul 15, 2005, 20:56
普通話是樂趣!!中� 是VERY好!我能理解SOME(ediar[不能PinYin。。。LOL])普通話。謝謝!
How is my CHINESE? It is a fun lnguage to speak, despite my minimal knowalage... :bluush:

全然話さんくも使ってみちまった・・・w
not bad...^^ i'm learner of simplified chinese...and my mother tounge is Indonesia and Indonesian-Hokkien(which is can only be use in Indonesia and Malaysia T_T)

7 years ago I started learning Chinese in Malaysia...I can speak well...but I cant write much hanzi...我很笨 I like it but it hard(for me) T_T

harry yang
Jul 15, 2005, 21:01
普通話是樂趣!!中� 是VERY好!我能理解SOME(ediar[不能PinYin。。。LOL])普通話。謝謝!
How is my CHINESE? It is a fun lnguage to speak, despite my minimal knowalage... :bluush:

全然話さんくも使ってみちまった・・・w

:cool:
your chinese is very good! 你的普通话非常棒!
it's so nice to konw you here.很高兴在这里认识你。
:cool:

Inuyasha-the-kid
Jul 22, 2005, 06:17
My native langage is a English, but I can hardly talk it right.

Inuyasha-the-kid
Jul 22, 2005, 06:19
are you 13 years old and a student?would you like to stay in china for holiday with my family?
i am chinese living in shenzhen city of china.chinese is my native language.i am studying english now.i have a son and he is seven years old.i want him to study english.if you like to stay in china for holiday with my family ,we will teach you chinese while you can teach us english.
if you like to stay in china with my family,you are welcome by my family.
welcome to china to study chinese.


I can`t it will take long to go there ,plus my mom probably wont let me.

lexico
Jul 22, 2005, 06:30
Well, don't you get along fine when you are with your friends ?
There are a lot of gestures, facials, and short sounds to help keep the flow nice and easy, but it's like that in any language, in any country.
You seem to have an active interest in learning and experimenting, and that's good for you in so many ways.

I only became confident about my Korean in my late twenties, and as for English I can't say I am fluent in all situations. As for my Chinese, I only remember the basics from my three yrs of intensive study; I have long, long ways to go to even think of becoming fluent.

But the good news is; once you get the basics, after that it's only a matter of vocabulary, style, speed, and perceptive conversation skills. These can only get better with time and practice. At 12, you're doing quite alright, so just keep up your experiments !

Inuyasha-the-kid
Jul 22, 2005, 07:30
Well, don't you get along fine when you are with your friends ?
There are a lot of gestures, facials, and short sounds to help keep the flow nice and easy, but it's like that in any language, in any country.
You seem to have an active interest in learning and experimenting, and that's good for you in so many ways.

I only became confident about my Korean in my late twenties, and as for English I can't say I am fluent in all situations. As for my Chinese, I only remember the basics from my three yrs of intensive study; I have long, long ways to go to even think of becoming fluent.

But the good news is; once you get the basics, after that it's only a matter of vocabulary, style, speed, and perceptive conversation skills. These can only get better with time and practice. At 12, you're doing quite alright, so just keep up your experiments !

Thanks for giving me confidence in what I do. :cool:

lexico
Jul 24, 2005, 11:04
they said there're 2 types of kanji: china's and taiwan's
and taiwanese's kanji is more complicated than china's
what should i learn? i mean, which kanji is commonly used by chinese, or japanese, or taiwanese, well .. by peopleTraditional characters shared by Japan, Taiwan, S.Korea, Old China, and Old Vietnam are called fan-ti-zi, 繁體字, cumbersome-styled characters, which are just that; having many strokes from 1 to over 40. While certain home-grown characters exists, they are less then 100-200 in all, and should be no cause of major concern.

The PRC took special pains to introduce simplified characters aka jian-ti-zi 簡體字, abbreviated-styled-characters, which have drastically redued number of strokes. While all PRC citizens under aget 55 were born after the inauguration of the PRC and know both Mandarin and simplified characters, the majority of them also speak their own local vernacular and read/write the traditional charaters as well since the correspondence between jiantizi and fantizi is regular and mostly predictable for those who's had the exposure.

Therefore over 99% of all traditional characters currently in use in any of the countries can be read and the generally understood within China, Taiwan, S.Korea, and Japan; N.Korea, although it had officially abolished Chinese characters for ideological reasons, revived it in 1963. Hence within the 5 countries the same written characters can be used in communication even though the actual vocalization might vary from place to place.

To compare the two if you have time for studying only one more language in addition to learning Japanese & Kanji (Sino-Japanese), I'd say learn the traditional cause you can use it in many more countries and your hanzi character wirting-recognizing training can be directly imported to kanji literacy upto a degree. You only need to learn the different readings and usage while the majority of strikes remain identical.

note: I might add that the use of traditional characters is not limited to the five countries, but also extends to all the areas where there are a lot of Chinese immigrants. Most major cities in SE Asia and other areas such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York have Chinatowns. Both the numerous Chinese expatriates speaking Cantonese or Mandarin would have nice shop signs in traditional characters as well as thse you will see in the many books in the Chinese bookstores and the Chinese section of your major libraries. Until sometime in the 1800's, books printed in traditional Chinese numbered the highest among all known scripts of the world !

innerfire
Aug 10, 2005, 01:00
and why worried about the 20,000 Kanji...even the native speakers have to refer to the dictionary from time to time. Just learn what you need to express your ideas and collect all this treasure naturally as you go. If you need my help, pm me, I can give some advise from firsthand experience.

ax
Yea you are right. Currently 6763 characters are used in common computers (National Standard II) which meets 99.9999% (*estimated of course) circumtances. But some 3000 out of the 6763 meets 99.99% circumtances. So do not be afraid - even TOEFL, comparing to that of English, requires a vocabulary of 10000 words. So Chinese is not that difficult.

I'll be pround to help. Maybe voice chat via MSN messager could be a nice tool.

chutianyiren
Nov 18, 2005, 07:19
try www.easychinese.us

bohrwen
Dec 30, 2005, 18:58
MSN:[email protected]
im Chinese...you can add me if you need help..

godppgo
Jan 30, 2006, 07:11
Depending on your purpose of learning Chinese.
If you're learning to work or live in China, simplified Chinese will do.
However, if you are planning to have some serious studying on Chinese literature and art, traditional Chinese is the better option for you.

Ebichu_chan
Feb 5, 2006, 23:45
I think it's better to study the simplified form, since it won't take longer time, and it has been authorized to use in global (around the world) by International United Nations with the purpose of everybody in the world can study Chinese easier & faster to prepare the global business, technology, educational and trade in the world.

So, if you intend to study Chinese instantly, you can use this system.

However, if you prefer to know the source of each characters, or arts and calligraphy purpose, you should study the traditional characters, since they are original and more complicated.

Regarding the relationship with Japanese kanji, actually Japanese kanji (漢字) is taken from Hanzi (汉字), so they exactly have the similar meanings, Japanese kanji take the character based on Chinese traditional ones. Though, Japan also has some special kanji characters which created by themselves. And some Japanese kanji have been simplified from the traditional chinese characters.

Currently I'm studying simplified Chinese, so I can just understand a few traditional characters. It's not so easy to memorize such a lot of characters in a very short period. But I will keep studying, though I'm so lazy, hehehe :p

现在我正学习汉语。
但是我很少用汉语讲话,所以,很慢会进步。
还有,我也常常觉得很懒惰啊~ :hey:
应该多多努力啦,我们该加油!! :yeahh:

请您们教我讲话吧 :-)
谢谢!!

metalforce
Feb 8, 2006, 05:20
hello

你好呀 ~ 你想學中文呀 ? 我可以教你, 大家也可作文化交流呢

我是香港人 , 你是那裡人

還有你學了中文多久 ?

其實我很想學日文, 但不知有沒有人教我呢 ~

Glenn
Feb 8, 2006, 05:42
If you're replying to the original poster, he's no longer with us. I seriously doubt he would have gotten anything out of that anyway.

There are some pretty good websites for learning Japanese -- three are in my signature. There are others, too, but I can't think of them offhand. If you do a search for "good Japanese websites" or something like that you should get some good results.

Anyway, welcome to the forum! Any questions you have about Japanese we'll do our best to answer.

Another Aoi Fan
Mar 21, 2006, 12:43
I am sticking with Japanese because that is to hard.
Japanese is harder than Chinese... and if you know Kanji, you know Chinese. Just send me mail if you want to learn! ((Chinese has like... a page of grammer. LITTERALLY))

dreamer
Mar 21, 2006, 18:38
Japanese is harder than Chinese... and if you know Kanji, you know Chinese. Just send me mail if you want to learn! ((Chinese has like... a page of grammer. LITTERALLY))

Hum...I still encounter weird forms sometimes... one of my teacher litterally told me of a "xong guo bu hen ta" (china isn't very big) and I am still wondering if the sentence is correct...

Supervin
Mar 21, 2006, 19:56
Hmm, I would say Chinese is a lot harder than Japanese for the learner in general. The thousands of non-phonetic characters plus idioms (chengyu) are already very burdensome.


Hum...I still encounter weird forms sometimes... one of my teacher litterally told me of a "xong guo bu hen ta" (china isn't very big) and I am still wondering if the sentence is correct...
Technically that sentence is not correct; it should either be "Zhongguo bu shi hen da" (中国不是很大) or "Zhongguo bu da" (中国不大). Probably just a mishearing on your part.

bossel
Mar 21, 2006, 20:45
Technically that sentence is not correct; it should either be "Zhongguo bu shi hen da" (中国不是很大) or "Zhongguo bu da" (中国不大). Probably just a mishearing on your part.
Well, maybe it's not school Mandarin, but it's OK in vernacular.

Supervin
Mar 21, 2006, 20:54
Well, maybe it's not school Mandarin, but it's OK in vernacular.
I would seriously doubt it. It's just too awkward. Do you have any basis for saying that?

I've never heard of such a construction in my experience, whether Standard or in dialect.

bossel
Mar 22, 2006, 09:39
I would seriously doubt it. It's just too awkward. Do you have any basis for saying that?
Yep, basis being my girlfriend's mother, who is a teacher in Guangdong. I thought immediately (without that much of a basis, actually) the construction was correct, because I meant to have heard it before. My girlfriend opposed, so she asked her mother. She should know.

Supervin
Mar 22, 2006, 09:51
Interesting.

I just ran a search; it does seem acceptable after all - albeit being very rare in comparison.

Gaijinian
Mar 22, 2006, 12:56
"xong guo bu hen ta"
Wow, I thought Japanese "ro-maji" was annoying. That is such a strange spelling (Plus not a very accurate statement!... Maybe riben, but zhongguo?)

Glenn
Mar 22, 2006, 19:40
Well, there are only about six different romanization systems for Mandarin (http://www.pinyin.info/romanization/compare/hanyu.html).

dreamer
Mar 22, 2006, 20:40
Hmm, I would say Chinese is a lot harder than Japanese for the learner in general. The thousands of non-phonetic characters plus idioms (chengyu) are already very burdensome.
Technically that sentence is not correct; it should either be "Zhongguo bu shi hen da" (中国不是很大) or "Zhongguo bu da" (中国不大). Probably just a mishearing on your part.
Well...not a mishearing since she wrote it down on the blackboard... (but this one's from my french teacher, the other teacher won't be back before next week...)

guitar100
Nov 15, 2006, 17:39
I am a chinese, i know english and little japaese , At present ,I still have a few problems in english, but I am getting better. can we learn from each other? msn :[email protected]

Nicholas Tse
Nov 15, 2006, 21:11
Japanese is harder than Chinese... and if you know Kanji, you know Chinese. Just send me mail if you want to learn! ((Chinese has like... a page of grammer. LITTERALLY))

No, I don't think you will know chinese if you know kanji! some kanji are different from chinese's and kanji mostly consist traditional chinese words... it's quite different from simplified chinese words......

gofai
Nov 16, 2006, 18:39
No, I don't think you will know Chinese if you know kanji! some kanji are different from Chinese's and kanji mostly consist traditional Chinese words... it's quite different from simplified Chinese words......
Agree, because Chinese character and kanji…
1. they have same wording but different meanings- Chinese(japanses)
勉強 to be forced to do something (勉強 to study)
檢討 to review a incident (検討 to discuss)
注意 to pay attention to sth or sbd ONLY (注意 warning or to pay attention to sth or sbd)
喧嘩 speak loudy and disturb other people (喧嘩 to fight)
2. some Chinese character have a similar structure to kanj
戰鬥/(戦闘)
3. some of them are the same wording but in revered sequence:
in Chinese 士兵 和平
in Japanese 兵士 平和
4. some kanji are made by Japanese, Chinese do not have them originally, they cannot be found in a Chinese dictionary. (may be modified form Chinese characters)
渋谷 -- 渋 (涉)???
竜 (龍)
戦闘 (戰鬥)
5. many kanji is meaningless in Chinese: (if kanji is translate to Chinese...)
お風呂に入る(洗澡) 切符(票) 赤ちゃん(嬰兒)
卒業式(畢業典禮) 夜明け(黎明/日出) 飛行機 (飛機) 弁当(飯盒)
6. Some kanji is imported from ancient Chinese, now they are not used in Chinese
湯 in ancient Chinese meaning: hot water, now it become soup.
湯 in japnese meaning: hot water
I come from Hong Kong, just know a little Japanese and English. If there are any mistakes, please correct them.

Nevertheless, there are many Chinese character and Japanese kanji have same meaning and similar pronunciation. So that It help you to learn Japanese if you learnt Chinese (I prefer Traditional Chinese), and vice versa.

jenniferlin
Dec 22, 2006, 10:11
hello ,veryone ,I am a Chinese girl ,nice to meet everyone here ,this is my first time to leave the words here.

Uncle Frank
Dec 22, 2006, 10:15
hello ,veryone ,I am a Chinese girl ,nice to meet everyone here ,this is my first time to leave the words here.

Welcome to the JREF Forum Jenniferlin, what a beautiful user name you picked!

Uncle Frank

:wave:

Aoi.
Jan 4, 2007, 15:14
中國是VERY好!

Ah, I just laughed at that, it's so cute~!

You want to learn Chinese? :x

Good luck. I hate Chinese.

Still, I want to take Japanese, Kanji, Katakana, all that neat stuffs, so I guess I better work hard in Chinese again~

I'm from Taiwan, not Mainland China so I'm not quite sure what China does. [Yes, I think Taiwan should be an independant country. Hands off.]


我很笨 I like it but it hard(for me) T_T

Very good~! At first I skimmed over it, and I read, "I am a vegetable." :x. Then I went, "Ah, sorry. :sorry:"

My Chinese dictionary, is like...huge. :p

i'm yoong
May 31, 2007, 18:05
Inuyasha-the-kid~!!do you want to learn chinese,i can teaching you but you better to know chinese word and chinese pronounce frist,because i teaching to you usually all using chinese words.
if you real want to learning chinese please mail to me.

and hope you in the future can speaking fluently chinese.^_^

hot12lips12
Aug 18, 2007, 13:20
they said there're 2 types of kanji: china's and taiwan's
and taiwanese's kanji is more complicated than china's
what should i learn? i mean, which kanji is commonly used by chinese, or japanese, or taiwanese, well .. by people

the taiwanese kanji is the old/traditional one, it's like the same or more similar to japanese kanji. but i think if you learn just one type of the kanji the other one will be very,very easy to learn/memorize...
so maybe you should learn the simplified one first (since it's easier) and then you can understand the traditional one without even learning it, but pretty much only understand not memorize...

hot12lips12
Aug 18, 2007, 13:26
Japanese is harder than Chinese... and if you know Kanji, you know Chinese. Just send me mail if you want to learn! ((Chinese has like... a page of grammer. LITTERALLY))

really? why? is it because of the usage? because I thought the Chinese pronunciations is harder than the Japaneses ones

Constantine
Jan 2, 2008, 14:20
Personally I recommend you to get some friends who are a native Chinese speakers.
But the most important thing lies in the fact that whether you inherently possess a deep attachment to the very culture of that language. It can give you an incessant flow of impetus to move on along the harsh process of learning it.
:-):-):-):-):-)

mammonth
Aug 6, 2008, 00:54
I am happy to help you learn Chinese.
You can contact me with ICQ: 231599948

GabbyWll
Aug 26, 2008, 12:28
Hi,
If you wanna learn Chinese, forum helps, but adding more local Chinese people as friends online may also helps a lot. Search hellochina, it is a website mainly about language exchange, business and all stuff about China and the world.

I am Gabby from HelloChina.com. There are so many foreign language talents registered on our website. They can speak English, Japanese and Chinese, etc.
Make friends and get what you need. The website has many new functions coming out. Now there are already 7000 members. Join us and have fun!
Register as a member, then you can add people and talk freely.

sxdxland
Nov 24, 2008, 17:24
may be i can help you . i want to learn English too.can contact me.
我很乐意帮你。我也正想学英语。可以联系我。
my MSN/Email is sxdx1089#163.com

Zoon van Ijs
Dec 29, 2008, 23:17
I'm very interested in Chinese, but I won't start learning it until I can speak Japanese fluently enough... that would take a couple of years perhaps... :blush:

kusojiji
Dec 30, 2008, 03:33
The tones and whatnot in Chinese are not fun to try to wrap your tongue around if your first language is an atonal one. It can be a very 'poetic' language in the right hands though.