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Showing posts with label Guest Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guest Post. Show all posts
This one of many guest posts here at Discovering Mandarin. This post/lesson is from my friend Megan (@megoizzy on twitter). I have actually been sat here talking to myself for ages after reading it. I implore you to do the same!
Mandarin Pronunciation Debacles
My first semester of learning Chinese was probably the most difficult one. Each week, my fellow wannabe Mando-philes and I were presented with a new series of 10 vocabulary terms, which our teacher went through painstakingly quickly every time. For the first month, I felt like I had missed a class somewhere. In true Chinese style, Zhu Laoshi never intimated the little pronunciation secrets that were my total bugaboos. It wasn’t the tones that were getting me, it was those pesky x’s and sh’s. I couldn’t understand why xian started with x but shen started with sh.
A background in linguistics and basic phonetics helped me to uncover the truth myself, and as the years finally took me to live in China, a local friend was able to help me unpack what was really going on between x and sh, q and ch.
First, there is a very important distinction to make.
x and q are always followed by high, frontal flat vowels like i and ue.
sh and ch are always followed by low, back rounded vowels like a, o and e.
This means that you can have:
xian or sheng but never shian
qiang or chang but never chiang
This might seem arbitrary. It did to me until I learned that there is actually a pronunciation difference between these - they are distinct sounds. And despite what most phrase books want you to believe (which is that x sounds like sh and q sounds like ch), the pronunciation difference between these sounds actually dictates why they are followed by different vowels.
Let’s play a game.
Open your mouth very slightly. Smile. Say the “sh” sound by blowing out the sides of your teeth rather than the front of your mouth. Keep your tongue lying flat. Don’t let it move! That’s the pinyin x. Now say xiàn with that same smile and blowing the air out the sides of your teeth. Keep smiling! You’ve got it.
So what’s the sh? Open your mouth again, this time wider. Purse your lips as if you’re about to plant a big smooch on your Aunt Mildred. Let your tongue curl up a little bit. Blow the air out the front of your lips and say the “sh” sound. That’s the pinyin sh. Now say shèng with those kissy lips still pursed. Keep ‘em puckered. You’ve got it.
This works the same way for q and ch. q is said with a smile, ch with a kiss. Try it now:
qiàn chèng
It’s fairly simple, but it takes a lot of practice to get it right. Don’t be afraid to feel silly. You’ve got to do things with your mouth that don’t feel natural and are not similar to how you use your mouth when speaking English. Don’t be afraid to really test this out. Shout at your wall! qian qian qian! cheng cheng cheng! Flat lips for qian, round lips for cheng.
Once you get your mouth retrained for Mandarin mode, this becomes much easier and feels much more innate. Until then, practice makes perfect!
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Megan Eaves is the author of ‘This Is China: A Guidebook for Teachers, Backpackers and Other Lunatics.’ She has a degree in Intercultural Communication and has been studying and teaching Mandarin Chinese for the past 7 years. www.meganeaveswriting.com
The following article is written by Karen, who lives in Canada and is part of my growing series of Guest Posts from people I have met online that are also Learning Mandarin. She founded the Chen Pan Ling Kuo Shu Preservation Group in Atlanta, Georgia with a friend. Without martial arts, she would never have started learning Chinese.
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My Chinese studies all started with martial arts. My teacher in Atlanta, Allen Pittman, had studied with Chen Yun Ching in Taiwan in the 70's. My friend and I realized he was still alive. A friend's father agreed to phone him for us; then we communicated by fax, and arranged a visit. Considering Mr. Chen knew little English, we thought anything we could learn would be helpful.
We took a Chinese I class at the community college, and found a college student who tutored us. She drilled us on pronunciation- a good thing. At least if our vocabulary was small, people understood what we did say. It also allowed us to use a dictionary and pronounce words correctly.
Our visit was a success, but I think our Chinese failed us. We took our clothes to the laundry, and the clerk ended up calling the hotel to find out what we wanted. I think the surprise of strangers visiting the laundry was more the issue than our language. There were very few Caucasians around. Once we left Taipei for Taichung, we only saw eight Caucasians in two weeks.
With the help of Mr. Chen's translator, we started setting up a teaching tour in the United States. I needed to know more Chinese! So, more tutoring sessions, listening to language CD's, and eavesdropping on conversations in restaurants. I could visit our Chinatown and have brief conversations. My tutor told me she shamed an American-born Chinese because my Chinese was better than his. I also worked with a professor from a local university, to provide more language practice.
We have continued our exchange of visits with Mr. Chen. We have been to Taiwan two more times and he has been to the US twice. He is returning to the US in 2010.
My skills are about those of a three year old. Studying Chinese is fun. I don't think additional Chinese skills will help significantly in my martial arts training, but I like learning the language. It is satisfying to visit Taiwan and not feel totally lost. I feel comfortable touring around Taiwan (dictionary in hand!).
It's tough being a self-guided student, though. The encouragement of language-learning bloggers, the expatriates living in Taiwan and China, and my fellow Twitter tweeters has encouraged me. I am now using Anki for SRS. It is easier and more accessible than cards. Our library has an ESL program that provides speaking practice. I rearranged my lunchtime to talk with my Chinese co-workers. I am using more language immersion, and purposely listening to things beyond my language skills to get a better sense of the language. Sometimes I can tell what it's about even if I don't get the details.
I make up stories about what goes on in my life, as if I were talking to a Chinese friend. "I went to Chinatown last week. There was a Chinese college professor there. She had brought her students to the market. The girls liked the candy. Some of the students bought tea. All the students thought the freezer area was icky. I don't think they learned much at the store." When I translate it back to English, it's not too bad. Maybe I have progressed and now can speak like a five year old! I look forward to speaking something closer to my own age level.
This is another Guest post from a friend that continues to learn Mandarin. Today's guest post is from Boyd, who runs several successful and interesting blogs related to Chinese culture. Boyd runs an Business English course for Chinese speakers. Chinese speakers My favourite of Boyd's blogs is Boyd's Bijou or his Musings on China. Here is a little about Boyd's journey Learning Mandarin.
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Chairman Mao famously dictated that one should 活学活用 - "live learn and live use" -- perhaps translatable as "learn by living and doing and utilize or implement by living and doing." Since I started learning Mandarin in 1987, I have taken this aphorism to heart. Attempting to implement this saying, I used some methods as follows to learn Mandarin:
- Forcing myself to interact with Mandarin speakers daily.
- Moving to and spending time in Mandarin-speaking areas such as Taiwan and China.
- Working in local companies and immersing myself in Mandarin-speaking environments.
- Reading Chinese-language newspapers daily (with dictionary in hand) and attempting to write letters to the editor.
- More recently, reading Chinese-language blogs and using character recognition input devices (so I can practice writing) and pinyin input to comment.
This is the next edition of what I now hope to become a regular part of my blog. Guest posts from Mandarin learning friends, explaining why they decided to learn Mandarin. How they have gone about the learning process and where they are now in their journey, learning Mandarin. Today's guest post is from Bill Glover founder of #MandarinMonday who has been a great help and inspiration to me in keeping Discovering Mandarin moving forwards.
Learning Mandarin: So Why Chinese?
I cannot remember the moment I decided to learn Chinese. It was not one of those decisive moments where I said to myself that I was going to learn a new language, it just kind of happened.I managed to leave school (and university) in stereotypical British fashion, speaking only one language, English. Despite dabbling in Latin, Sanskrit, and to a greater extent Classical Greek, I wouldn’t consider myself a linguist by any means. I tried French a couple of times but spent more time outside the classroom than in and consequently never made much progress. So why Chinese?
Well, there is this girl. Hang on, before you stop reading, she is NOT the reason I started learning Chinese. Challenge anyone who tells you they are learning Chinese because “there is this girl”. If you dig deeper, you will probably find that it’s just an easy way to respond to a casual questioning. When I met my wife (whom you’ve probably guessed is Chinese), her English was excellent. Now, several years on, her English is superb. Yes, she makes mistakes but they are relatively minor and the structure/style of her written English is far superior to mine. And the true test? She can not only argue, but also win in fluent English. So, in short I have no reason to learn Chinese to communicate at home. However, it would be wrong to say that my wife played no part at all. One thing that she did give me was an introduction to China, Chinese culture, and of course the Chinese language.
But what was it that really got me learning Chinese? If I had to put my finger on one thing that really sparked my interest, I would attribute my decision to learn Chinese to one phrase: “In Chinese we call it…”
I remember early one morning walking with my wife (then friend) through Lammas Park (map) in Ealing and deciding to visit the animal sanctuary. One of the inhabitants of the sanctuary was a barn owl.
In Chinese we call it… 猫头鹰 [māo tóu yīng] literally, cat headed eagle
On our visit to The Science Museum in London we spent some time in the computing section looking at the history of computing. One of the themes of any computing exhibition is how “intelligent” computers have become.
In Chinese we call it… 电脑 [diàn nǎo] literally, electronic brain
And then there is the mobile phone. How many people know why it is called a cellular phone? It’s obvious if you know a little about the mobile phone networks work, but in Chinese there is no such complexity.
In Chinese we call it… 手机 [shǒu jī] literally, hand device
Another favourite of ours is the use of butter in cooking. Needless to say I am forever putting too much butter in (or on) everything. So, how do you say butter in Chinese?
In Chinese we call it… 黄油 [huáng yóu] literally, yellow oil
The list goes on, but hopefully you can start to see why the language fascinated me. Yes, I would never be able to read those crazy looking characters, but here was a language that appeared to make sense. And so, I started to look around for online courses. I came across ChinesePod (one of my top 5 tools for studying Chinese) and began listening to the newbie lessons. It all seemed so easy.
Now, several years on I realise that it isn’t easy. Progress has been very slow (people are often surprised at how slow), the list of excuses is endless, but two things remain: I still find the language fascinating, and I still thoroughly enjoy learning it. Since visiting China, I’ve found an additional reason to learn spoken Chinese, and that is to communicate with my in-laws. Most married couples seem to detest the visits to/from the in-laws, but I’m longing for the day when I can have an in-depth discussion with them both in their native language. The only trouble is, their English is improving far faster than my Chinese.
As long as I still find it interesting, challenging and fun, I will continue to learn Chinese. Part of what makes it fun, is the great people I have discovered on my journey. If you are learning too, you are welcome to get in touch. You can find me over on my personal blog, or taking part in next week's #MandarinMonday.
This is another Guest Post just in time for #MandarinMonday It is written by my friend Greg over at Mandarin Segments and is his personal experiences of learning Mandarin. Greg has been learning for about 2 years, although has made amazing progress in the last two months. Here is Greg's learning process.
Disclosures
Before describing my journey in learning Chinese, I need to be open with you:
When I began learning Mandarin: I did not have any Chinese relatives (I still don't), I do not have a Chinese wife, and I do not work for a Chinese company. I don't live in China, and I was not planning to move there. I do not have any ancient secret documents written in Chinese that I need to translate, I am not practising t'ai chi, and I am not studying acupuncture.
Nope, there was no obvious reason for me to learn Chinese whatsoever. And yet, there I was, subscribing to the "Teach Yourself Mandarin" series on iTunes - and really excited.
Pressing The Button
Just 6 months earlier I had been in Taiwan on business, and I learned to read my first Chinese word: exit = 出口. (You can read the story here.) And so my entry was 'exit' - then Mandarin started to creep into my thoughts.
I also learned a dozen basic phases (Hello, How are you, I am fine, Two beers please, Just a little, Don't want, ...) Chinese people are so complimentary when they find out a Westerner is learning their language. You don't need much more than "ni hao" or "zai jian" - to get lots of bubbling outbursts like "Wow - your Chinese is amazing!" and "You are so clever!"
And for 6 months, with just a dozen tone-less phrases, it felt like I was fluent. Until I realised that I wasn't ... but that I really wanted to be.
So I pressed that magic 'subscribe' button in iTunes.
The Laziest Path
By that stage in my life I had no spare time, and absolutely no desire to study any more. A couple of degrees and a professional qualification lay in the past, and 10-12 hour work days and a half-dozen international business trips a year lay in the present. I knew that anything extra that I took on would quickly get discarded - I definitely needed a better plan.
So I did nothing. Well, almost nothing. On the way to & from work - totalling 20-30 minutes a day - I listened to my Mandarin podcast. Most of the time I was thinking about something else, but those beginner podcasts played over & over in the background. Until one morning, after a month, I woke up from a dream repeating "Huan ying nin lai Beijing" to myself. That phrase must have played in my ears a dozen times by then, and even though I'd never really concentrated on it, here I was, saying it in my sleep, knowing exactly what it meant.
So I took a significant step forwards - I actually started to listen to the podcasts, rather than just playing them. I also subscribed to ChinesePod, and my conversational Mandarin continued to develop.
But I stuck to my original promise - I was not going to study Chinese, and I was definitely not going to waste time learning to read Chinese! I would plug into my podcasts, but it would not be like school. I was not going to memorise lists of vocabulary, and this was not going to feel like a big effort. (And yet, I was enjoying myself so much at the time that - looking back now - it was a disproportionate amount of time that I was spending with my Chinese-English dictionary!)
Steroids
Then in May this year, I changed gears again after spending a month in Asia on business (China, HK, Taiwan and Singapore).
When I took off from Heathrow Airport I was pleased with how much Chinese I could speak. When I landed here again a month later, I was frustrated and determined to up my game. There was going to be more effort, more podcasts, memorising lists, using flashcards - and learning to read. Although I was at a conversational level, I realised in trying to speak with people that I simply didn't have a wide enough vocab. I could speak & be understood, but they used so many words when speaking to me, I just couldn't keep up.)
So in the last 4 months, I have been listening to more podcasts, memorising lists, using flashcards - and learning to read. It has been fantastic.
Sometimes I wish I had been this fired up 3 years ago - I'd have a much better command of Mandarin by now. And yet, somehow, that's OK. If I had pushed too hard at the beginning I might have scared myself off. But that feels irrelevant ... this is where I am now. I've learned over 1000 Chinese characters in my reading experiment, and I am progressing all the time in my spoken Mandarin.
Discovering Mandarin
One of the things I did at the start of my 4 months of passionate learning was to start my blog, Mandarin Segments. And through blogging I discovered a world of people who are also learning Chinese, who have also experienced the same challenges as I have - and who are willing to provide input, and to debate in a way that keeps my moving forwards. Blogs are a great resource, and an excellent sounding board. Make sure you subscribe to a few with a Mandarin focus.
But perhaps I am preaching to the converted - after all, you're reading this on a blog, Charlie's excellent Discovering Mandarin blog.
This is a guest post from my Dutch friend Guus. This is his experiences of learning Mandarin. Guus runs a Mandarin school in Singapore and has been learning Mandarin himself for about 3 and a half years. I wanted to add a new perspective to the blog, to give new learners like myself an idea of the stages of transition that you are likely to go through learning Mandarin. Guus also runs a blog about learning Mandarin with tips.
Charlie
My journey of learning Mandarin
A Dutchman in Singapore, I have been learning Mandarin seriously since January 2006. In this post, I’d like to reflect on the various stages that I’ve gone through. Of course, the process by which one learns differs from person to person, but I think that each stage of proficiency and learning has recognizable characteristics.
My motivation
I enjoy learning languages, but I don’t think I would have started to learn Mandarin if it weren’t for my then girlfriend, now wife, who I met when on exchange to the National University of Singapore. It’s my philosophy that you have to have a purpose in mind before you start learning a language. If you don’t, whatever you learn will sink away from your memory in a few months’ time.
Pre ‘Serious learning’
In 2005, I was in the Netherlands, completing my degree and did want to try learning some Chinese. I used the ‘teach yourself’ method, which comes with a CD and textbook that covers many everyday situations and also found materials online. I managed to drill the number 1-10 and some everyday situations like introductions.
The practical focus was nice in the sense that it had a real purpose, but it didn’t yet touch those mysterious characters, which I had a great interest to grasp. I needed more depth (and peer pressure!) to make headway.
Mid-2005 I decided to move to Singapore in 2006 and look for a job there. I would have my degree, and since I had nothing to give up I thought it’d be a good time to move to Singapore and give life there a go.
Four months of full-time learning at NUS
Since I needed a legitimate reason for being in Singapore beyond the normal 1-month tourist allowance, and wanted to learn Mandarin anyway, I enrolled myself into the Mandarin program of NUS extension. I took classes from 9:00am-1:00pm daily and spent the afternoons job hunting.
The four months before I clinched my job turned out to be a great foundation for learning Mandarin. The teachers at NUS approached language learning intuitively, not scientifically, and really pushed us to make the language our own.
We spent hours repeating the 4 tones (always hard for Westerners) and me and my classmates were ‘put on the spot’ by having to make a coherent sentence with whatever limited vocabulary we had. It was intense learning, but learning like a baby does. Not according to rules, but by mindful repetition and reinforcement. As one of my four teachers told us, “I can teach you the rules, and you can understand the rules, but that does not mean you will be fluent. You need to show me that you can make a sentence, and show that you can make it fast enough.”
The breakthrough point was about 6 weeks into learning the language, when I overheard my girlfriend give her friends directions on the phone and got the gist of the conversation. For some of my classmates the 1-month mark was the break-off point, they felt they were putting so much energy into learning the language, but not seeing the pay-off.
While it was sometimes tough to keep up, I really enjoyed the fact that characters were an integral part of my course. After a month or so I could not imagine any more to learn Chinese without learning the characters. It is as if you don’t get the ‘soul’ of the Chinese language if you don’t pick up its written part. Of course, the progress in writing was slow, but in the context of course books, stripped from characters we hadn’t been introduced to, I could see what it might be like some day to be able to read and write freely using Chinese characters. The day I reach that stage is still ahead of me.
Part-time evening course
I found a job after learning Mandarin full-time for some 4 months and switched to a part-time class. I’ve kept taking 5 hours of Mandarin weekly in the evening hours for approximately 2 years. It was tough sometimes to concentrate, and we had again a teacher that really pushed us, in fun ways.
She would ask us to write a story and present it in front of the (approx. 15-person) class. After one student had told their story, she’d ask someone else to summarize what he’d heard. One day, she came with brochures for property developments and let us do a property viewing role play using new vocabulary about rental terms, fixtures and rooms in houses, etc.
The group was mixed with some Singaporean Chinese, some younger professionals and some older expatriates as well. We had lots of fun, which I think made all of us do that little bit extra, and most importantly, kept us coming for the classes. Let me repeat once again, it takes energy, not in a peak effort, but continuously for a long period of time, to make headway in learning Chinese.
Learning in practice
I am lucky that my wife is Chinese, and while her English is faultless, her parents, uncles and aunts do not speak it that much. I got a great boost in my Mandarin, ironically, when we paid a visit to her family in the US in May of 2007. I was the only white guy between the uncles, aunts and cousins and while the younger generation is perfectly fine with English, several family members kept themselves to speaking Chinese.
Especially funny was the moment where I was in a shop with my newly found Chinese family and the shop attendant approached me as if I were a separate customer, apparently confused by the fact that a white guy was among these Chinese people. These “show-off moments” are great morale boosters that you simply need to keep going.
If you give up too early, you won’t get to the point where you realize you are actually making headway. So the earliest stages are really the hardest, because you are spending a lot of time and effort without being able to reap the fruits of your hard work. It’s like building the foundation of a skyscraper.
Since March 2008 I have stopped attending classes. I’m still using the language every day because of living in Singapore where Chinese is one of the spoken languages and having Chinese family.
A week ago, I was at the cashier of the local supermarket, where the lady thoughtlessly took my stuff, scanned it and bagged it. Without looking up, she mentioned the price in Chinese. When she looked up, she realized that I, being white, shouldn’t understand, but I had the right amount ready. I told her with a smile “be careful, I understand everything you say” and we had a good laugh.
But I do realise that while words may come out more confidently and fluently, my vocabulary is limited and I am still far from the level where I could pick up a Chinese newspaper and read it, let alone correspond in the language. My written Chinese level is actually slipping because I’m not taking time to deliberately exercise it. It may be terribly immature, but I need a certain level of peer pressure to set myself to doing that.
So I am planning to take up a new course again, this time a course focused on business Mandarin with the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce. I have taken the Business Chinese test to assess my level and am now awaiting the result.
