Three Months of Learning Mandarin

I started writing this blog just after I decided to commit and start learning Mandarin. In the three months since, I feel like I have made good if a little slow progress. Before people jump up and tell me off for thinking that I have made slow progress. It is not that it is slow, so much as, I haven’t spent and dedicated enough time (that I told myself I would) revising the things I have learnt.

I have certainly thrown myself in at the deep end by starting this blog and forcing myself to keep up with the goals I set myself. Yet, I still find myself wanting to know more, a real craving and frustration that I can’t say anything I want to.

So What I Can Say After Three Months Learning Mandarin:

Basic Greetings,
Basic Colours,
Basic Numbers,
Days of the week,
Months,
Basic Foods,
Basic Drinks,
and some basic actions (eating / running / cooking etc)
Most recently some basic items of clothing, and basic household items.

I can say : thank you, I want, I like, I love etc.

And about 70 Daily Proverbs... Although I would certainly not claim that I remember them off the top of my head.

And this is my current problem, I am learning a lot, but the memory recall of it isn’t strong currently. Hopefully it will get better with time.

Discovering Mandarin:

I intended this blog to be a collection of the things I had learnt as a reference point for myself, and for other people who are learning too. It has turned out that through the daily updates and being busy that I haven’t had time to update with things I have learnt quite as often as I had hoped.

I started out writing this blog because I did not have anyone to practise my Mandarin with, and my housemates were both learning Japanese. Truth be told, they haven’t stuck at Japanese at all and my motivation has sunk a little. The people I have met through this blog are very inspiring and have made me continue with my dream and I want to thank you all for the little bits of help you give me daily.

Learning Mandarin - What Now?

The three months I have been learning Mandarin I have learnt more than I have ever learnt in French that I learnt for four years at school. This is largely due to the fact I wanted to learn Mandarin and never wanted to learn French.

I want to carry on learning and actually stick to my commitment of daily learning. I think I am also going to try out the much talked about Heisig method of learning characters. Although, many of the drawbacks are outlined well in Chris' Mandarin Student blog post. I think I would like the ability to know that I can understand a large amount of characters much like Greg’s experience of the theory in Mandarin Segments blog.

I intend to carry on using Rosetta stone for my basic vocabulary and helping to build it up bit by bit, alongside my other research. Also using Heisig as mentioned to increase my knowledge and recollection of Chinese characters I hope that my writing and reading ability will increase with my spoken Mandarin.

So here is to another three months of Mandarin learning, and to hopefully many years of learning Mandarin happily and as excitedly as these first three months.

This Chinese proverb serves to remind us that daily effort is needed learn and grow. Sporadic efforts and variation in your concentration levels and efforts do not help achieving goals efficiently.

This proverb is from Mencius and can be used to describe someone with a short attention span.

一暴十寒
yī bào shí hán
one day's sun, ten days' frost

Photo Source:
Flickr

This Chinese proverb refers to everything having its own purpose and that though you might not be good at everything. Each and every person, and each and every thing has something it is good at.

恭喜!恭喜!! 今天庆祝国庆!
gōngxǐ! gōngxǐ!! jīntiān qìngzhù guóqìng!
Congratulations! Celebrate Chinese National Day Today!

Whilst I was going to write a piece about the huge Chinese National Day parade today, I thought I would link to some other great references that have much better pictures and stories than I do. As it is the largest and biggest parade in the history of well... ever. I think I will let the bigger publications have their time with this one.



One question I have heard a lot from my friends is why celebrate 60 years?
60 is a big number for the Chinese to celebrate because of the 12 year cycles of the Chinese Zodiac. 60 Years marks 5 cycles of the entire zodiac.

Probably the best video of the day here from Dan Chung on vimeo

Here are the 30 Daily Chinese Proverbs I published and translated into English, Hanyu Pinyin and Mandarin during September. You may also be interested in the 31 Proverbs from August.

This Chinese proverb refers to the act of profiting from somebody elses misfortune.

This Chinese proverb is one that is important for society and for one's self. To lead by example and to set yourself as a standard for other people to follow. In other words, by setting your good behavious and polite manners as an example. Other people around you will respect you with the same kindness and politeness.

It is important for us to act in a way that we are happy for everyone else around us to act.

以身作则
yǐ shēn zuò zé
To set a good example / Set yourself as the standard

This Chinese proverb means to do something wholeheartedly. With all of your heart and belief behind something you will apply your mind much more succesfully. Most often this proverb is used to say "with all my heart" regarding missing or loving someone.

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.

A county magistrate named Wang Lu was very greedy and took many bribes. One of his secretaries was equally corrupt, and often schemed for Wang Lu's deeds. One day a man lodged a complaint against the secretary to Wang Lu. The secretary's crimes were almost the same as the crimes the magistrate himself committed. Wang Lu was so frightened that he forgot his proper role in handling the case. Instead of issuing a judgment, he couldn't help writing these words concerning the complaint: "By stirring the grass, you have startled me who am like a snake under the grass!"

This Chinese proverb represents the process of bullying others because of your position or contacts. The proverb also can also be used when taking advantage of one's connections with powerful people.