Moderator:OldBoring
linguoboy wrote:When you asked "what kind of Chinese?" I thought you meant what variety, e.g. Standard Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Jiaoliao, etc.
I chose to learn Taiwanese Mandarin in traditional script. My teacher was from Nantong (南通) by immigrated to Taiwan before coming to the USA.
Yasna wrote:I am learning Chinese mostly out of personal interest, but I hope it will be useful professionally at some point too. My goal is to become proficient enough to read newspapers and sophisticated books smoothly, understand all sorts of media, and have in-depth conversations on most topics I would be comfortable speaking about in English. Listening comprehension has proven to be the most difficult aspect, but I continue to improve so I think I'm on the right path.
Same to all of the above, except I think she was from Taipei.linguoboy wrote:When you asked "what kind of Chinese?" I thought you meant what variety, e.g. Standard Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Jiaoliao, etc.
I chose to learn Taiwanese Mandarin in traditional script. My teacher was from Nantong (南通) by immigrated to Taiwan before coming to the USA.
First, I'd like to know when you started to learn Chinese.
Second, how do you learn Chinese?
Third, what do you learn Chinese for, interest, work or something else?
Fourth, do you like Chinese, or maybe you don't like it since you are forced to learn it?
Fifth, what do you think is the most difficult part to learn Chinese?
Sixth, are you happy with your Chinese studies now, such as the way you learn it, your level, your Chinese teacher, etc...
Everyday Chinese, I guess. Enough to read a paper, watch a movie and have simple conversations. I don't want to write a PhD thesis in it.At last, if you had a choice, what kind of Chinese would you like to learn, basic Chinese, everyday speech, business Chinese...and how do you want to learn it?
Meera wrote:I would like to learn Taiwanese Mandarin in traditional charecters, but I don't think that is too practical so I think if I was to learn Chinese I'd learn simplified.
linguoboy wrote:Meera wrote:I would like to learn Taiwanese Mandarin in traditional charecters, but I don't think that is too practical so I think if I was to learn Chinese I'd learn simplified.
What makes you think it's not practical? That's exactly what I did in preparation for our trip to China.
It isn't used much in the PRC, but there are plenty of books that teach it and knowing it would still help you read simplified since there's a lot of overlap. I learned traditional and found I could read simplified fairly well without having to look a lot of characters up. It's inevitable that you'll pick up some of both, really.Meera wrote:I was thinking that maybe traditional wouldn't be used much or that course books wouldn't have it?
mōdgethanc wrote:It isn't used much in the PRC, but there are plenty of books that teach it and knowing it would still help you read simplified since there's a lot of overlap. I learned traditional and found I could read simplified fairly well without having to look a lot of characters up. It's inevitable that you'll pick up some of both, really.Meera wrote:I was thinking that maybe traditional wouldn't be used much or that course books wouldn't have it?
You're lucky. Mine only taught shitplified.vijayjohn wrote:Yeah. Simplified is just traditional with some of the characters changed, after all. In college, everyone in my Chinese classes had to be able to read both but also had to pick which one they wanted to write in. Most chose to write in traditional Chinese. I would expect other North American universities to be similar.
Because that shit is ugly, and feudal characters are still commonly used here.OldBoring wrote:Why do the laowai want to learn the feudal capitalist traditional characters. Simplified characters belong to the proletariat.
First, I'd like to know when you started to learn Chinese.
Second, how do you learn Chinese?
Third, what do you learn Chinese for, interest, work or something else?
Fourth, do you like Chinese, or maybe you don't like it since you are forced to learn it?
Fifth, what do you think is the most difficult part to learn Chinese?
Sixth, are you happy with your Chinese studies now, such as the way you learn it, your level, your Chinese teacher, etc...
Karavinka wrote:Going from Traditional to Simplified isn't a big deal at all. I can tell from my own experiences that all it takes to go from Traditional to Simplified is just some getting used to the most common patterns, but it's reportedly much harder to go the other way around.
Karavinka wrote:Not only the characters look more complex, Simplified Chinese often merges different characters into one. 志 (zhi4; will, intent) and 誌 (zhi4; record) become merged as 志; so the word for "magazine" (za2zhi4) is spelt 杂志 in Simplified, 雜誌 in Traditional but your "willpower" (yi4zhi4li4) is 意志力 in both Traditional and Simplified. I can imagine why going the other way can be headache.
Karavinka wrote:Learning the first five hundred is more difficult than the next 1500, so good luck there. Learning a new Hanzi can become almost trivial past +2000 as you'll readily recognize its components and have a rough guess at its phonetics.
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