Experiences with learning Chinese

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

jeff_yao — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 05:04:29 GMT

Good luck in learning Chinese. Another way is to go to China/Taiwan / Singapore and study/live for a few months, I bet your Chinese will have a good boost.

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

Andrew Dugdell — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 00:20:07 GMT

Hey Greg, a little off topic for "speaking" Chinese but check this out from MSR. Jump straight to ~7:14 http://youtu.be/Nu-nlQqFCKg

Good luck on your first HSK exam !

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

Greg Low — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 01:04:40 GMT

Hi Jeff,

Yes, I try to visit there when I can. I spent time in Beijing last year and enjoyed it.

Hi Andrew,

Yes, I saw that. While it's really just an extension of existing technologies, it's so impressive to see it tied together so well. Thanks!

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

John Huang — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 23:55:45 GMT

Greg, You've done great learning work! Your vocabulary seems doubled since our last talk. This should allow you to use Chinese dictionary to learn Chinese. This is the way how I learned in China when I was a child.

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

Greg Low — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 01:38:25 GMT

Thanks John. Hope you're well!

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

Hayden — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 02:43:07 GMT

Hi Greg,

How long have you been learning Chinese?

You can read around 300 Characters. But what about your speaking? can you have a decent conversation?

Thanks.

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

Greg Low — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:46:14 GMT

Hi Hayden,

About 2 years. Not sure how many words for speaking but it's quite a few. My vocab has been growing steadily. The first time I was to attend an online class for an hour that was all in Chinese, I wondered how I'd go. But I do those now all the time ok. (Classes have a fairly constrained set of topics though)

I try to learn words in sets eg: above, below, in front, behind, left, right, or many things of the same type: blue, red, green, yellow, purple, white, grey, black, etc.

The Bit Bucket (Greg Low): IDisposable : An update on using Rosetta Stone: Studio is now so useful and not great value as an add-on

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:25:43 GMT

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re: Experiences with learning Chinese

Greg Linwood — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:45:07 GMT

You should try learning to sing songs in Chinese, it is a very effective method for anybody with a musical background even as an adult

You first learn to sing without necessarily learning the meaning of the words, then you learn the meaning of each word & finally you learn to write each character.

This approach brings many new words, each within a learning context which is memorised in three ways.

Learning via Chinese poetry is similar

re: Experiences with learning Chinese

Greg Low — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 10:59:35 GMT

Hi Greg,

Yes I know a number of people that have done that quite successfully. Many others reckon Karaoke works well :-)

I just wish I could find movies with pin yin subtitles. Just been watching "Safe" the Jason Statham movie. It's got quite a bit of Mandarin dialog and I'm ok with quite a bit of it. I think it's because they were targeting the language at a young girl in the movie.