Reply to best way for a beginner to learn Chinese

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "best way for a beginner to learn Chinese"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I've been learning Chinese for a few years. I'm not bragging when I say that in living in multiple countries and knowing many expats going in all different directions, I have never met anyone who has a better accent in foreign languages. In three different European countries I lived for just a couple years each, [b]I was frequently mistaken for a native speaker of those languages[/b] despite only learning the language briefly.

I have now been told by several people that I pronounce Chinese *almost* well enough to be considered native. But this was a struggle. With Chinese, I tried to use rosetta stone, other online courses, and books that I ordered. I listened to the speakers over and over, and practiced speaking for months. Then, I visited Singapore and tried to speak some Chinese to my colleague, and he was like "dude what are you saying?" Apparently pronunciation is much more subtle, and a lot of it is because of the tones (but there are some tough sounds for a lot of speakers - q, x, r, c). So, I got an online tutor. She went over speaking drills and sounds over and over and over. It is fairly common knowledge online that unlike french, spanish, german, or other basic European languages, Chinese is really something not advisable to learn from a book or online course. You need a live person there telling you how you're butchering the language in real time in order to really improve.[/quote]

I'm impressed! Any tips on how you were able to learn how to pronounce? [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics