Anyone interested in Chinese?

Everything. Really.

First you sort out do you want to learn the traditional or the simplified? (I personally prefer simplified). Next thing to do is get a good dictionary, pref one with both your language and Chinese (eg: English Chinese) which should have:

- pronounciation of the word
- meaning of the word
- possible usages of the word

Also recommend that you listen to more chinese sources - tapes, news, videos (everyone likes videos and dvds.)

have fun. :wink:

I think the most challenging job to learn Chinese for a beginner would be its fuzziness if your mother tongue belongs to the Indo-European language family. The language has no inflections. The connection of words in a sentence depends more on meaning than on form. Moreover, the same word could be verb, noun, adjective, etc. at the same time without any change of form. This does not mean simpleness at all--if you suppose so. On the contrary, this could cause great trouble for a novice.
However, as a famous Chinese writer Ji Xianlin says, the magic and charm of Chinese is just its fuzziness.

I am from Taiwan and I speak Mandarin, too. We write in Chinese traditional instead of simplified. Despite the challenges, Learning Mandarin is quite fun and useful since China has become a new market in Asia, even in the world.

thank you all for your encouragement. I speak english and arabic and have taught myself Latin (to help me learn other romance languages - french & spanish are works in progress) - but Chinese is going to be the biggest challenge.

Inflection is the main driver of the languages I have come into contact with (less so english which is more about word order), so it wll be a real challenge to tackle something completely different.

Which is spoken more, simplified or traditional? Will I be able to communicate if I know one and not the other? In arabic there is traditional that is used on television across the arabophone countries, as everyone understands it, whilst each country has its own unique dialect. Everyone understands the traditional whilst they struggle with the dialects. Is it the same with simplified and traditional?

The first thing I want to clarify is that simplified or traditional Chinese refers only to the written form. That is to say, a word which has its simplified and traditional forms has only one pronunciation. The whole China, except Taiwan and Hongkong, uses the simplified Chinese in press, books--actually the Microsoft operating system I use is in simplified Chinese.
China also has a lot of dialects which differ from each other greatly. But if you know Mandarin, which we call "pu tong hua", it is sufficient to communicate. For me, dialects of the southern part of the provience in which I live could be foreign languages. However, I can communicate with people form that part freely because we all know "pu tong hua". In most time we talk to each other from different parts of China in "pu tong hua".
To sum it up, the best choice of the Chinese variety for you to learn is simplified Mandarin.

Interested in Chinese
Hi, i'm interested in learning chinese, i'd like to communicate with you, if u want we can chat sometimes thanks

Hi, gerd, it would be nice to chat with you, but I'm afraid I don't have much time. Maybe you can write me emails if you want to:)

i recently went to teach English in China [Shanghai to be specific] and i learned basic mandarin. I still wish to learn more mandarin so i'm on a chinese course back here in the uk. It is a challenge indeed. I'm not good enough to email my ex-chinese students in mandarin but i'm slowly incorporating it into my emails. My biggest problem is remembering the tones for each word.

Reasons why i wish to continue with mandarin is not because of the learning, but because i think it will be very valuable in the near future.

good luck to all who are learning chinese anyway. It is fun.

Hi, everyone:
I am from China. I want to make some friends here. I like music, sports, cybergames etc. Anyone want to learn chinese language can add me to you contact list, we can take a voice chat online, and you can hear the pronounciation in mandarin.
my ICQ:122685084

Hello from Goalkeeperelle
Hi, thanks for being interested in the Chinese language, everyone!
It's my first post in forum and it happened to be the Chinese New Year's Eve! Happy Festival for all Chinese here!

I am a Chinese student, now studying translation and interpreting in Australia for the coming one and a half years. Anyone in Australia who wants to learn Chinese (I can speak mandarin and cantonese, and a few French sentences,hoohoo), feel free to call me. (Please send me e-mail before hand at [email protected])

I might not be good at teaching the language, yet I am a good language learner and would like to share with you the experience of learning the languages. :wink:

KUNG HEY FAT CHOY to all - wishing you a wonderful year of the DOG!!!

thanks=谢谢(xie xie )
你好=(hello)
再见=(goodbye)
I am also a Chinese.you can email me
Chinese:
我也是一个中国人，你可以给我发电子邮件
[email protected]

祝大家狗年吉祥
Translation:
wish you happiness in the year of dog

I know that Chinese (standard Chinese/Mandarin) has their own pin yin system.

How about Taiwanese? Do they have their own "pin yin" system? A friend of mine told me that they do have their own system and they don't use alphabets. What is the Taiwanese "pin yin" system?

What is the Cantonese "pin yin" system? I heard there was a Yale system and other variations, thanks.

From worldatlas.com Japan shows the historical time periods in a nicely laid out fashion with info. I know China has something like that there does anybody know the link to it? It was there before... and I hope it's still there now, thanks.

Taiwanese?
Now they mostly speak Mandarin (because some historic reasons) I have a friend from taiwain ,she speaks pretty well mandari but some also speaks minnanhua ,which stems from Fujian Province in china

Does minnanhua use alphabets in it's "pin yin" system? Cool, thanks.

minnan means Fujian province in China,while hua means language(dialect exactly),so ,it is a dialect of Chinese.In Chinese Every dialect has a rule of the spoken language while the written language is more or less the same.Cantonese is the mostly used dialect,so someone did some research and found an alphabet,remember:the alphabet is mostly used and designed for alieners.In China there are several thousand of dialect,but many are not popular and do not have an alphabet

Curious about Chinese dialect?You will find the language amazing!For example ,there are maybe more than 10 dialects in one county(in China county is subject to city)so even people from just thirty kilometers cannot communicate using there separate dialect at some places in China especially in the south part of jiangsu province Howeve nearly everybody(especially youngsters)can speak pretty good Mandarin ,so if you are interested in Chinese ,study Mandarin

Cool, thanks.

Has anybody seen the movie called "The Bird People of China"? I heard the term BIRD PEOPLE is actually an insult to the people of China? Does this include all other Chinese people? How's this an insult? And did the movie some how symbolically, metaphorically, etc. display such an insult? Thanks, appreciate it.

I thought the movie was called "The Bird People of China" because of the bird school where they taught kids how to fly in the village.