Susan Lee asked:


Many people faced with the task of how to learn mandarin fly into a absolute panic. The symbols look so strange to none Chinese speakers, and the words sound nothing like the languages we may be accustomed to. But there are shortcuts to learning Chinese that will have even the most rookie student speaking this unique language in no time.

You can overcome the first issue – those strange-looking but beautiful symbols by separating speaking Chinese from the act of reading it. Admittedly Mandarin doesn’t use the Roman alphabet, or technically, any alphabet at all. Those symbols are called characters, and there are a lot of them. But fortunately, many English speakers learn to speak beginner Chinese without learning Chinese symbols, because Mandarin can be written in a Western alphabet called Pinyin. This greatly helps people like you not speaking Chinese with how to learn the Chinese language faster!

The second stumbling block – the sound of Mandarin words themselves can be explained by realizing that Mandarin is very dependent on pitch and tone. For example, the sound “ma” said in a high-pitched tone could mean “mother” in a different tone, it could mean “horse.” Thus, it’s very important that learners concerned with how to learn Chinese approach this mysterious language in a way that allows them to hear the words and phrases pronounced. Rocket Mandarin is a excellent language learning program for this reason; it will help you learn the Mandarin language in the quickest and most effective way and you could learn to speak basic Mandarin within 8-weeks.

When deciding how to learn Chinese, you must know which type of Chinese you need to study. There are quite a few variations of Chinese; whether these are dialects of a single language, or related but separate languages like Thai and Korean, for instance, is difficult to say. Two of the most commonly used variants of Chinese are Mandarin (the standard language of both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan), and Cantonese (more commonly spoken in Hong Kong). But each language variant is totally unique from the others, and a Cantonese speaker cannot be understood by a someone who speaks only Mandarin.  

In addition to practicing with a good audio-based program such as Rocket Chinese, it helps a lot to befriend a native speaker to chat with. This is true when learning any new language, but it’s a very important factor in how to learn Chinese. Have you ever heard someone say an unfamiliar name on the phone, and failed to understand what they were trying to say to you? This is because you can’t see the movements of their mouth as they say the words. With so many Chinese words dependent upon tone and the slightest variation of pronunciation, it helps so much to have a native Chinese speaker to watch as well as hear.

You say you don’t know any native Chinese speakers? I’ll bet you do! Is there a Chinese restaurant nearby? If its proprietors speak the variant of Chinese you want to study, make them your new best friends, because they’ll definitely will help you on how to learn Chinese! Is there a Chinese community in your area? In all likelihood, there will be Chinese people there. Look on the Internet for forums and meet-ups featuring Chinese language and culture. And as a last plan, you can learn a great deal from viewing Chinese movies.

Practice at least 30 minutes a day! You’ll never sound like a native Chinese speaker, but before you know it, you’ll be able to speak conversational Chinese with ease. And your friends will never know that only a few weeks ago, you had no idea how to converse Chinese!  Finally pay a visit to www.ecpod.com and you can make a lot of Chinese friends to test your Mandarin.

 

Raz Chan asked:


g business one of the most important things is being able to understand each other. When working in China it is a good idea to have a working knowledge of the language. At the very least it is a good idea to have some conversational skills. This can be of great benefit in bridging one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to business, language.

It is not hard to learn to speak Chinese if you have the right language program. There are a few things that you are going to want to look for when you are looking into a program that will help you to learn the Chinese language. The first thing you want to consider is a program that provides you with well-rounded exposure. This is one of the most important things when looking into a program to learn the Chinese language.

You are going to want a program that is interactive. A language program should be more than just a book and a set of audio lessons. It should have a way for learners to have support when questions arise or they have difficulty understanding something. In business misunderstandings especially when crossing language barriers can have devastating effects. This is why it is essential to know that you are correctly pronouncing a word or you have the correct structure done.

You also want to make sure that you are getting a program that is going to teach you some of the basics of the language. Such as how to recognize the Chinese words for various types of locations such as train stations, taxi station, restrooms and so forth.

You are also going to want to learn to speak Chinese from a program that is going to teach you how to structure a sentence and how to use the language in addition to assisting you in vocabulary building.

This is a vital part of any language program and essential for a program that is designed to assist those who want to learn to speak Chinese quickly for business purposes. You are also going to want a program that presents the language in both audio and visual format.

There is more to a language than just memorizing vocabulary and attempting to learn a language that way can make it incredibly difficult. This is why it is a good idea to consider a program that offers more than one presentation. Ultimately this is going to assist in making it easier to learn to speak Chinese.

There are dozens of language programs that claim to help you to learn to speak the Chinese language quickly. The best thing to do is to make sure that the language program you are looking into covers everything that you are going to need to learn how to speak Chinese quickly while making sure that you can get all the aspects of the language that are necessary to provide you with a good foundation.

Once a foundation is laid it is easy to pick up the variations and various terms that are necessary for learning the more subtle aspects of the language quickly making it easier to handle situations in business as they arise. This is an important skill for anyone learning a language for business purposes.