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.