I'm about to start learning mandarin chinese myself, without any teachers but with a help of textbooks and video (audio) lessons. My question is: where do I start, I mean, is it better to start with pinyin or with Han characters? What words do I need to start with? What about grammar? Maybe someone can recommend me a good book to start with?
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Ahhh they're not hieroglyphs! – Stumpy Joe Pete Oct 23 '13 at 16:48
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1Thank you for pointing out. Is it better now? – Bohdan Oct 23 '13 at 18:28
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After you start learning, you can use this site as a sort of forum to ask for clarification or help! – grayQuant Oct 26 '13 at 22:14
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Please see this: chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/1120/… – xqMogvKW Feb 18 '14 at 6:11
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Regarding starting with pinyin or characters: It's funny, I recently asked this question myself. In your case, I would recommend:
Starting with basics of pinyin... getting the hang of pronunciation. TalkBank provides a pinyin chart that pronounces each for you given the selected tone. It's really cool. Just choose a tone, and click on a vowel/initial.
Learn the 4 tones.
Mā: 妈 = mother
Má: 麻 = hemp
Mǎ: 马 = horse
Mà: 骂 = scoldStart pairing characters with pinyin. Learn the basics/greetings.
Nǐ hǎo: 你好 = hello
Xièxiè：谢谢 = thank you
Bù kèqì: 不客气 = you're welcome
Zài jiàn: 再见 = good byeSolidify what you've learned by practicing in a chat room. I recommend Zhongwen.com > then go to LiaoTian! (chat). Informal chat rooms were hugely helpful for me to get started.
- Once you have some basics of chatting down, maybe head over to a Chinese restaurant and try ordering in Chinese (most speak Mandarin or at least some Mandarin that I've encountered). Or find a local Chinese market, or anything... Anything for you to go and practice speaking Mandarin. This will get you comfortable speaking. But you need a foundation with the words first. So keep practicing them.
- For a book, Stumpy Joe recommended this one. Also look at the community wiki for Chinese learning resources.
Good luck! If I think of anything else I'll let ya know.
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Your answer is just what I was asking for. Very thankful for book, chat room and TalkBank recommendation. – Bohdan Oct 23 '13 at 20:16
Start with PinYin. Don't worry about writing and grammar at this stage. Find a native speaker to correct your tones. I have used chinese-bootcamp.com practice session several times, very useful to practice with native speakers.
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Pinyin is difficult and illogical for people who don't already know Chinese. And it makes it easy to ignore tones until it's too late. I suspect learning through pinyin is a reason so few otherwise fluent foreigners have good tones. – hippietrail Feb 16 '14 at 7:56
