r/MandarinChinese

I have some newer Mandarin learning books, but I also have done older books from the 1970s and before, which use Wade-Giles transliterations. Some have even older transliterations.

Would it sound odd to speak Mandarin with these transliterations? For example, just looking at the map of China, I see Peking, Nanking, Foochow, Amoy, Tientsin, Canton, Huhshot, etc.?

I decided to learn chinese just because and i’ve found the duolingo isn’t really helpful and hellochinese is pretty much oriented towards american (Im australian). So what’s a good app i can use, preferably one that’s free and has minimal to no ads :)

I’m 25M from India and I’ve been visiting China regularly over the last few years because of family work/business connections there. The more time I spend there, the more I’ve realized I genuinely want to learn Mandarin properly.

Mainly because:

I enjoy talking to people from different cultures

I’m curious about Chinese daily life/culture

I want to be able to have real conversations instead of depending on translation/apps

I’d eventually like to become conversational and socially comfortable in China

My biggest constraint is time. I can realistically give around 45 mins–1 hour daily consistently.

My priority is:

speaking

listening

conversation ability

sounding natural

Not really focused on:

handwriting

exams/HSK

heavy grammar study

I currently have access to:

Pimsleur Mandarin

SuperChinese

If you had to design the most efficient daily routine possible for someone in my situation, what would you do?

Would love advice from people who became conversational while balancing work/full-time responsibilities.

Hi everyone! I'm an ABC/ABT who's been trying to re-learn Chinese as an adult. Growing up in America, I was always embarrassed to speak Chinese and ashamed of my heritage, so my Mandarin was pretty much useless until I started self-studying. I've put a good amount of time into it, and I've gotten to the level where I feel comfortable speaking now, but I almost always get the "your Chinese sounds so ABC" comment from friends and strangers I meet, which can be discouraging at times. Since I've never lived in Taiwan or China, I'm pretty conscious of my American accent when speaking Chinese.

I was wondering if any of you would be able to give me some pointers on my accent, and to give me some suggestions on how to improve. Any specifics on what features of my accent sound "ABC" would be appreciated. Thanks so much!

Quick recording of me speaking:
https://voca.ro/19d3YTc5wOSs

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Sometimes I can say something in Chinese and it’s technically correct, but I’m not sure if it actually sounds natural.

Like, a native speaker would understand me, but maybe they wouldn’t say it that way.

Recently I’ve been doing more casual speaking practice, and the most helpful part has been when someone tells me things like, “That’s not wrong, but we’d usually say it like this.”

That kind of feedback is honestly way more useful than just being corrected for grammar mistakes.

It made me realize that a lot of my Chinese is understandable, but still sounds kind of translated.

Has anyone else dealt with this?

What helped you sound more natural when speaking Chinese?

I know 玉 is a rare surname, but I really like its annotations and I think it softens the feel of 伟志 to not sound overly masculine, but I wanna get the opinion of others and native speakers.

I recently read a write-up on how 小姐 is nowadays not necessarily a safe way of addressing a young woman because in some circles this term has come to be regarded as derogatory or disparaging, it (apparently) being evocative of "ladies of loose morals". I think that's tragic, what with the term 小姐 literally being quite courteous, but I can't change the way things are, so that leaves me wondering: what are safe forms of address toward females—but also toward men. Is 太太 still safe, or is 女士 safer? How about young girls, either teenagers or children? How about men? Surely 先生 is still okay for grown men? How about teenage boys? And how about the elderly? I'd like to be updated on what's currently considered best because I think my textbooks may be a little outdated. Also, please do point out if there are important differences between mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and diasporas. Thanks all.

Hi! I am looking for a mandarin language partner. I would be happy to help with English. My mandarin is very limited but would love to meet once or twice a month to have a meal and practice as well as text etc.

I live in the chamblee area.

Total fluency to me means you can, for example, go on Chinese TV and give an unscripted interview while being at ease, comfortable, and confident. It's what Jodie Foster is capable of in French, even though she's not a native speaker. (Search YouTube for "jodie foster interview french" to see what I mean.)

I wonder, do any non-Chinese exist who have this level of competency in Chinese? I doubt it for the simple reason that all vids I see on YouTube of foreigners speaking Mandarin, are mostly dudes and gals who have achieved fluency w.r.t. practical household talk and are quite smug about that, to the point where they seem to consider themselves quite fit to comment on the language as "experts". I very much doubt though that they could match (in Chinese) what Jodie Foster does in French. In any case I haven't seen any video evidence of it.

But maybe someone here knows of foreigners who have reached this level? I'd be interested to hear about it.

What bothers me most about the incredible number of homophones in Mandarin is not the effort of learning them from a vocabulary list and the occasional confusion that may cause, but rather how they interfere with what I consider to be the normal reflexes of a learner's mind to try to understand what one hears even when what's being said contains words one hasn't heard before. Here's an example:

Let's say I know 工 as part of 工作 and 工夫, and I'm aware of its standalone meaning "work". Let's say I also know 电, electricity, both standalone and as part of 充电 and 电影. Now let's say one day I take a walking tour with a guide somewhere, and he's showing us around an old town and explaining things in Mandarin. While we're standing in front of a some building I hear him use the word "gōngdìan" several times. I don't know this combination, but my mind enthusiastically attempts to piece something together from the spoken form of these two syllables. They sound like 工 and 电, work and electricity! I guess he's talking about a power station, or a generator, or a something like that? Surely this is a building where electricity got generated, or at least some work to do with electricity got done! Nice how in spite of my limited comprehension I can piece things together, same as in other languages I've learned!

Except, of course, I'm quite wrong. He's saying "gōngdìan" alright, but this gōng is 宫 and this diàn is 殿, and together they mean "palace". The word has absolutely nothing to do with 工 or 电, and so my assumption that I'd achieved a little understanding was actually counterproductive, not so much because I missed what the guide was actually saying, but—which is much worse—because my mind is actually forging incorrect associations. Unless I go through the trouble afterwards of actually verifying my inference somehow (in a dictionary or by asking someone), I will walk away from the guided tour thinking I'd learned a new word on the fly, while actually I didn't at all.

IOW, this way of trying to improve listening comprehension is actually quite reliable in all languages except Chinese, where this absolutely does not work. You'll get it wrong far more often than you'll get it right, so when learning Chinese it's best to not even try to best-guess the meaning of unknown words even if you hear them correctly and can associate them with some meaning. So then how do you try? Frankly I don't know. Where listening comprehension is concerned, I find that my usual way of improving it (in other languages) doesn't apply. In the case of Chinese, you pretty much have to find out what the written form is before you tell yourself you've learned some new vocab. And that's quite a nuisance. It also makes it quite clear, imo, that learning "spoken Chinese" only, using nothing but Pinyin to note words down, is hopeless. It is an intrinsic property of Chinese that you need to know the characters if you want to move beyond the basics—so that's what I'm doing, but that doesn't fix the problem I just described of being unable to infer the meaning of new words from their sound and context.

What y'all say?

Consider the question "Can I charge my phone here please?" Google translates this as "请问我可以在这里给手机充电吗?"

Two things surprise me here. First, why not simply "请问(我)可以(在这里)充电我的手机吗?" What I mean is, GT's translation moves the direct object (手几) before the verb, but why do that?

Second, even if moving 手几 in front of the verb is better (more idiomatic?) here, why does GT use 给? I would expect 把 instead.

Please suggest good apps for learning chinese for beginners

I am going to start learning Mandarin but I'm quite lost about where to start first. Is there any apps or website i could use?