2017/04/14

Learning Mandarin

I'm not a teacher, neither a learner, just a native speaker who has some thoughts.
There is a TL;DR section in the end for those who are too lazy to read.


1.Motivation
          Motivation is what keeps you working on learning languages. If you don't have your motivation and don't use the language for a long time, you will forget it somehow. If your motivation is talking with people, talk with someone as soon as you can.  If your motivation is reading novels, find novels which you can understand most of the content and learn from those you can't understand. If your motivation is passing exams, study hard and do simulation exams to get used to the real exam. If you have lots of motivations. That's good, try one and when you get tired of it, try another one. My motivations are usually related to my interests. Such as finishing a novel, a game, a series of anime, but I will ask myself to make a note about some vocabularies or grammars and study them.

2.How to type out / Which to choose, Pinyin or Bopomofo (Zhuyin)? Simplified or Traditional characters?
     2-1.IME (Input Methods)
          There are lots ways to type out Mandarin. Pinyin and Bopomofo (as known as Zhuyin) are based on phonetics. These two are also systems of phonetic transcription. Perhaps you would worry about typing out which kind of characters. Nowadays, most input methods allow users type out both simplified and traditional characters, but some input methods don't support this function. If you worry about that, check before you choose. By the way, there are other input methods based on shapes or hybrid. (See Wiki for more information about IME and the reference about Pinyin & Bopomofo.)
     2-2.Pinyin or Bopomofo / Simplified or Traditional?
          I would suggest you consider your environment and motivation. If you plan to visit China or other places using Mandarin but not Taiwan, most people use Pinyin. Besides, there are more accessible Pinyin materials on the internet. If you have difficulty with understanding how to pronounce by Pinyin, or plan to visit Taiwan, you can try Bopomofo. Choosing simplified or traditional is a similar question. Some people may argue or mock simplified characters, but it depends on your own decision and no one stop you to study both. (There are two articles about mocking simplified characters or traditional characters, see the reference.)

3.Grammar
          I want to point out 2 things. The first one, Mandarin has grammar, but scholars are still building the theory and the current theory is very different from English grammar (or should I say European?). It's hard to understand and still changing. The second one, a person having ability to speak a language doesn't mean he/she also have the ability to teach. The following is some examples to show you how different Mandarin grammar is.
          The basic word order is SVO, but it's different. 我打你 (I hit you) and 你打我 (you hit I), it seems like understandable. What about 一車坐五人 (one car sit five person) and 五人坐一車 (five person sit one car)? Both mean "five people sit in one car". One more example, 小吃 (small eat). I think it's usually translated into merienda or light meal. What I'm trying to say is you can study English word by word, but I suggest you don't study Mandarin by the same way. In my opinion, it's better to understand the whole sentence, even the situation and then study the morpheme in the sentence. By the way, try not to ask a Mandarin native speaker "why". Ask "How would you say in this situation?" or "What would you say in this situation?" and examples (as simple as possible). Unless you believe he/she have the ability to explain or teach. You may ask "Is there any Mandarin Grammar textbook?" There are some. However, I think it's still too hard to understand. If you want to try, you can try this one, Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar.

TL;DR Section
          Simplified or Traditional? Pinyin or Zhuyin? I just want to let you know there is another choice, not only Simplified and Pinyin. You can even study both if you want. Consider your motivation every time before you decide. You will have lots of grammar questions which I can't solve, but I write some simple examples and suggestions in the Grammar section. You can come back to read when you have these questions.

Reference (EN=English, TC=Traditional, SC=Simplified):
EN Wikipedia: Chinese input methods for computers
EN Wikipedia: Chinese grammar
EN Learning Chinese – Pinyin or Zhuyin?
EN 郎不歸鄉 (joke)
TC Re: [問卦] 有沒有人學過中文文法?

Special Thanks:
Polyglossia Community (Telegram)
Margot
Luc
玄玄
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