Learning Chinese
 

Ok, so I am an average white guy here and I have decided to learn Chinese. Not sure which dialect to go with, so thats my 1st question: Which dialect would help me out in life more?

2nd Question - any good tutors out there not too pricey willing to teach a white ghost?

Thanks Revscene!

Proper mandarin please. Not shanghai or beijing dialect or stupid cantonese.

My buddy who is an Indonesian, he spent half a year learning Mandarin online, sing
karaoke, and from movies (with sub). He picked up some of the basic then he went to
China to take 1/2 yr beginner mandarin courses.

Now he can read simple chinese characters and pick up TW/mainlander chicks in richmond.

...who would want to do that??

his buddy ^

^
Lawl

^
^
^
Fail advice

for an indonesia, anyone above the equator in Asia is Chinese...lol

chinese can be broken down to 2 main spoken languages, mandarin and cantonese. cantonese is spoken in hk, and basically the lowermainland of china. everywhere else is mandarin and or a variation of it via dialecs.

the written language is all the same, so if u can master this, even if u cant speak the language, u can write what u need down and it would be pretty universally understood all through china (unless they cant read chinese, then ur screwed)

as to where, college's and universities do offer beginner courses.

as with any language, written language is much more formal than the spoken language and thus there are a lot of short slangs.

business wise, mandarin is a better bet as its the preferred spoken language by majority of china.

you can try rosetta stone
i heard great things with that program...

Learn Mandarin. It's much more useful than Cantonese (which isn't even the second-most common spoken Chinese Language).

Dan_Guy, are you still in school? You could look at taking courses there if you are.

Otherwise, you could also look into adult or continuing education places like Langara or VCC and the like.

Cantonese is only a dialect. Only around 35-40million people speak
cantonese, then cantonese can be broken down into sub-dialects like Zhong
Shan dialect, GuangZhou dialect, Shaoguan dialect, Zhaoxing dialect,
Chaosan.

Mandarin is the only way to go, it's the official language and much easier for foreigners to learn

yeah... but still didnt stop me from not understanding a single word any of my old relatives speak. :confused:

mandarin is MUCH easier to learn, only 4 tones, while cantonese has 8 tones.

Mandarin is easier than Cantonese. Its also a lot more formal and polite sounding than Cantonese.

mandarin

i can tutor you chinese if you teach me english

-If you want to deal with china people (be it business, personal, whatever), learn mandarin
-If you find yourself around Taiwanese people more, learn mandarin
-Otherwise learn Cantonese

Although it is way easier to learn, mandarin is not as useful as people want to make it out to be. If you think it will get you ahead somehow, then you probably have a future in finding supplies of cheap products to import into Canada or something like that.

But if you really want to learn more than the language, Mandarin and Cano can't be compared. Go to some shithole city in China and compare it to Hong Kong, and you will never want to hear Mandarin spoken again.

cantonese is okay but theres a lot of slang... and simplified chinese(mand) is easier to write out

so damn true.
But then again, everytime I go back to Hong Kong, the amount of Mandarin I hear increases :(

i swear im the only asian that thinks beijing mandarin is the pirate speak of china!

listen to someone speak beijing mandarin, recognized all those nasal sounds, alll thats arr's err's and rolling tongues.

now apply pirate speak!

combine...

xi xi shi shi (real pinyin) then got "ARRR MEITY SHE BE A FINE BOAT LAD!"

hahaha, fits right in! :D

^ You're not the only one.
It's really hard to understand lol. All those tongue rolls drive me crazy.

do you have tits?

actually cantonese has 6 tones (the 9 tone system is only for linguistic purposes. tones 7-9 are the same as tones 1, 3, and 6 respectively but for words ending in -k -p -t glottal stops)

the 9 tones can be heard by saying these numbers in cantonese: 3 9 4 0 5 2 7 8 6. Note 7 has the same tone as 3, but 7 has the -t ending and so linguistics treat them separately. Similarly with 8 and 6. For someone trying to learn canto, the 6 tone system is way better and cause less confusion.


but anyway taiwanese mandarin sounds the best IMO

^^ I'm no expert in Cantonese, but 3 and 7 sure don't sound identical to my ears (-t ending notwithstanding), nor do 8 and 6.

So there's 4 different tones right there, in your example :lol

what? You're saying 三 and 七 don't have the same pitch? similarly, 四 vs 八, and 二 vs 六 ? They sound the same to me pitch wise. Try elongating the vowel sound without saying the stop at the end.

If you do a google search or w/e you'll see what I mean. It's not necessary to treat tones 7, 8, and 9 separately. It will more than likely confuse a beginner.

they divide the tones up as
1 - high level (三, 詩, 急 for -p ending)
2 - high rising (史, 粉)
3 - mid level (試, 四, 八 for -t ending)
4 - low falling (時, 琴)
5 - low rising (市, 我 )
6 - low level (事, 路, 木 for -k ending example)

You teach a beginner the 6 tones, and they can say pretty much every word.

I don't want to get into the details and all that but if I were to teach a beginner how to say 七, i'd just tel them how to say it, and tell them it's tone 1 for instance (if they are trying to write down pronunciation + tone on a sheet or paper or w/e for future reference)

I'm no expert, but it sounds right to me.


Whether there ARE minor discrepancies or not, I'll just say that 6 tones is really all you need. there's no need to learn anything else and any minor tone "tweaks" will be learned naturally through tv, radio, or having actual conversations. I mean look at mandarin (proper mandarin from China), there are definitely more than 4 tones. The neutral tone itself is a 5th tone and it actually has 4 different pitches depending on the tone of the previous word. The 3rd tone becomes a half tone when followed by another word (ie. it falls but doesn't rise again), etc...
a newbie will just get all confused XD