My teacher is asking me for help with her research. She is looking for words that are only one word in English but two in Chinese, which might give (first year) students problems. For example, or:或者/还是 late: 很晚/迟到 later:然后/后来

scroggalog · 14 days

Yeah, that's what I mean. The dictionary I linked to lists exactly that kind of words. It's not written for native speakers, so all the synonyms are typcially based on what English-speaking people have problems with. Example: 辦法／方法，鄙視／輕視／藐視／小看／看不起，逼近／靠近／接近. And so on. It's really quite an awesome book.

scroggalog · 15 days

Any synonym dictionary will give you tons of examples. I realise that not all of them are relevant for beginners, but a lot are. Check something like this for example:

Chinese Synonyms Usage Dictionary

You (or your teacher) can probably find lists of such words online, too.

perpetualjoe · 29 days

In difference to what other people seem to think, I actually think language exchanges are excellent. I've had more than ten that lasted longer than a couple of months and I have seldom encountered serious problems. I've learnt an enormous amount of Chinese from this as well. Of course, I've tried at least twice that many times and stopped meeting people for various reasons, but talking too much English hasn't been a major problem.

The reason I like language exchanges is that you can and should talk about how to practise, what languages you use and so on. This is much, much harder with friends. Also, if you start treating your friends like language partners, they might start thinking you're a drag. With a language exchange partner, you can really ask all the questions you want until you're satisfied. You can't do this with friends, at least not often. Teachers seldom have time with in-depth discussions of grammar, word usage, pronunciation and so on.

You can read more about this here (language exchanges).

Regarding language battles, I think this article on Sinosplice is excellent (I'm surprised no-one else has linked to this yet).

In essence, the best thing you can do is improve your Chinese to a point where you speak better Chinese than they speak English. As soon as this happens, Chinese will be the default language whenever real communication is the problem. The number of people who persist speaking English anyway are very few indeed. I know this is not very helpful.

You can of course also try what other people have suggested, i.e. persist in Chinese no matter what, but this would be very bad in a language exchange.

You can also pretend that you don't know English. I'm Swedish and sometimes when I just can't stand another "Hello, how are you?" or "Hi, are you American?", I reply in Swedish. Whatever they say in English, I reply in Swedish. Then, when total confusion ensues, I switch to Chinese. Works almost every time. If you don't happen to speak Swedish or any other language you can be fairly sure they don't know, invent one. Klingon sounds nice.

logospogos220 · 1 month

I don't use Windows so I can't give you any detailed help, but I'm pretty sure this can be done. If it doesn't work from Excel, you can try opening the file in a powerful text editor (not notepad) that allows you to change the encoding.

logospogos220 · 1 month

Try? If you export from Excel, you can choose the file type and encoding. Select according to registered99's instructions. It's not that hard. If you don't know what CSV and UTF-9 is, five minutes on Wikipedia will solve this for you.

demthumbs · 2 months

I started learning when I was 23 as well, which is roughly four years ago now. Sure, I've spent two of those years in Taiwan, but the rest I've spent studying in Sweden, sometimes along with other subjects. I'm not at something close to C1 (can read and listen to almost anything, can communicate anything with reasonable fluency, albeit not 100% correctly all the time).

I wouldn't worry a second about age if I were you. Other things matter much, much more. Also, StellaMate's answer is probably the best one. Good luck!

PostAllTheThings · 2 months

I think that's the best you'll get, because having definitions would be very hard. That would mean most of the poster is covered with English, because explaining characters like 了, 的 or 个 is not trivial, provided that the textbook "(a measure word)" and "(a particle)" is not acceptable.

Besides, it probably looks cooler without English and you'll learn the definitions soon enough. :)

bluebassy1306 · 2 months

Third, you mean?

kayina · 2 months

That depends on what you mean by "simplified", I suppose. If you mean characters that exist in a more complex version, but where the simpler version is more common, 台 would be another example.

GreeneyHZ · 2 months

I've been running a language corner here for a year or so and I usually just have some games or topics to get people started, i.e. I don't do anything too serious. Here's one game you can try, that has worked out very well for me (work well for any language, it's even fun for native speakers):

http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940

GoP-Demon · 2 months

My first reaction was to say that "shui4" is the correct one, but after reading about ten forum discussions in (simplified) Chinese, I gather that lots of people say "shuo1" as well. I've mostly heard "shui4", though, and asking a friend who's Chinese is good (she's a teacher from Beijing), she also said “shui4”. What's formally correct is perhaps another matter and not necessarily related to what people actually say. :) Still, it seems obvious that opinions differ here.

TheCapn · 2 months

I used Chinesepod quite a lot, but make sure you don't get stuck at the lower levels for too long since they use quite a lot of English.

LionLeo · 2 months

Here are some general advice for beginners. I don't think everything is relevant for you, but most is. I agree with what other people have said, learn some basic characters, perhaps the 100 most common ones or so. You can find them here, for instance. I also suggest you check out Chinesepod (listen whenever you're walking, cooking or whatever, listening is very much about quantity).

I think the most important thing is to know what you want to achieve and then make some kind of plan how to reach that goal. You can achieve quite a lot in three months, probably much more than you think. :)

Good luck, have fun!

Molndrake · 2 months

I actually have @Fluentflix on my list, I must have accidentally deleted it. Thanks for your suggestions, I'll check them out.

Guard01 · 2 months

Yes, but since we're explaining this to an English speaking person, I think that's very relevant. In other words, I think your original explanation needs quite a lot of expansion if it's going to be helpful for beginners.

Molndrake · 2 months

Thanks for the suggestion, but this isn't what I'm after. There are hundreds of accounts with such tweets. What I'm after is people tweeting about learning itself.

Molndrake · 2 months

I'm planning to start using Weibo, too. Since you seem to be in the know, can you perhaps provide some suggestions for people to follow there, then? Please apply the same criteria as I did in my original question. Thanks!

Guard01 · 2 months

Isn't this stretching it a little bit? I mean, I know what you mean, but for someone not familiar with the correct answer, I doubt this will be very helpful.

Guard01 · 2 months

"我快到了"

Molndrake · 2 months

And the TLDR version: I found that explaining idioms to people who don't study Chinese was extremely helpful for remembering the idioms (I translated them to Swedish and explained them). This works quite well even if you have no real student to teach (invent an imaginary friend, if you don't already have one.

Also, teaching complicated concepts such as grammar by drawing, summarising and explaining in easy terms as if to a beginner is a useful way of making explicit what you know implicitly. It's also a neat way of checking if you really understand a concept. If you can teach it, you know it fairly well.

Guard01 · 2 months

There are hundreds of decks, most focus on words, some on characters, but very few on sentences.

erikmyxter · 2 months

I haven't applied for this particular scholarship, but medical tests are usually time limited. The ones I've taken have been valid for three months. I don't know if it's the same here, but if you had the check done long ago, I think you can be pretty sure it's not valid.

Solarin88 · 2 months

I'm not really sure what the problem is. There are millions of things you could do, but it all depends on what you want to achieve. If you include reading, your options are almost endless (depending on how much effort you want to invest and how you define "intermediate"). With sound, you also have quite a lot to choose from (radio, music, podcasts, TV). If you specify what you're trying to achieve, it will be much easier to help.

Molndrake

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