so im trying to teach myself chinese. i have a few books on it. Its kinda difficult esp because i am just beginning and its a completely new concept. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to go about learning chinese in an efficient way. If anyone has any advice, just throw it my way.

 

Would you be able to travel?

 

i start college in the fall and i am taking chinese there, im just trying to get ahead because i hear its quite difficult. the plan is to get a level of proficiency that my college (Duke) says i am able to go abroad. but i need a way to learn some of the language before i start official classes in it.

 

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It's not easy, and I suck at it, despite spending 12 years learning it.

I wish I had taken it more seriously in school though.

 

When I was trying to learn Japanese, I was advised to get myself a Japanese girlfriend and then I would learn it very quickly. My wife didn't approve of that idea, but you should consider it

 

My suggestion would be to try and familiarize yourself with some of the introductory characters. In order for you to be able to communicate in it, you'll need a very good understanding of how the pronunciation system works. You'll need to take class for that and/or have Chinese friends to assist you.

One shift in tone will completely change the meaning of the word. In English, we can say "mother" in any tone of voice and it could be understood. In Chinese however, the word "ma" depending on which tone is used, could mean 'mother' 'horse' or 'hemp.'

 

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I would suggest getting tapes and just immersing yourself in them. A friend of mine lives in Japan and when I told him I'd like to learn the language, that's what he told me.

Good Luck

 

It depends on what you mean by "learning Chinese". From your post, you are trying to learn Chinese (or any language) from books, and from that, I conclude that you are not trying to learn the spoken language. If you want to learn the spoken language, then you cannot learn from books, you have to hear it and speak it. I think most of the other responses were assuming that you were trying to learn the spoken language. In that case, I agree that immersion is probably the best way to learn.

Until you clarify, I will assume you are trying to learn the written Chinese language using books. Like many other languages, besides brute memorization, there is a sort of "rules based" way to recognize Chinese characters. [I may be completely wrong here, but this is what I was taught.] The Chinese characters are really based on two concepts: the meaning radical and the sound radical. If you see a character with the "hand" radical, then you can reasonably conclude that then meaning has something to do with action or motion -- these radicals do not contribute to the "sound" of the word. The "sound" radical determines how the character is to be pronounced. If you know the sound of another character with the same radical, then you can make a guess on the pronounciation of the new character (this is not always accurate, but it is a starting point).

Good luck with your learning. Learning a new language is a difficult thing for most of us, and I encourage you to not give up.