Virtual Mandarin

Reading, reading and more reading

While I've not really been posting to the blog over the past few days, I have spent some time reading on various websites and discovering new materials aimed at the learner of Mandarin Chinese.

Here are some of the things I've been discovering:

Sinosplice
A brilliant website covering lots of information for learners of Chinese and those generally interested in Chinese life and culture. Its author John is a grad student in applied linguistics and has written some really good stuff on pronunciation, already making me question some of the things I've been reading.

Dr Blair's Chinese in No Time
Think this still qualifies as sourcing online material! I downloaded this from the iTunes Music Store. It's quite funny - the idea is that you're a PhD student on an island off the coast of China. You start out on a yacht off the coast when you get a phonecall to say that the island has been taken over by pirates. You must save the day with your knowledge of Chinese which you learn by tuning into a course over Short Wave radio. A good idea and it gets you involved. I've only listened to the first part so far, and that was at the weekend. It's quite impressive how much I remember actually - like the word for "pirate" which I believe is something like hai dou, though because it's all audio I'd need to check the pinyin and Chinese characters. Good fun, though, and I'll definitely be listening more when my ears get more tuned to Chinese sounds. Favourite bit so far: "Hair" is "tou fa" in Chinese. Imagine saying to someone "with that hairstyle you've gone tou fa (too far)", but said in a real Mickey Blue Eyes New Yorker accent!

Chinese Tools
I mentioned this the other day in my McDonald's post. It's a collection of online tools, eg. pinyin convertors, "Character pronunciation" tools, etc. The Character pronunciation one is quite good - if you can copy the Chinese text from, eg. a Chinese website and paste it in, it gives you the text back in pinyin with tone markings.

I've also done a lot more reading at Wikipedia and at the Britannica online site about the Chinese language situation. All very interesting stuff!

The one other thing I have discovered - and I don't actually know if this can qualify for my self-imposed "online only" restriction - is that I actually receive CCTV, Chinese State TV, at home. I've got a free-to-air satellite decoder which is currently pointing to one of the European Satellites for the European free-to-air channels like TV5, arte, RTL, RAI uno, etc. Sitting among all these channels are CCTV4 and CCTV9. CCTV4 is a Chinese language channel and CCTV9 is the English language channel broadcasting to Asia and across the world. At this stage in my learning I don't really think I'm going to pick up a huge amount from the newsreaders and voiceovers, but having it on in the background as I work certainly helps to tune my ears to the sounds of Mandarin. It's also quite interesting because as far as I can tell, every programme on CCTV4 is subtitled. Perhaps to make them available to speakers of Cantonese, Wu, etc. I have recognised a few 你好s nǐ hǎos in programme introductions!

A wee update then on my Mandarin adventures to date. I'll be doing some more "serious" learning tomorrow - I've loaded the next ChinesePod onto my iPod to listen to in the car, and I've also downloaded the first couple of programmes of Serge Melnyk's Learn Mandarin podcast so I'll see what that's like too.

我就喜欢 I'm lovin' it...

I never expected to be learning Mandarin from a McDonald's paper bag. [I had a salad, promise!] OK, so it is hardly a major academic achievement, but I have to admit to being fair excited when I realised I recognised the 我 wǒ character on the multilingual "I'm lovin' it" logo of McDonald's! Having done a bit of investigation the other characters include 喜欢 xǐhuan, one of the words used for "love" when talking about things or activities. I wonder what the 2nd character is...

Update
On a mission to "unlock the code" that is recognising Chinese characters I started off by looking at the Wikipedia list of Chinese radicals to see if I could identify the characters which made up the missing character. This proved too difficult - I don't really understand the radicals enough yet. So, Googled "我 喜欢 McDonalds" (wǒ xǐhuan) and found a few references where I recognised the 2nd characted. I then headed over to Chinese-tools.com to the Chinese text to pinyin convertor and entered the four characters, 我就喜欢, and all was explained: the missing link was the character 就, in pinyin jiù. As a follow up, I tried I couple of online translators* and the combination of 我就喜欢 wǒ jiù xǐhuan seems to give "I like", which I guess fits in with the McDonald's theme!

If any native Mandarin speakers want to give a better translation of 我就喜欢, please feel free to post a comment! And I was going to say no to the McDonald's lunch to be more healthy! Still glad I had the salad... ;)

Here's the full logo, now that I know the four characters:

*I would stress that I'm NOT suggesting that the use of online translators is an effective method of getting an accurate translation, but they can help sometimes in confirming meanings as long as they're used carefully!

Two more greetings

I had a really busy day today so I've not had much of a chance to get into my Chinese. However, rather than do nothing at all, I've picked up from a newly discovered website a few more greetings.

I've already covered 你好 nǐ hǎo, meaning "hello", so it's only right that I add in the phrase for "goodbye". This is 再见 zàijiàn.

There's also the phrase "see you tomorrow". This is 明天见, pronounced míngtiān jiàn.

I'm afraid that will have to do it for tonight. In the meantime, 明天见！

One more thing...

Ros kindly pointed out in response to an earlier post that the word for Scotland is 苏格兰 sū gé lán. I guess this means that Scottish (person) is 苏格兰人 sū gé lán rén. In which case the phrase I was trying to find earlier in response to Graham's discussion is:

不是英国人，我是苏格兰人！
bú shì ying guó rén. wǒ shì sū gé lán rén.

(I'm not English, I'm Scottish).

Now I'm counting on the support of everyone for this adventure, so I'd better stop there!

我是美国人 :: wǒ shì měi guó rén

I've not really had much of a chance today to do more Mandarin - it's been a busy day. I did, however, listen to the rest of Chinesepod lesson 1, and I've managed to add a few more phrases and words to my vocabulary.

The first thing I came across today was the word shì. It's pretty difficult to say, or at least to imitate the pronunciation of the presenters on Chinesepod. It actually sounds a bit like a New York accent in a way! Shì appears to be part of the verb "to be", and, like Japanese, it seems to stay the same, regardless of who is "being". Some of the personal pronouns were also covered in the vocabulary for this edition of Chinesepod. I'm sure there are more, and there are undoubtedly different levels of politeness with the "you" form, but no doubt I'll come across these in good time.

我是 :: wǒ shì :: I am
睨是 :: nǐ shì :: you are
他是 :: tā shì :: he is
她是 :: tā shì :: she is
它是 :: tā shì :: it is

Interestingly the same word, tā seems to be used for he / she / it, but there are three separate characters: 他，她 and 它. (I keep wanting to say "kanji" for the characters, but I know they're not kanji!)

This phrase, 你是中国人 nǐ shì zhōng guó rén, means "you are Chinese". To make it into a question you need to add on the 吗 (ma) particle, giving nǐ shì zhōng guó rén ma?

The negative particle (?) seems to be bú. This may also mean "no", but I'm not 100% sure. I think it makes the verb which follows negative, so while the sense of bú shì is "no", it actually means "am not".

This is "I am", wǒ shì To say "I am Chinese" would therefore be 我是中国人， wǒ shì zhōng guó rén. To say "I'm not Chinese" I think you'd say 不是中国人, bú shì zhōng guó rén.

If 中国人 zhōng guó rén is "Chinese person" then 美国人 měi guó rén is "American person". By extension, I think that China is 中国 zhōng guó, and America is 美国 měi guó. The 人 rén is the "person" part. I'm sure I'll be able to add some more vocabulary quickly when I get a few more countries.

Putting it all together, you get 不是，我㖷美国人 bú shì, wǒ shì měi guó rén, meaning "I am not (or simply "no"), I am American.

Download 060427_Archive.zip to access the iPod-ready flashcards covering the phrases and words in what I've learned today.

Just as a wee practice of what I've covered so far:

A :: 你好 nĩ hão
B :: 你好吗？ nǐ hǎo ma?
A :: 很好。 你好吗？Hěn hǎo. Nǐ hǎo ma?
B :: 很好。你是中国人吗？Hěn hǎo. Nǐ shì zhōng guó rén?
A :: 不是。我是美国人。 Bú shì. Wǒ shì měi guó rén.

Translation

A :: Hello
B :: How are you?
A :: I'm well. How are you?
B :: Very well. Are you Chinese?
A :: No (I'm not). I'm American.

And that will do for tonight!

A good start!

晚上好！ Wǎnshang hǎo! Good evening one and all. Thanks primarily to Ewan who posted about Virtual Mandarin on edublogs and the MFLE, and some discussion on the LinguaNet Forum, my adventures in Mandarin seem to have generated a fair bit of interest, even after my first official post!

Thanks to everyone for their comments and words of encouragement on the various discussion boards and blogs. Vincent believes I can get away with using CD/DVD-roms in my task, and I probably can, but for the time being I'd like to limit myself to online resources, just to see if it's possible! I've used many different types of resources when learning other languages in the past, and I have to be honest: my preference is probably for a *good* book and some contact with native speakers. But this particular task I've set myself is something of a challenge - an experiment - to see how possible it is.

The other major resource I'm depending on is the help of "real" people, both learners and native speakers. Even on my first day I've been sent lots of links (谢谢, Ros!), and 谢谢 also to 林凡 for her comment! :)

I was thinking today that since the challenge began officially on the 26th April I have 5 months until the European Day of Languages on the 26th September. Maybe that will be an opportunity to put what I've learned into practice!

One final thing. I'd like to make it really clear that I'm not intending this site as a resource for people to learn Mandarin Chinese. Without wishing to sound "selfish", everything I do on the site is for me. If anyone can take any benefit from what's there then please feel free, and if anyone wants to learn with me then great. Equally, I'm hoping that native speakers and more experienced learners will correct any mistakes I make on the site: that's the whole point of keeping this learning log!

Anyway, enough talk. On with today's learning...

你好吗？ Nǐ hǎo ma?

This is really the first day of my independent learning course in Mandarin. I've had a look around the web and decided to start off with something where I'd have the chance to hear the pronunciation of the words along with learning the written language, both in Chinese and Roman characters. I opted for ChinesePod and I've been listening to Lesson 1.

I'd already picked up somewhere that nǐ hǎo meant "hello". It seems to be a fairly normal greeting, and you can use it in lots of situations. I've found the tones quite tricky, but there'll be more about that in future posts.

Perhaps an extension of nǐ hǎo is the phrase nǐ hǎo ma? This means "how are you". Both the nǐ and hǎo have the 3rd tone which means your intonation goes down then up. I'll post a podcast at some point of my trying out the tones - I look forward to your comments!

A possible answer to nǐ hǎo ma? is the phrase hěn hǎo. Here both words again use tone 3. Hěn hǎo apparently means "very well". If I've understood the podcast correctly you can use it in a variety of situations. Nǐ seems to mean "you", so you can say nǐ hěn hǎo, and it would mean "you're very well". I'm not 100% sure yet if you could say this with different intonation to make it into a question. Or maybe you'd say nǐ hěn hǎo ma, to mean "are you very well", because I think that ma is a question particle.

Finally, to make the answer to nǐ hǎo ma? more polite, you can add the word for thank you: xiè xie. The "x" sound is quite difficult to produce, but I'm sure with practice it will become easier.

So, my first Mandarin conversation:

A: 你 好 吗？
B: 很 好。 你 好 吗？
A: 很 好 谢 谢

A: nǐ hǎo ma?
B: hěn hǎo. Nǐ hǎo ma?
A: hěn hǎo, xiè xie.

It's late so I'm going to finish there. If you want you can download iPod-ready slides of the characters and phrases I've made to help me in this lesson: Download 060426_Archive.zip (216k)

I'll need to try to find out how you say "see you soon"!

你好！ Nǐ hǎo!

Welcome to this blog, a journey in one person's attempts to master a new language. My name is Mark Pentleton and I have set myself a challenge: to learn Mandarin Chinese. My language-learning career began in 1983 when, as an 11 year-old I started French at secondary school. Since then I've formally studied Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, and in later life picked up some German, Norwegian, Catalan and most recently Japanese.

I work in the west of Scotland as the coordinator of the PiE project, a modern languages and technology project running currently in 29 secondary schools. Through this project and in my previous life as a teacher in the south side of Glasgow I've seen more and more possibilities develop for language-learning using online resources.

So... I've decided to make this a linguistic and technical challenge: I'm actually challenging myself to learn Mandarin Chinese only using technology-based resources. That means no books, no audio cds, no teacher or class. Only what I can find online!

Maybe I should be a bit more specific. And I should also admit to having bought one book: the Oxford Chinese Minidictionary which is quite a nice wee dictionary! But as far as course books etc. are concerned, there won't be any Teach Yourself Chinese or anything like that for me. I'll be relying on the various materials I can find via the internet, etc. I may permit myself to download some audio from the iTunes Music Store, but other than that I think I can probably find everything I need on the various websites I've already come across.

Of course, learning a language requires someone to speak to! So, if you're a native Mandarin speaker, or indeed a learner like me, then get in touch via the comments on this blog. Most of all, if you want to learn along with me then let me know. I'll be posting various things I prepare for myself on this blog, eg. virtual flashcards for my iPod I prepare to help me get to grips with learning Chinese characters, and maybe even some podcasts so that someone out there in this virtual world can help me with my pronunciation! One of the main tools I'll be using is the ChinesePod podcast, and that's certainly where I'm starting.

I'll also post reviews of websites, podcasts, and other materials I come across, and hopefully these will be of interest to other learners out there.

So, in advance I'll say 谢谢, or xiè xie, which I've already learned is "thank you". Incidentally, if you can't read the Chinese characters, or indeed the extended Roman alphabet characters to mark the tones of Chinese then I've found that wikipedia does a good job of explaining how to set up your computer to do just that.

I'll do my best to keep posting regularly - it's not always possible cos things are very busy. Please do give me some feedback and feel free to join with me and learn a bit of Mandarin Chinese!