Learning Mandarin with Greg

I had a former colleague ask me the other day if he should learn Cantonese or Mandarin. He was going to spend a few months in Hong Kong and southern China.

Here are my opinions. I’m sure there are many who might differ but this is how I see it today.

Hong Kong is a tricky one. A large number of people there can speak Mandarin given the difficult relationship between “mainland” China and Hong Kong, even locals who can speak it don’t treat you the same as if you speak Cantonese. Many just aren’t happy about aspects of how China now runs Hong Kong. But the way that I see it, is that resist as they might, they will be “integrated”.

2016-03-21

I’m continuing to learn Chinese (Mandarin) in my spare time. (Although I’m not sure I really have any).

This year I made a change in how I’m doing things. I decided to give the team at Hanbridge Mandarin a try. I’m doing online Skype/Webex based video classes 3 times per week for about an hour, one on one with a teacher. Teachers for Hanbridge mostly seem to be ShenZhen based.

2016-03-05

One of my biggest goals for this year was to try to pass the HSK 3 exam. I wanted to do it as a validation of my efforts to learn Chinese.

HSK (Hanyu Shui Ping Kaoshi - 汉语水平考试) is the exam given to foreigners to assess their level of Chinese. (Hanyu is the Chinese language, Shuiping basically means a level of achievement, and Kaoshi is an exam). The organisation that runs it is called Hanban.

2015-07-13

Happy new year to all my Chinese readers! Particular thanks to those that have been helping me  to learn Mandarin and patiently answering my elementary questions.

恭贺新禧. 新年快乐.

感谢你的帮助，去年

2013-02-10

I had a surprisingly large number of responses from my previous posting about learning Chinese. An update for those considering Rosetta Stone ( www.rosettastone.com ) for Chinese, Spanish or any other language that they offer:

I had to renew my “Studio” subscription today and it’s now a much worse deal than it was.

It’s now $75 for 6 months for Studio sessions.

• Online classes used to be 45 mins. Recently they reduced them to 20 mins. Given how often people have connection issues, etc. that 20 mins can disappear very quickly.
• They’ve also reduced the number you can attend. You used to be able to have 2 scheduled at any point in time. Now they limit you to 2 “group sessions” per month during the period. (You can pay for additional private sessions).

The combination of these two changes now makes it much less useful. Two x 20 min sessions per month is an almost meaningless amount of practice.

2012-11-28

If you have Chinese friends, it’s time to say 新年快乐 to them!  (Xīnnián kuàilè -> Pronounced like Shin Nien Kwai Ler)

They are welcoming in the year of the dragon.

2012-01-23

Another book that I’ve just finished reading on the Kindle is Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows. I had purchased the hard cover edition a while back on the recommendation of colleague Ron Talmage but hadn’t got to reading it. I was glad to then see the Kindle edition of the book appear. I purchased and read it and loved it.

Deborah spent three years recently living in Shanghai and has documented many of the struggles she had with coming to terms with learning Mandarin and with getting used to Chinese society. I imagine that part of the hassle she would have had was dealing with Shanghai-ese rather than the Mandarin that she would have learned before heading off to China but I could relate so well to so many things she spoke of.

2011-06-01

It’s that time of the year again with the start of the year of the rabbit.

So for all the Chinese folk, happy new year!

新年快乐

2011-02-03

过年好

or perhaps

新年快乐

 

but Happy New Year anyway!

2009-01-26

It’s that time of the year again for all the blog readers of Chinese heritage. Shortly I’ll be off to dinner and probably briefly to the local temple with Mai’s parents.

I hope all readers have a great Chinese new year!

祝你新年快乐。

(I hope I got that right or at least close)

2008-02-06