Learn Chinese? Here’s how to make progress fast:
To learn Chinese can seem to be an insurmountable task. There are seemingly too many difficulties for soembody of English language origin to ever master this fascinating language:
- different writing with thousands of signs
- words that if they are pronounced mean something totally different
- physical distance to China (you can’t just quickly hop over to spend a weekend)
To learn Chinese well, one really would need to spend some time in China. And then where in China? There are different dialects of Chinese, with Mandarin Chinese being the main language. But then there is Cantonese Chinese, spoken in HongKong and Southern China, where there are a lot of economical activities…
One solution that will not make you perfect in either Mandarin or Cantonese, but will give you an excellent start and will immerse you into the language immediately is to listen to Pimsleur Chinese language audios. Everybody I know who used the Pimsleur method is raving about it. These audios allow you to go on a virtual trip to China, every time you listen to them.
Means, you are getting used to the different pronunciation, the ‘music’ of the Chinese language and you allow your brain to acquire the language similar to the way you first learned your own English language. This works well and is a great basis for then continuing to study either one of the two main dialects, Mandarin or Cantonese.
Downloadable Pimsleur language lessons are available from here:
Give the Pimsleur method a try, you will be astonished how fast you will speak your first few phrases in Chinese, either Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese Chinese! Have fun!
