Coz some websites are just like ENGLISH-CHINESE-ENGLISH DICTIONARIES.

Just a suggestion,

Try listening to some Chinese songs, then get the lyrics in PINYIN then try to interpret the words in English(using a C-E dictionary), in this way, you can learn some simple sentences, quotations and phrases...

And then for the Tones, if you are REALLY SERIOUS in learning Chinese (mandarin), as in Masterals Degree (hehe just jokin),
you have to study the "STORY OF AUNT YI" (ahyi de gu shi).
It features the four tones in mandarin which will help you practise and master the tones...


For the Chinese Characters, if you are a beginner, try to study first the "PICTOGRAPH CHARACTERS", in which you can interpret the meaning just by looking at the character itself,
like for example, the Chinese character for "TREE"(mu) is just LIKE A DRAWING OF A TREE, so it is easily recognized.

Another one is the "IDEOGRAPH CHARACTERS", these characters show the idea of a character,
like for example, the Chinese character for "THREE"(sen) is literally a DRAWING OF A THREE STICKS, one on top of the other.

There are I think about 5-7 more methods in the makeup of a Chinese characters, I just gave two methods which I hope will help you guys, heheh...


hao de!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2007 11:23PM by Olive.

I agree with you Kwaijita,
Learning mandarin with Chinese songs is a nice way to practice vocabulary and grammar at the same time!

What is the "Story of Aunt Yi"?

"story of aunt yi's pancreas" is an old literary chinese story,
the funny fact about this piece is that all the PINYIN in this story are "YI".

yeah! the story is made out of just the pinyin "YI", but of course with different tones and characters...
its very interesting, I searched all over the net but cant find the copy.

my chinese teacher showed me a copy of this, but now I'm back in my hometown,
never had the chance to recopy it, huhuhuhu...

hope somebody here has :-)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2007 06:31AM by kwaijita.

Oh i see...
Just like the 施氏食狮史 (shī shì shí shī shǐ) story?
I'll make some search.

hahaha, yeah!
thanks! :-)

kwaijita, thanks so much for your topic; very useful indeed; i'll be grateful if you can offer more suggestions
i'm only at my second lesson, so i know very little about chinese; i can't find anyone to teach me in my city, so i settle with online lessons

unicorn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> kwaijita, thanks so much for your topic; very
> useful indeed; i'll be grateful if you can offer
> more suggestions
> i'm only at my second lesson, so i know very
> little about chinese; i can't find anyone to teach
> me in my city, so i settle with online lessons
>
>

hi unicorn! you are welcome!

Try to ask your local cable operator if you can have a chinese channel in
your subscription.
Here in my hometown I have MTVChina, CCTV4 and two other chinese channels in my cable. It is very helpful watching these channels coz besides from listening to the audio(spoken chinese),
every program has a chinese character subtitle.

hao de! :-)

yeah, that gives a lot suggestions for chinese learner.

quite useful