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Old 12-15-2012, 10:20 AM
 
Location: Viña del Mar, Chile
16,393 posts, read 30,856,196 times
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Just wondering if anyone here speaks Chinese or any Asian languages? What is your level of being able to speak it, in terms of accent and grammar?

How long did it take you to get where you are?

If you're a native speaker, I'm not too interested.. I'm just trying to get an idea of how people did when they were learning an Asian language. I speak two Romance languages and now want to start with an Asian one.
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Old 12-15-2012, 10:56 AM
kyh
 
Location: Malaysia & Singapore
381 posts, read 1,265,611 times
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Ok, am a native Mandarin speaker. My national language is Malay so I am required to master it during school. I watch Hong Kong dramas (which are extremely popular with the Chinese community here) and hence I understand Cantonese. My relatives speak various dialects (Hokkien, Teochew) so I understand those too.

As for Malay, it takes constant practice to perfect your speech as well as to achieve the native accent. I'm still far from achieving that level, but I have absolutely no problem when it comes to comprehension, provided that the speaker speaks the standard version without regional dialectal influences.
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Old 12-15-2012, 12:49 PM
 
Location: Shanghai
593 posts, read 794,137 times
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I speak Chinese and I used to speak Japanese because I lived there for a few years. Regarding Chinese, I first studied in the US, then improved further with self study and a private tutor. Later, I spent two summers at a university in China to enroll in their intensive Chinese programs. I continue to visit China every summer and in the US, I use Chinese to teach Chinese people English.

During the first few months, Japanese is easier because the pronunciation and lack of "tones" is easier to master. However, after six months, Chinese becomes easier becasue Chinese grammar is much easier.
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Old 12-15-2012, 12:51 PM
 
Location: Texas
44,256 posts, read 64,181,606 times
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Hindi.
Parents.
Russian - but that has european roots.
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Old 12-15-2012, 02:03 PM
 
Location: Viña del Mar, Chile
16,393 posts, read 30,856,196 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Data1000 View Post
I speak Chinese and I used to speak Japanese because I lived there for a few years. Regarding Chinese, I first studied in the US, then improved further with self study and a private tutor. Later, I spent two summers at a university in China to enroll in their intensive Chinese programs. I continue to visit China every summer and in the US, I use Chinese to teach Chinese people English.

During the first few months, Japanese is easier because the pronunciation and lack of "tones" is easier to master. However, after six months, Chinese becomes easier becasue Chinese grammar is much easier.

Yeah, I've actually heard the grammar of Chinese is pretty simple. Is that due to the lack of conjugation of verbs? I don't know too much about it, but it seems to be a pretty common sentiment. How long did it take you to speak in intermediate conversations?

I'd be studying at my university and probably wouldn't take a trip to China until I can converse. The Chinese at my university is pretty intense and there are a lot of Chinese people that I could practice with. What is an average time to start speaking it?
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Old 12-15-2012, 02:49 PM
 
Location: US Empire, Pac NW
5,003 posts, read 12,331,630 times
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僕は日本語を勉強します。

It has taken about six months to get to that level of Japanese. Still require furigana. I've also been an anime watcher off and on for a few years, and studied a year ago for a few months but abandoned it to finish my master's. Now that I'm done with that, I can spend more time studying. I try to study every day.

I've been using Rosetta Stone and I like it because it teaches you languages as if you were learning your first language. However, they don't have a good way to teach kanji, so you will likely need formal instruction or living there to learn it.
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Old 12-15-2012, 05:26 PM
 
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I can speak Thai. I'd guess my proficency is somewhat advanced but not quite as proficient and fluent as I'd like. I can handle a reasonable conversation though. I'm not all that great with technical, medical or legal teminology though.

Thai is a tonal language and I had no problem learning that. There are 4 major dialects in Thailand, some of which I'm not overly confident with. I had learned the Central Thai dialect (Bangkok Thai) which is the official language of the country. That works out pretty well in that most Thais understand Central Thai as well as their own dialect, so they can understand me better than I can understand much of their regional dialects.

It took me about 4 or 5 months on a daily basis to develop a rough basic skill level (including learning their alphabet), and have increased in skill ever since with regular use over the years. I learned the language from Thai friend who was a retired professor. I've also known Thai people for many decades, so even though I didn't always understand everything they said, I was familiar with the sound of the language when I began to more formally learn it.
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Old 12-15-2012, 10:46 PM
 
Location: Shanghai
593 posts, read 794,137 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by burgler09 View Post
Yeah, I've actually heard the grammar of Chinese is pretty simple. Is that due to the lack of conjugation of verbs? I don't know too much about it, but it seems to be a pretty common sentiment. How long did it take you to speak in intermediate conversations?

I'd be studying at my university and probably wouldn't take a trip to China until I can converse. The Chinese at my university is pretty intense and there are a lot of Chinese people that I could practice with. What is an average time to start speaking it?
Yes, lack of conjugation is one reason along with my feeling that Chinese is a rather pragmatic language that doesn't waste a lot of effort on style. Regarding how long it takes to speak depends on how much time you devout to reading and/or writing. After my first year of studying it at a local univeristy, I could read about 500 characters, write about 300 and my spoken Chinese was still not very useful in real-life situations. Later, with a one on one tutor, I wanted to concentrate on speaking and listening. Without spending so much time on writing characters, the speaking and listening developed 10X faster.

Later in China, I had class five days per week for seven hours each day. We had endless repetition that wasn't very interesting, but very effective in speaking sentences fluently. One recommendation I have, in the beginning don't worry too much about the four tones. They will come gradually, and remember, in English we also use tones on many of our words without realizing it.
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Old 12-15-2012, 11:17 PM
 
Location: State of Transition
102,099 posts, read 107,266,232 times
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It depends on how good an ear you have. Some people take years to get the tones, even after spending a year studying there. People with a good ear for language and/or music get it right away. Grammar is pretty much a piece of cake. What drove me crazy about it was the writing, because I'm not so visually oriented. The characters are different for Taiwan and Hong Kong than for the PRC. The PRC uses a simplified form of the characters. If you're learning it for business, it would depend on who you're doing business with, re: the characters. Well, and Hong Kong speaks Cantonese, anyway, not Mandarin. Taiwanese is very similar to Mandarin and is easy to pick up.

Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 12-15-2012 at 11:29 PM..
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Old 12-15-2012, 11:31 PM
kyh
 
Location: Malaysia & Singapore
381 posts, read 1,265,611 times
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In order to be competent in the Chinese language, Mandarin specifically, one needs to be able to read at least 3-5k Chinese characters.

I think Chinese language for many outsiders seems like a very complicated language to learn, mainly due to its writing which is drastically different from the Latin script. Grammar wise, it's simple and straight forward, with no conjugations. However, I still think it's one of the toughest languages, especially when it comes to classical Chinese - gosh, I'm still dripping sweat whenever I read a passage written in that form!
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