Simple Mandarin Conversation
Sebastian Thorndike
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Living in #Malaysia, I believe we all are exposed with diversity of language and culture since we were young. Chinese being the second largest race in Malaysia means all of us would have at least 2-3 Chinese friends or neighbors growing up. I bet at some points we wish we can speak Mandarin and talk with our Chinese friends in their native language.
#Mandarin language sounds foreign yet it is a fascinating language to learn, and it can be especially useful for traveling to Mandarin-speaking countries such as #China. Together, we'll explore some practical phrases and sentences that can help you start using Mandarin in day-to-day conversation even if you have zero basic in it.
Introducing our name is like adding contact to the other person's brain, it's crucial on to establish our identity in their mind. To introduce yourself in the simplest way, you only need to know these two Mandarin syllable which is "我叫 (wǒ jio)" followed by your name. For example, "我叫 (wǒ jio) Muhammad.", it carry the literal meaning of "I'm called Muhammad". There are other ways to do self-introduction in Mandarin that sounds more formal but today we are going to take it easy by learning the simplest way which is "我叫 (wǒ jio)".
Malaysians' soulmate is food and Malaysia is well-known as the food paradise among SEA countries. Eating out is a common part of our daily life, and knowing how to order food in Mandarin might potentially save your bank account. Typically Chinese sellers love when non-natives speak in their native language, they usually shows appreciation in the form of discount (shhh, it's our secret weapon). To order something, say "我要 (wǒ yo)" followed by the item you want. For example, "我要鸡饭 (wǒ yo jī fn) " means "I want chicken rice." To ask for the bill, simply say "买单 (mǎi dān)".
Speaking Mandarin in daily conversation can be a fun and rewarding experience. Whether you're doing it to brush-up your Mandarin skill or simply want to mingle around the Chinese community better, knowing some common phrases and sentences can help you get started. So don't be afraid to practice and have fun with Mandarin!
If you need support from the experts *cough* Fasih Mandarin, feel free to reach out our Education Counselor and find out the latest promotion for our Mandarin class. Don't miss out the chance to claim our free Mandarin class!
I have been inspired by many people in my life and in many different areas. When it comes to learning things, Scott H. Young runs one of the most interesting blogs I know I have kept an eye on his various projects and thoughts about how to get more out of life for at least five years, so when he said that he would now turn to learning languages, I was eager to see what would happen. When I saw that Chinese was one of the languages he had chosen to learn, I was thrilled!
In this guest article, Scott shares some of his learning experience in a practical and easily applicable way. He reached a very decent level of Chinese in little more than three months, including passing HSK4 (yes, including reading and writing). If you want to evaluate his speaking skills, there are several videos in this post, one of them with Scott, his friend Vat and me speaking Chinese here in Taipei a few weeks ago. Enjoy!
In May, just a little shy of three months in China, I wrote the HSK 4 and passed with a 74% (Listening: 82%, Reading: 77% and Writing: 62%). For those unfamiliar with the HSK, it is the largest official exam for Chinese as a second language. It is divided into six levels with HSK 1 being the most basic elements of the language and HSK 6 as the highest level.
Speaking more generally, I believe my level of Chinese is sufficient to deal with most basic necessities of living, travel, make new friends and have interesting conversations entirely in Chinese. I can also read most of simple emails, menus and signs, although my reading still lags behind my speaking ability.
In China, I studied fairly aggressively from February 16th when we arrived, until around May 10th, when I wrote the HSK 4. Although I went on to spend another three weeks in Taiwan, I did no formal study at that time and spoke in English with Vat (taking a break to finish the video before starting Korean).
Beyond my studying, I also had a few good friends and many acquaintances in China with whom I only spoke in Chinese. Movies and television shows I also omitted from the tally of total time spent. I watched a number of Chinese movies, a few seasons of 爱情公寓 (English title iPartment), and some Chinese music.
I believe the methods and schedule I outline is something anyone could implement, provided they are living in China and studying Chinese full-time (either in classes or privately). Obviously, if you need to work in English while in China, you may have to adapt these methods to suit your schedule.
Early in the challenge, when I found myself unable to correctly recognize and pronounce the 4 tones of Chinese, I turned to pronunciation specific drills. Later, when I found that my listening ability was hindering my Chinese much more than speaking, I spent a bulk of studying time doing targeted listening drills.
I tried dozens of different methods for learning Chinese, from textbook study to pronunciation drills, vocabulary lists and grammar exercises. Ultimately, I narrowed down my studying to just a handful of methods I thought were the most broadly useful. They were:
The result of these tweaks meant that I was spending less time memorizing the cards and more time exposed to new ones. This exploits the 80/20 rule, by quickly eliminating too-difficult cards that waste your time and pushing too-easy cards far ahead.
Taking these decks allowed me to, using only 116 hours in China and 70 hours in Canada, learn roughly 1800 characters and see them used in a few thousand example sentences. Because the decks also separate listening/reading/production as well as single-character/sentence, I was also quizzed on each element separately.
For listening drills, I started by just listening to ChinesePod episodes. My feeling was that these are nice passive resources, but they are too long to be easily used for improving your listening ability until you get to the upper intermediate level where both hosts speak almost entirely in Chinese.
It typically took about 5-10 minutes to do each file, and I did around 250 in this way. The ChinesePod files are quite good because they use very natural sounding, conversational Chinese. Most other learner resources try to be overly clear and well-spoken, so when you listen to actual native speakers, you struggle to make a match.
Despite that, I did find a small amount of pronunciation drills to be invaluable. I truly believe that getting even an adequate pronunciation in Chinese is quite hard, especially if you train poor habits from the beginning.
Next I worked on tone-pair drills. I made the mistake of doing these on my own in the beginning, which inadvertently had me pronouncing my second tone too much like a third tone. I worked with Olle to go through a specific pronunciation test to see if I could pronounce the sounds right, at least in deliberate isolation. The first time I had some tonal errors, mostly related to this 2nd-as-3rd-tone problem, as well as a couple isolated problems with the phonetics themselves.
After a few weeks with drills with tutors, I redid the test and got a good score. This hardly means my pronunciation is perfect. First, the test was mostly designed to see if I was making errors that would be large enough to cause confusion with native speakers, not accent reduction. Second, the test focused only on individual words in isolation, a much easier feat than getting all the tones right with unfamiliar vocabulary in a long sentence.
Pronunciation is probably one of the few areas with language learning that fixing mistakes as an intermediate or advanced learner is extremely hard. So even though Chinese can feel completely overwhelming and tones feel like a side concern, I completely agree with Olle that getting them right (even if just in limited isolation) is something beginners should allocate time for.
Tutoring was also very important, but not in the way most people think of tutoring. In China I ended up having three different tutors, two in-person, and a third via Skype using iTalki. My goal with tutors was to spend as much time as possible having real conversations with them, and a minimum of drills, exercises and the things tutors normally emphasize.
I emphasized the above four because I felt that they comprised (a) the most important studying I did in China and (b) they are activities many students do not do. I did use a textbook in the first month as well as a portion of my tutoring time in typical classroom activities, but my guess is that the average student spends too much time on these rather than too little.
Similarly, I believe someone learning in a classroom environment, but outside of China, could still arrange conversational exchanges via iTalki.com and the slowdown from not being within the country would be modest. The only challenge would be maintaining the motivation, since you have less pressure to learn Chinese.
That is incredible. I must say, I have a new desire and hope that my own Chinese can improve without too much time. I do have a question for Scott, if he is able to answer, though any input would be helpful. Anki is mentioned as a useful resource, but I went to the site and was slightly overwhelmed with the content. Is there any recommended list for beginner learners? Which list did Scott use?
I link to the set of decks I use in the post. Mastering Chinese Characters were the best I found, however they are slightly more formal, slightly more written and not geared at the most important phrases, so I consider them to be a resource that pays off most in intermediate, not beginner Chinese. That said, I used them from nearly the beginning, and I found them very useful.
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