May
Did you start from learning PinYin when you study Chinese Mandarin?

I always have this question in my mind ,How the foreigners start to learn Manderin ?Because I started learn English from the alphabet ,and when we were in kindergarten we learnd Chinese also start from our own alphabet,the PinYin.And I'm study in a foreign language school now,the foreign students who study Chinese also start from PinYin,so I'd like to know how much of you start from PinYin when you start to learn Chinese? If you didn't start with PinYin,how did you start to learn Mandarin?

I have this question because I want to teach my friends Mandarin and I also want you to help me check out the errors in my topic,because I'm also learning English now.

Aug 25, 2014 1:51 PM
Comments · 26
3

pinyin, hanzi and tones at the same time... For example ni(3):你 , All together ;) some of my friend started with pinyin but it was diffucult for them to learn hanzi then... Because they just focused on speaking not writing.. I thing this way is meaningless... 

August 25, 2014
2

Kraut9, you're right of course that Pinyin includes tone indicators.  My original phrase was "initials, finals, and tones," which I then simplified it to "Pinyin and tones."  While I was aware that it was a little redundant, I wanted to emphasize that learning Pinyin is not a single challenge.  That is, learning Pinyin and Hanzi together does not represent only two challenges to a student.  The tones are a whole challenge in themselves.

 

Dorothy, you asked about the importance of learning "standard Mandarin."  I asked the same question, including what is actually meant by "standard Mandarin," in the following discussion:

http://www.italki.com/discussion/72853

 

I agree with Nunu that learning Pinyin and Hanzi together is extremely helpful, <em>but not at the very start</em>.  Chinese is so different from English that it needs to be introduced in stages.

 

Even though many students of Chinese only want to speak the language, learning Hanzi is helpful here, too.  If the student learns that hǎo means "good" (好), he or she may think that every utterance of hǎo means "good" when often it means something else entirely. This is the right time to introduce Hanzi, to shift the student's thinking away from 'sounds' and towards 'words'.

 

Personally, from my position as a beginner, I think learning Hanzi is very important, and I disagree with courses that teach <em>only</em> Pinyin.  Yet Hanzi is one challenge too many to an absolute beginner.  Hence my advice to May, when looking to teach Chinese to her friends, is to start with Pinyin, and only introduce Hanzi after the student has started speaking correctly.  From that point onwards, the student can learn both the Hanzi and the Pinyin for any new words.

August 26, 2014
2

I tried learning some Mandarin writing when I was in college and that made me decide that Chinese was impossible. 30 years later (not too long ago) I tried repeating words through the Pimsleur method that works so well for me with other languages... but it didn't work at all with Mandarin. 

 

Then I met my language partner here who patiently has been teaching me just pinyin (with the tones on the vowels of course) and now I have a CHANCE at being able to pronounce some words correctly! 

 

Pinyin with tones... like Alister said, is totally the way to go! Anything else for me was totally overwhelming.

 

There are a few good videos on youtube, but to really learn pinyin I think you really must have someone listening to what you're doing and telling you if you are getting it right or not. 

August 25, 2014
2

Maybe he is right, but i started to learn chinese in Beijing at a university directly.. It was an intensive course took about 3 months. At First class my teacher started with tones and pinyin, sounds like zh,sh,ch and the others... But at the same day I learned how to say and write wo:我, ni:你 and a few words like these.. Eveyrthing was parallel...

August 25, 2014
2

Because I am learning Chinese, I have had a few teachers, read many articles, watched many videos, and subscribed to many websites, all about learning Chinese.  All of them, without exception, start with Pinyin and tones, but do not start with Hanzi characters.  Not a single teacher, article, video, or website recommendeds that a non-Chinese person start with Hanzi characters in addition to Pinyin and tones.  (There may be some, but none in my own experience.)

 

The general advice is to start with Pinyin and tones.  That is enough of a challenge for a non-Chinese person.  Pinyin and tones provide the foundation for a student to "feel" the language, and to get started with the language.  After the student can say a few words with the correct pronunciation and the correct order of words, the student can start to learn Hanzi characters.

 

Here is a video of a well-known polyglot who recommends starting with Pinyin and tones.  He suggests studying Pinyin and tones for about 120 <em>hours</em> before starting to learn Hanzi characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMQqDWrJ034

August 25, 2014
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