A friend told me, 'To learn Chinese, you have to learn three times. First, Pinyin; second, speaking... ' why?
Please think it again, Pinyin=Pronunciation??? Actually, many researches have been proving that Pinyin is not so good as we had expected. Pinyin is helpful in typing characters, texting messages, and using dictionary, but it is harmful for brand new learners, because Pinyin make pronunciation complecated and end up with bad pronunciation. Additionally, Pinyin is not any part of Chinese......Pinyin is NOT standard madarin Chinese, and it is not any part of Chinese. Pinyin is just a symbol system used to record sound. For example, do you think International Phonetic Alphabet is English? Do we have to start with international phonetic alphabet to learn English?

Question

A friend told me, 'To learn Chinese, you have to learn three times. First, Pinyin; second, speaking... ' why?
Please think it again, Pinyin=Pronunciation??? Actually, many researches have been proving that Pinyin is not so good as we had expected. Pinyin is helpful in typing characters, texting messages, and using dictionary, but it is harmful for brand new learners, because Pinyin make pronunciation complecated and end up with bad pronunciation. Additionally, Pinyin is not any part of Chinese......Pinyin is NOT standard madarin Chinese, and it is not any part of Chinese. Pinyin is just a symbol system used to record sound. For example, do you think International Phonetic Alphabet is English? Do we have to start with international phonetic alphabet to learn English?

Answer

Hello Dawn,
I agree with Alan , pinyin doesn't work well for me to pronounce the characters correctly and they don't make the tones enough distinguishable .
Yet pinyin is a very useful tool in typing and using the keyboard of course as you mentioned.

Answer

pinyin  is fundermental in chinese  .you 've got to learn pinyin and tone first so that you could know how to speak chinese

Answer

Pinyin is a modern Chinese which is equivalent to alphabetics, such as ABC in English. In spoken languages, many people who have by-passed this fundamental process. The home study courses "Rosetta Stone" are the examples, it woun't teach the pinyin or alphabetics. You will picked it up while you learn to speak. 

It's depending on the methods of what and how to be used for teaching and learning.

Answer

I agree. As an English person, if we don't learn pin yin first, we do not know how to pronounce the characters. So we need to learn how pin yin works and then later learn the characters after we have got used to chinese tones. Pin yin gives us the tone marks which are invaluable.
Bye
Alan
England

Answer

learning pinyin is the most basical thing to learn chinese,if you dont know pinyin you must have diffculty in pronouciating.

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