Mandarin Chinese - moving on

I'll be in Thailand for the next year and the big (but expensive) bookshop in the Siam Paragon shopping centre in Bangkok is the only place I know which sells a decent range of material. If anyone has any suggestions of where to buy any books (and Chinese films with both Chinese and English subtitles), I'd appreciate the info.

Would it be possible (and advisable) to go straight to learning the characters without learning Pinyin. I read that even Chinese kids learn Pinyin first, is this true?

Because Chinese doesn't use an alphabetic script, if you were only to learn characters you would still need some system to help you remember the pronunciation - pinyin is as good as any (and I would say better than most). I think you will make more progress - especially with the spoken language - if you use pinyin, especially as you will not be constantly surrounded by characters (e.g. on signs, where frequent exposure to characters in regular use can help you to memorise their appearance and meaning).

I read that even Chinese kids learn Pinyin first, is this true?

In mainland China, yes - but not in Hong Kong, where children dive straight into characters, without any formal use of a phonetic system to support this.

Pinyin is important, especially if this is a language you really want to continue to use. Knowing pinyin has helped me be able to text and type in Chinese characters and can sometimes help when using a dictionary. Like stormboy points out, it is a good basis for knowing the pronunciation. I really don't think it should take all that long for you to learn, especially in the scheme of things (you'll be spending the rest of your life learning characters!). It's worth it.

I also like chinesepod.com and I haven't found any other decent podcasts out there.

Would it be possible (and advisable) to go straight to learning the characters without learning Pinyin. I read that even Chinese kids learn Pinyin first, is this true?

Yes, Chinese kids do learn pinyin first, and no it would neither be the smallest bit possible nor advisable to skip this important step. Apart from anything else, if you ever want to type in Chinese or text on a Chinese cell phone, pinyin is essential, as Chinese keyboards are all based on the principle of predictive text (e.g. I type "ni hao" and the computer guesses that I almost certainly mean 你好, "hello," though it will also offer other possibilities in decreasing order of probability). And, as has been pointed out, you also need to know pinyin if you want to be able to use English to Chinese dictionaries.

(You are also vastly underestimating the difficulty of the task before you. The Thai alphabet, complicated as it is, only has a few dozen letters and letter-combinations to learn. To achieve even very basic literacy in Chinese, you need to know about 3000 characters, many of which are extremely similar to one another. There's no analogy whatsoever to learning an alphabetic writing system.)

And I hate to tell you, but I, too, went through Pimsleur 1-3, and the speakers do not speak at normal Chinese speed! Nothing like. In retrospect, too, I think Pimsleur was almost a complete waste of time: their failure to explain such basic concepts as tone sandhi (the way tones change in relation to one another) meant that my Chinese pronunciation was miles off until I started learning from a native speaker. It took months to undo the Pimsleur damage.

It's not a textbook, but by far the best Mandarin reference on my bookshelf is this one. For textbooks, you might see if you can find anything from BLCUP in Thailand: they publish the most popular books used in Chinese for Foreigners beginner classes here in Beijing, including the "New Practical Chinese" series and the "Conversational Chinese 301" series.

Thanks one and all for the advice. Seems like learning pinyin is essential.

I did notice that the tones seem to follow rules not explained in the Pimsleur course. For example the "you" in "thank you" (che che nee") seems o be a short falling tone rather thn the long falling/rising tone it normally is. I think that learning Thai has taught me not to demand a thorough explaination of everything and to just go with the flow and imitate as precisely as possible rather than think things out too much. I agree, they shoud have mentioned it, but I think it's ok, so long as you copy the speaker as closely as possible.

The increase in speed from the MTM course to the Pimsleur took a bit of getting used to and I guess I'll have to go through it again when I start watching Chinese movies and speaking to native speakers!

The grammar book looks excellent, thanks for that (it even got a glowing review from the author of the MTM course). I'll try and gab some of tose textbooks as well.

This next step is still some way off yet, but I may as well ask t while I have everyones attention. I took a Thai language course in Bangkok at the beginning of my studies and, although I thought the teacher was very good, I felt that the whole approach just wasn't right for me. I've since took the attitude that the whole of Thailand is my school and have just focussed on being able to go about my everyday business using English as little as possible. I love being able to learn something from my books and just go and test it out straight away on the nearest unsuspecting victim. I've found that the Thai people are very encouraging at the beginning and soon move past that very kindly, but slightly patronising, attitude to become stern but construcive critics when they see that you've moved past the beginning stages and want to understand the language properly. If Chinese people are half as good as this, then I think I'll be alright. Have people found that just being in China and putting yourself out there is enough, or do you think that a structured class is still essential? If so, is taking a class at one stage more benificial than another (eg at beginner or advanced level)?

Thanks again

Just a quick extra question regarding the writing:
If 3000 characters is enough for basic literacy, how about intermediate literacy? Roughly how many characters would the average educated Chinese adult know?

Since I'll be living in a small town in Thailand without anyone to practise with, I think the writing will be a main focus.

According to Wikipedia 2000 is needed for basic literacy and the average Chinese person knows 4000-5000 characters. There are over 85,000 known characters, but most of them are no longer in use.

There’s no excuse for not knowing pinyin.

If you know how to pronounce Beijing, Shanghai and fengshui then you can figure almost half of it out straight away. Bei, hei, lei, mei, pei, jing, ling, bing, shang, hang, bang, rang, feng, meng, peng, deng, shui, hui, rui.

Mao Zedong. So now you know: mao, hao, pao, rao, ze, le, te, dong, long, nong.

There are a few odd or counterintuitive syllables that just have to be learned over the course of a few hours and then you’re away.

I suggest you get rid of any book you have that tries to teach you another phonetic system. Pinyin is all you need. It rocks.

If you have a book that tells you the correct Mandarin pronunciation of “thank you” is “che che ni” then I would suggest you burn it and piss on the ashes.

I’ve never taken a class to learn Chinese. For me, that seems slow and pointless. Some people think it’s absolutely essential for them, however. Courses for horses.

My methods:

1. Cram characters using flashcards
2. Chat with hot Chinese chicks on myspace.cn
3. Eavesdrop on my colleagues
4. Watch American movies on youku.com and pay attention to the Chinese subtitles
5. Keep my eyes open for adverts, shop signs, restaurant menus etc.
6. Bug my bilingual friends and work colleagues via msn to explain stuff to me.
7. Set up multiple email accounts and keep re-registering with Chinesepod.com. Listen to the lessons on an mp3 player when I walk down to the shops or whatever
8. Sometimes use jollo.com for online translation when all else fails - though you need to take that with a pinch of msg.
9. Occasionally talk to a Chinese person.