Question concerning to grammar sequence.

[cintiaghimel]

Hello, everyone!

As I mentioned before I'm studying mandarin chinese by myself and I got lost with all that grammar. The fact is that I know how to make statements, negative and interrogative questions...now what? I don't know where to go. Should I start learning the aspects? Or the measure words? I presume the measure words should be studied all along the other steps of grammar, am I right?

Plus I asked this chinese guy if he could speak mandarin chinese and he said: What?! and I tried putonghua, hanyu, zhongwen and all he did was shake his head and smile. I know they're from Guangdong, so I thought of going there one of this days and start talking the so little chinese I know just to see how they react. Before that, can somebody tell me if people in guangdong speak mandarin chinese?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[koreth]

You probably know "Guangdong" by its other name, "Canton." Most likely the man in question spoke Cantonese (which is called "Guangdonghua" in Mandarin, by the way.)

Whether someone from Guangdong speaks Mandarin is, I think, largely a matter of when they grew up there. These days, given that Mandarin is taught in schools and especially with the influx of migrant workers, my impression is that most young people are, if not completely comfortable, then at least competent Mandarin speakers, and many are totally fluent. That's probably less true in Hong Kong, and less true of older people from the other side of the border who grew up before mandatory Mandarin in schools and before the big influx of non-Cantonese-speaking workers.

As for your question about grammar, to some extent it depends on what you want to do with your Mandarin. If you want to become fully literate (you don't mention if you're learning reading/writing or just speaking) then you're going to have to study all the common grammatical patterns and you should probably invest in a decent set of college Chinese books. My favorite is the "Integrated Chinese" series; the ubiquitous "New Practical Chinese Reader" isn't bad either.

But if, on the other hand, your goal is just to be able to navigate around a Chinese-speaking area and do simple day-to-day stuff, then I'd argue that learning grammar is not really all that important, and you'll be much better served by just cramming as much vocabulary into your brain as you can handle. When I have to interact with someone completely in Mandarin (e.g. my girlfriend's mom) I find myself groping for vocabulary far more often than for sentence patterns; most daily communication is pretty grammatically simple. "Please pass the salt" is a trivial sentence but you have to know how to say "pass" and "salt," to use an English example.

Either way, you should listen to a lot of ChinesePod both to expand your vocabulary and to practice your listening skills with a ton of different material.

That's my two cents, anyway. I'll be interested to see if others disagree.

[HashiriKata]

I'll be interested to see if others disagree.

I do!

No, not really, but I like to say a few words about grammar...

As you said, it's true that you need a lot of vocabulary so as to avoid groping for the right word in the middle of a conversation; but it's also true that no matter how large your vocabulary is, you'll still find yourself groping for the right word in the middle of a conversion!

From reading the forums I think there is a recent trend to emphasize on learning vocabulary perhaps at the expense of learning structures, as a magical shortcut to mastering the language as a whole. This again is understandable: if you got stuck for a word, you know that you've got stuck for a word; but if in communication you've created a most peculiar sentence in the language, it's not so easy for you to realize that it's so, so all seems well by you and it seems ok to concentrate on just one aspect of the learning. For short terms, this is fine but remember once you've choosen to speak like a pauper, you'll always speak like a pauper, as no one can improve their grammar at a later stage, when all has been set and done. Words are bricks for building a house but without a structure, there will be no house, just piles of rubble!

Concerning cintiaghimel's question, I don't know how others approach grammar but for me, I simply try as much as I can to find out about the structure of the sentence I've got at hand, the sentence that I'm learning or using. Therefore, to me, there is no such things as stages in learning grammar: this first and that next, etc. Of course, I'm talking about self-teaching. If you're on a course, then the course may direct you to steps relevant to the materials being taught.

Whether you're on a course or teaching yourself, one very important thing to bear in mind is that grammar is not a set of complicated abstract rules to test your intellect or you knowlege of Latin, but only ways for making (sense of) sentences in the language you're learning. So do try to learn grammar through concrete sentences, and if anyone tries to refer to Latin grammar while teaching you Chinese, then just tell them to sod off!

[koreth]

I actually agree with that in some sense -- if your goal is to sound like an educated speaker of the language, then a solid foundation in grammar is a must, the earlier the better. And you will never know all the possible vocabulary you'll need; most native speakers (of any language) grope for words on a regular basis.

But I still think that if your goal is nothing more than to speak adequately to function in daily life, e.g. for travel or to survive while you're in China on temporary assignment for work, then you probably don't care if it's elegant as long as you get your meaning across. Having a firm grasp of lots of sentence structures will allow you to express yourself with much greater precision and in fewer words, but you don't need great precision to buy groceries or to have simple conversations. 除了这样水果以外，我都不喜欢 is nice, but if you say 我喜欢这个水果。我不喜欢那个，那个，那个 they'll probably get the picture.

I am firmly in the "want to sound like an educated native speaker" camp myself (though I'm many, many, many years away from that) but not everyone is.

This again is understandable: if you got stuck for a word, you know that you've got stuck for a word; but if in communication you've created a most peculiar sentence in the language, it's not so easy for you to realize that it's so, so all seems well by you and it seems ok to concentrate on just one aspect of the learning.

This point, I have to vehemently agree with! It's worth reminding oneself of on a regular basis. It's next to impossible to tell when you've said the right words in a nonsensical order or used a language structure that exists but is inappropriate in a given context. God knows I've done it enough times. (One of these days I hope I'll develop an intuition for when to add 起来 to my verbs...)