Mandarin and Japanese Together

[MarkH]

I am starting to think that I could get to a reasonable level of ability in both Mandarin AND Japanese, notwithstanding their complete lack of lexical similarity, in the same time as it would take me to learn even the basic 2,000 or so characters I would need to pick my way through a Chinese text. Am I nuts?

Here's my situation:

I am a new learner of Chinese, in Texas, which, although much more multicultural than you might think, is not exactly brimming with opportunities to interact with Chinese speakers.

I have been getting on fine with the spoken language -- I am fortunate in that I am one of those people who picks up on languages quickly, BUT, this is only true on a hearing/speaking level. Which brings me to my problem; I just cannot seem to get characters to stick in my head. I have tried writing them out, using flashcards, all the usual techniques, and they just aren't sticking in there at all. I just don't seem to have the ability to make the connection between the character and the word. Obviously I expected this to be harder than an alphabet based system, but I am just an idiot when it comes to this.

Ultimately, my desire is to learn to speak and understand. Sure I would love to learn to read, but it just doesn't seem to be happening.

So, would it be crazy for me to focus on the spoken side first? Even if I am also learning Japanese?

Thanks.

[nipponman]

Unfortunately, I don't think you can. Because if you get so far along and you haven't made the connection between speech and language, then you might find yourself in a predicament, at least as far as Chinese goes. Now as far as Japanese, the link between spoken and written is far weaker. Really though, speaking and writing (and listening too) are all interelated,

so skip one now and you might regret it later.

nipponman

P.s.

If you want th learn more about my personal writing techniques, I suggest this link: http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=4114

[Vardainzilwen]

skip one now and you might regret it later

Too true. My French (and Spanish too, come to think of it... ) listening is appalling, just because some foolish parts of me thought that the writing was more important. So don't just leave the writing out!

As to your problem, am I just making an assumption here or are you trying to learn too many characters in one go? May be you can break the bulk up into small chunks. I briefly read through the helpful link nipponman provided and I agree completely that writing out the same character again and again helps. That's how I was taught Chinese . Perhaps after that you can practise writing out combinations (that have meanings) of characters?

If you find it hard to make connection between spoken and written Chinese, may be you can read out every single character you write as you write it. That was how I learnt English at the beginning spelling and reading outloud while writing them.

Also I find reading simple books of the language you're learning helpful. (e.g. Tin Tin books, The Lion King, Little Miss Chatterbox...ahem, let's not go too far into my personal collection ) Try reading outloud the text if possible.

Good luck!

[wushijiao]

Keep up the good work!

I might suggest, put the thirty or so most commonly used radicals on flash cards and work on those for a while. Then, every time you learn a character, say, 上海 (shang4hai3) put that on a flash card. Then on another card put a word that has one of the same characters, say, 海岸 (hai3an4) coast, seashore, shoreline. And then maybe 上帝 (shang4di4) God, Lord. Also, make sure that with every word you include the general, vague idea of the character like sea and coast for hai'an. Then, make a pile of 20-50 cards with words that have characters that reinforce each other, which will hopefully make it easier for you to remember the characters while learning useful words. This was a method that worked for me at least. I aso only had a small pocket dictionary (I think Oxford's) of only 4,000 entries or so. This was a blessing in disguise because I didn't write down any esoteric or jargonish words on the flashcards, which would have been confusing at a beginners level.

Personally, I think it is best to err on the side of listening/speaking at the very start anyway.

In any case, good luck! Stay motivated!

[MarkH]

Thanks to everyone for the tips.