New Members s.jin_410 Posted May 15, 2020 at 10:50 PM New Members Report Share Posted May 15, 2020 at 10:50 PM hello, people of chinese-forums I'm a Chinese person born Canadian, but my parents and I haven't had the time to teach me how to read Mandarin growing up and now I'd like to learn how to type a few sentences that are often used in conversation. This might be a lot to ask, but if anyone would like to help it would be greatly appreciated. I can read pinyin no problem, so I can follow a pinyin-hanzi format. Thank you for taking your time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anonymoose Posted May 16, 2020 at 01:05 PM Report Share Posted May 16, 2020 at 01:05 PM I'm not sure what kind of help you want. Sounds like you just need to sit down and learn characters. If you already can speak Chinese (which seems to be what you imply in your post), then probably the quickest way to just learn characters is to use something like the "Remembering Simplified Hanzi" series by Heisig. I haven't used it myself, but it seems to get good reviews. You would need to supplement this with reading to retain your knowledge for the long term. I suspect that after you've worked through all the Heisig books, you'd be ready to start tackling native level material, in which case anything you're interested in would do. Otherwise you could try graded readers which use a restricted number of characters. An alternative would be to use children's books which have the pinyin printed above the characters (although that may be counterproductive, as it is tempting then not to look at the characters). To me, as a non-native speaker of Chinese, if you already know the language, learning to read and type may be a bit laborious and time-consuming, but should not be difficult. Personally, I would also learn how to write (at least the common characters) by hand, as it will help you to appreciate the characters in more depth, and will probably help you in memorising them, but that is optional. You can watch YouTube videos on how to write characters - I like the calligraphy videos (even if writing with a pen/pencil) as it helps with character aesthetics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edelweis Posted May 16, 2020 at 03:13 PM Report Share Posted May 16, 2020 at 03:13 PM 16 hours ago, s.jin_410 said: a few sentences that are often used in conversation Maybe you can start with these: http://www.zhongwenred.com/lessonsoneten.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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