Study Chinese in Hangzhou

[celine0123]

Hi,everyone,

I'm new here I'm a former chinese teacher from ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY,and now i want to start a chinese course with some other teachers.We want to make it really fun and enjoyable.Below is our simple plan ,we also want to start some culture course,like Kung Fu or Calligraphy,do you guys find it acctractive? Or have any good suggestion for us?

Backpacker's Chinese Start in August

Enrich your hangzhou experience. Study basic travel and survival Chinese while learning about Hangzhou's off the beaten track hot spots.

Drama course Start in August

Read and write scripts, rehearse and perform chinese drama with a professional actor. Drama allows students to understand the feeling, emotion and nuance of chinese.

Intensive Mandarin Start in August

Study with former teachers from Zhejiang university, handle the vocabulary and grammar in a short time. Different levels offered.

Han Zi study Start in August

Chinese writing has a 4000 year history.Explore its richness,beauty and poetry.Learn the development and evolution of individual characters.Study characters in the context of chinese idioms.

Thanks,

Lidan

[celine0123]

I myself studied chinese language in Beijing before i started teaching in ZheDa.

I don't know where you learned chinese before, and I'm sure you had enough bad experiences to have a reason for such prejudices and also I am sure your chinese Level is good enough to judge a native speaker's mandarin, even before you met him personally and just by reading his english postings in a forum.

But what I'd like to tell you is that it is possible to speak your home dialect and speaking perfect mandarin without having an accent.

If you don't believe me i suggest you join my course and find out by yourself.

[Roee]

"I myself studied chinese language in Beijing before i started teaching in ZheDa.

...

But what I'd like to tell you is that it is possible to speak your home dialect and speaking perfect mandarin without having an accent.

..."

As mentioned, I'm sure you do.

[gato]

You do have to keep in mind that every Chinese city has its own accent. People in Harbin speak with a different accent from those in Beijing, for example, and CCTV accent is not Beijing accent and few people in Beijing speak like announcers on CCTV.

In fact, I find that people from the south -- particularly the younger ones who grew up learning Mandarin -- tend to speak Mandarin closer to the CCTV accent because they consciously learned Mandarin, learned the "standard" tones, and don't use the "er" endings as much as Beijingers do. I don't think language students are going to be talking enough with people on the street to pick up their accents. They probably will be conversing the most with their teachers and students. But they probably will talk to the other local enough to learn to understand a non-Beijing and non-CCTV accent, which is an important skill in its own right. This admitted might be somewhat difficult for beginner students, but not that difficult since most people in Hangzhou probably speak decent Mandarin.

[Roee]

Gato,

The fact that there are differences in the pronounciation and tones between the cities is the whole point. The question is, where do you think it is best to base your Mandarin education on?

"particularly the younger ones who grew up learning Mandarin -- tend to speak Mandarin closer to the CCTV" -- closer to CCTV as in compared to what?

[gato]

"particularly the younger ones who grew up learning Mandarin -- tend to speak Mandarin closer to the CCTV" -- closer to CCTV as in compared to what?

Compared to Beijingers. Beijinger don't bother copying the CCTV accent because they think their Mandarin is or should be the standard, whereas that's not the case. The CCTV accent is, shall we say, less colorful than the Beijing accent.

An example might make this clearer. The standard dictionary pronunciation of 色 (color) is sè, which someone speaking Mandarin in Hangzhou or Shanghai almost certainly use, but the Beijing pronunciation is shě'er.

If you are a beginner student that comes to China to mostly interact with the teachers than I find it somewhat dissapointing.

If a student takes four hours of classes a day, he or she almost certainly would speak more with teachers than with people outside the school. Yes, you can take classes back in your home country, too. But twenty hours of class a week in a small group environment would cost a lot more back at home. Moreover, students can use the Chinese they learn much more readily outside the classroom if they are in China. I think that would be case anywhere in China. I just don't believe they are likely to speak to people outside the classroom for more than four hours a day. Their teachers' pronunciation will have a much greater influence. I would submit that the key is whether the teachers' pronunciation is standard, not the pronunciation of the local fruit vendor. Plus, I don't know if you know it, but many small vendors and people who work in restaurants in Beijing (i.e. people who earn very little money) aren't local to Beijing. Many of them hail from Sichuan, Hunan or whereever and speak with a very thick non-Beijing regional accent.

[johnd]

I'm not quite sure that I understand this mythical seach for standard Mandarin. Does every English learner need to study in Oxford? If they end up with a Scottish / Australian / US accent it makes no difference. The objective is being able to communicate. And Hangzhou is a damn nice place to communicate in.

[Roee]

I 150% agree with you on the importance of the Teachers's skills.

[HashiriKata]

Roee, are you in essence saying that the teaching and learning Chinese should not be don't anywhere else but Beijing??

[Roee]

"Roee, are you in essence saying that the teaching and learning Chinese should not be don't anywhere else but Beijing?? "

Of course not! I for sure did not study in Beijing.

[Roee]

Johnd,

"Does every English learner need to study in Oxford? If they end up with a Scottish / Australian / US accent it makes no difference."

Have you been to Scotland mate? I have, but I have no idea what they were talking about. hehehe

"The objective is being able to communicate. And Hangzhou is a damn nice place to communicate in."

It sure is a damn nice place.

[HashiriKata]

But answer me this: if your motives are 100% Mandarin-orinted, which place would fit you most on the Mainland?

As it'd happen to be in my case: both Beijing and Hangzhou would be around the top of my list. But the reality is this: I've been learning Chinese in a most unimaginable place (I've got no choice ) but I can go against modesty and say that my Chinese is fine.

[roddy]

If you are going to base your decision solely on similarity of the Chinese on the streets to the Chinese in your textbooks, then Beijing / somewhere in the north-east is probably your choice.

But for my money there are so many other factors to take into account - climate, cost, proximity to decent travelling - AND being outside of Putonghualand does not make it impossible to learn 'standard' Chinese, just potentially makes it harder, that it's really a theoretical debate.

[johnd]

I am Scottish mate, and I'm not suggesting that you go to Sighthill to study English.

As for Dongguan, why not? The local language is Cantonese, but if you speak to anyone in Mandarin, they'll speak back in Mandarin. And most people there are workers from all over China. Of course they have a common language, and that's Mandarin. And what will be wrong with the accent you learn? Maybe some "sh" sound like "s". Then you can still go and work in your stuck-up multinational.

[Roee]

Roddy, fair enough. So, if you could choose anywhere, assuming Mandarin is the top priority, where would it be? And on the other hand, where would you avoid?

[johnd]

I'm not going to give up this point! If there is nothing wrong with it anyhow, how can you do better? If your pronunciation, including tones, are different from "standard Mandarin" AND you can communicate with the majority of Mandarin speakers, then you are a successful Mandarin speaker. Language is rich in diversity, what's wrong with being part of that?

[celine0123]

I just came back from a short camping trip,it seems very active here,I'd like to take part.It's a very interesting topic.

I admit there are some misunderstandings when i replied your post last time.Yeh,it's true,there are a lot of hangzhounese still speak Hangzhou dialect all the time,and also some of my students complained about it before,because when they started learning chinese,sometimes it doesn't work when they talking to some taxi drivers or the waitress in the restrants.But it's not so terrible.All of them can recognise the diffrence between Putonghua and dialect,they only get influence when they want to make some jokes,they will take some interesting pronounciations from Hangzhouhua.

I feel the problem is not about the dialect,when you start to learn chinese,try to get rid of the influence from your own language is the most difficult and important thing.I never saw a foreigner speak Putonghua with a hangzhou accent,but i saw a lot speak Putonghua like a english, a american,a japanese or whoever.

[atitarev]

I noticed that with words I know, I can sometimes tell if a dialect speaker mispronounces it (like e.g. the s - sh example) but with new words I am not sure what's right. They pronounce zhai as zai and I get confused, which word is meant. Understanding Mandarin spoken with a at least one regional dialect is a skill you probably want to acquire, since it's too common a phenomenon, in parallel to understanding standard Mandarin. Number of similar sounding syllables is increased with the mix-up of sibilants (s-sh, z-zh, c-ch, z-zh) and other sounds (n-ng), (h-f), (r-y,-whatever), it must be a bit harder to get used to hear words you learn in class pronounced differently.

[blink]

This entire thread has me very worried. I plan to study Mandarin for a few weeks in Hangzhou at the Manda Center. I took one intensive beginner class in the US last semester, but now I'm a little rusty. Is visiting hangzhou a bad choice? I don't want to be confused and end up speaking a local dialect instead of standard Mandarin and, being that I've never heard a local dialect, I wonder how easy/difficult it is for a beginner to tell the difference. I'm also concerned about living in another country by myself without being able to use what little Mandarin I do know to buy food locally or exchange money.

I chose hangzhou because the school was less expensive, the surrounding area seems wonderful (west lake etc), to avoid Beijing construction, and to avoid the temptation to speak English with other foreign students. Do the people posting against hangzhou really believe studying in Hangzhou will be a detriment to my ability to speak standard Mandarin? Do you think the difference justifies paying twice as much to go to a school in Beijing?

[gato]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Manda Center's program looks great, or at least its website looks better than that of most other Chinese schools.

http://www.mandacenter.com/index.php?id=programs