The Chinese language is frightening in its complexity. Many people think that only superhumans with some special and mysterious “talent for languages” can learn it. This is not true. It is possible to learn Chinese, but it is really much harder than English. And a lot of it depends on your goal.
If you want to work professionally with Chinese, it is better to find a teacher or enroll in a course right away. But the level of “survival” is also quite achievable with self-study. In this case, you should concentrate on conversational phrases – writing will not come in handy as much. But to conduct business correspondence with business partners, the skill of speech perception, on the contrary, is not so important. Below we give tips on how to fully master the language. First of all, a few basic rules:
- Study every day. This is critical. Without daily practice, knowledge will flow out of your head like water through a sieve. That’s why 20 minutes every day is better than a five-hour marathon on Sunday.
- Make a class schedule. It’s hard to control yourself in the absence of a teacher. When the difficulties start (and they will), you will want to postpone the class for the evening, for tomorrow, for next week – for later. Unfortunately, the “later” may never come. To avoid this, put yourself in the frame yourself. Make a schedule and study according to it. It will help you separate your studies from the rest of your life and make studying a special ritual.
- Don’t be afraid of difficulty. When you first start learning Chinese, you have to learn a lot of new information: unfamiliar sounds, tones, characters, keys. But then the core of knowledge will increase faster and faster – like a snowball rolling down a mountain. You will find it easier to memorize new characters when you understand what they consist of. And speech perception won’t be a problem when you master the tones and vocabulary. So the effort at the initial stage will pay off a hundredfold.
- Love Chinese. The best motivation for learning a language is sincere interest. With it you will not have to force yourself to study, and you will learn new words and characters not only from textbooks, but from a variety of sources. So if you started learning Chinese not out of love for the language or culture itself, but for practical reasons, try watching TV series, listening to Chinese music, reading literature. Basically, find something that hooks you.
- One last thing. Unfortunately, there are very few good materials on Chinese. Without knowledge of English, it will be much more difficult to master Mandarin, especially on your own. So if Chinese is your first foreign language, you should think about starting with something easier and more practical.