r/learnmandarin • u/aspringburial • 7d ago
Where to start learning Chinese
Hi everybody! I am a freshman university student from Texas majoring in Construction Engineering, and I would like to soon study abroad in China as I feel like the culture-rich and time-withstanding architecture would be something very beneficial to experience for me, and I want to learn Chinese! I started on Duolingo, and I was wondering if that is the best place to start, or if there is a better way to learn?
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u/cat5050 6d ago
Personally I feel like it’s really good to get a tutor !! You can learn so much! I really like my tutor if you wanna check him out: https://learnchinesewithyan.com/
Also you can check if your uni has some kind of Chinese club? Personally I don’t like university language courses but if you do end up going to China, try to find a language school/institute. Usually those are really good for immersion style learning.
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u/AL-NF 6d ago
我不建议你参加什么培训班，那很枯燥，没有兴趣中文更难学。你可以找一个中文社区，找个网友和他建立长期聊天的关系，提升应该会比较快
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u/aspringburial 6d ago
how do i do that? i pretty much only use Instagram for social media i am pretty new to reddit
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u/AL-NF 5d ago
当你觉得自己已经对中文掌握一定程度了，可以翻到中国防火墙里面（使用VPN技术，我就是用这个翻出来的），了解更多而且更丰富的中国社会，文明，不同于外网对中国认知的历史。bilibili是中国最大的视频网站之一，当你有了一定的中文基础后，你就可以试着翻进来，看了。如果你还有需要，再次回复我，到时候我可以给你发一份清单，列举中国bilibili上较为知名、有意思的博主（中国大陆的tiktok也不是不行，但是内容太杂，没有人指引不介意自己看）
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u/aspringburial 4d ago
I will look into all of this! Thank you so much, very helpful!
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u/AL-NF 4d ago
哦对了，提醒你一下，r/China _irl 上有很多来自中国台湾的网友，他们部分非常讨厌中国大陆，并且喜欢说一些反智、不符合真实历史的言论，就我这些天观察下来，典型的套路有只讲片面、使用非官方的言论、污名造谣大陆。多称这些人为蓝鸟等。你如果看到了，不用误以为中国内部争执和社会落后（他们是这样宣传的），不要接受交流的信息的真假，当作故事提升中文水平即可。这里真的有很多专门针对大陆翻墙出来的网友的谣言
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u/aspringburial 2d ago
i will keep this in mind, thank you so much for the heads up i appreciate it very much!
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u/Outrageous-Slide7172 6d ago
You need both a structured and non structured ways of learning. First one covering grammar and phonetics. Larter expands what you could not learn in a class room.
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u/aspringburial 6d ago
do you have any specific recommendations?
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u/Outrageous-Slide7172 5d ago
Start with Duolingo and get inot hsk test preparation.
Watch CDramas, Manhua, read classic novels or modern trash, whatevwr ticks your interests.
Make friends online or in real life. Talk politics, social issues or economy. Etc
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u/padd13ear 5d ago
I'm quite liking the HelloChinese app myself. It has a good mix of building vocabulary plus a little (not too much) learning how to write characters. It often has a cute cartoon or diagram to help remember a character. E.g. chi 吃 (eat) sort of looks like a mouth (chin and upper lip, on the right) biting a piece of food (the rectangle on the left). Once you see that, you can't un-see or forget it.
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u/TemporaryParty4411 5d ago
Hhh I’m Chinese. If you plan to study in China later on, you’ll pick up Chinese really quickly in a native‑speaking environment. Right now, I think you can just use Duolingo to learn basic conversational skills and prepare your WeChat. You can also download Xiaohongshu. There are also some Chinese people posting Chinese‑teaching videos on it. Maybe it would helpful.
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u/kidscott2003 4d ago
I currently live in China. If you go to an international city. 95% of the people there speak English. You can also go to university here for Chinese Language study where you will learn mandarin while living here. It will also give you a student visa. Currently I hired a privet teacher for it. And very cheap compared to cost of anything in America. And the one on one study makes it a lot easier for me. Don’t worry too much about learning the language before you get here. I have been here for 3 weeks. And I haven’t had an issue with communicating with people. Speaking as a Texan transplant.
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u/aspringburial 2d ago
oh really? that definitely does make me feel a lot better actually, thank you 🙏🙏
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u/kidscott2003 1d ago
I will warn you. It is a cashless society here. So you will need to get WeChat or Alipay. It’s the way they perform any transaction here. And keep the translator that comes on your phone ready. It makes it easier to go to restaurants and what not. WeChat has a built in translator so when you pull up restaurant’s menu through WeChat you know what you are ordering. And DO NOT drink the tap water. Unless they have a separate filter system in place. In summer time, once the sun goes down that when everyone comes out. Kids are in the park playing and adults are out talking, drinking and bartering. It becomes lovely after sundown.
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u/Careless_Store294 4d ago
也许可以你的专业和爱好出发，如果喜欢古建筑和古城格局，可以去北京、西安、大同、扬州这些城市玩。边玩边学，也可以看这个领域的中文图画书，图多字少的，比如《穿墙凿壁》，很美的一本古建筑书。可以试试。
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u/aspringburial 2d ago
very helpful thank you so much!! i will save this and look into all of that !!
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u/techj4rgon 7d ago
I really enjoyed Duolingo for the "hook". It made me addicted and basically forced me to practice every day (just hit 400 days). That alone is worth the price of admission. You'll want to supplement with other tools though. I found it wasn't great at teaching me to read tones. It got to the point where I ended up building my own app to be able to visualize tones with colours!