Learn Mandarin - Part one

I have been tinkering with learning Mandarin for a while, taking a conversational class one evening a week, starting at zero. Luckily Jennifer is doing the class with me at the same time and even though we don't really practice speaking outside the class, just having someone else doing it with you is a support. We do practice the previous week's lesson together and if one of us is away for a class the other one does fill in the gaps, but its not the same as a real lesson. The real lesson is the learning place where the brain gets engaged by the context of a classroom with a teacher who has a plan to move us forward. I like this part because it works. We start out with a review of what we learned the previous week(s) and because our conversation group is fairly well engaged in the class this part is usually fast and gets us up to speed. I can almost sense the brain straining to make the switch from expecting English sounds to expecting Chinese sounds, and they are different. This is one of the more challenging aspects to learning this language, the sounds of each character are really dependent on the way you say them, which is of course, the tonal aspect of the language. English has a tonal aspect to it as well but it is contextual to the speaker's desired meaning, for example, 'come on' (urging my daughter to move), 'come on' (a description of a ploy to dupe a fool). You can imagine more ways to give 'come on' different meanings by employing tonal qualities that you decide will convey your intention. Tones in Mandarin are not as personally determined. They are part of the meaning structure of the language and need to be learned along with the orthography. That brings up another interesting aspect to learning this language. The way it is represented on the page is generally either in the romanesque Pinyin or the Hanzi characters or traditional characters. These need to be memorized as the vocabulary is built up word by word.

I am continuing with my weekly conversation classes and have begun to explore more ways to learn this language. I have been a silent listener for about three weeks of something called ChinesePod, a daily podcast from Shanghai that presents itself as a new way to learn the language 'on your terms'. The ChinesePod website rolled out a new look (V.3) on the weekend and I decided to sign up for the free lessons. The lesson set begins with their Intro series which are ultra slow, careful, friendly and very doable. I will do these but I will dip into some of the other Newbie lessons randomly as I go. I think the free session is now two weeks instead of one week so I will have enough time to really get a sense of how effectively I can make use of this site. It also has some nice 'exercise' lessons and 'test yourself' areas to see how well you are doing. The general principle seems to be a mastery learning approach, memorize to a high degree of success and then move on. Nothing wrong with that, but its not conversation. You can subscribe to the conversation aspect as well (utilizing a daily ten minute Skype call) although that will cost a bit more. For now I will stay with the click and listen and repeat until my cat gets tired of me I suppose, or I learn enough Mandarin to risk actually speaking with a stranger.