Here’s a really useful video for learning a bit of Mandarin. The instructor, Yangyang, speaks very clearly and before you know it, you are saying hello and how are you? I had to laugh at the explanation for ni hou ma, which means “how are you?” as used between good friends. As I’ve written elsewhere…
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Fluenz Mandarin
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Who Wrote This Site?
My name is Rosana Hart & I explore what works best when we learn new languages. See my bio for more. Do know that if you buy something after clicking through from here, I may make a commission. That doesn't influence my opinions; as a former librarian, I have a lot of experience in evaluating products.If you are interested in learning Chinese with a program, you have several choices, which I describe in my article about Chinese language software. There are other programs out there, of course, but these are the top ones in my opinion. I ended up liking Fluenz Mandarin and Rocket Chinese the best, so here is a…
Governments in the US and the UK are increasingly recognizing the importance of offering Chinese language classes in the school systems. One 2008 poll of employers in the UK, done by the Confederation of British Industry, discovered that 38% of employers answering the poll wanted to hire people who spoke either Mandarin or Cantonese. (The…
Around the net I’ve noticed a lot of people making a New Year’s Resolution to learn Chinese. I hate to say it, but for most of them it ain’t gonna happen. It’s too easy to get sidetracked. Unless, of course, you go to Beijing or someplace else and take a course! Or you CAN do it…
I had an childhood advantage in learning Chinese, as I heard a lot of Mandarin while I was growing up. My father spoke Mandarin, although even I could discern that he did so with a pronounced American accent. He was a professor of political science, specializing in China, and our home was frequently full of…
Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone, and this can seem daunting to someone learning Mandarin, or even just thinking about learning a language so different from English. Cantonese has even more tones, but since most Westerners who want to speak Chinese are interested in Mandarin, we’ll stick with it here. (Mandarin is the…
I recently came across a list of free Mandarin Chinese lessons and spent a good bit of time exploring it. In a nutshell, I have not yet found anything I like as well as Rocket Chinese. Actually, first I poked around the website where I found it, a place called Open Culture, a bit to get…
Do you want to learn Chinese fast? Maybe you are going to China and want to get a good start on the language, or for whatever reasons you are interested in learning Chinese. Many Chinese language software programs are available, such as Rocket Chinese and Fluenz Mandarin. They vary in what they emphasize. Some are…
Chinese language software is made by quite a few companies. I’m talking here about software for learning Chinese. Please note that I have not much used any of these programs for Chinese, but I am very familiar with all of them for Spanish. (I spent a lot of time in Mexico, and this website is an outgrowth…
Pimsleur Cantonese is the only program for learning Cantonese that I have come across. There may be others out there, but as I looked at the main companies creating good quality software to learn Chinese, this was it for Cantonese. (Amazon link) You can also find Pimsleur Cantonese on eBay.com. It isn’t surprising that there…
The Pimsleur Method for language learning has been around a long time. It’s based on listening and speaking, not reading. For Chinese, there is both Pimsleur Mandarin and Pimsleur Cantonese. I have two friends who have used Pimsleur to learn Spanish, and they both felt that they got a very good start in the language. One of them…
Rosetta Stone is probably the best-known multi-media computer program for learning languages, and Rosetta Stone Chinese is a program that a lot of people do like. I haven’t used the Chinese one myself but I did try their Spanish one when I was living in Mexico. It didn’t suit my learning style. I found it…
Do you want to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese fast, using a method based on up-to-date research for how adults learn languages? Fluenz Mandarin (link to Amazon) is a software program, for Windows and Mac, that can help you get a good start in learning the language. I haven’t gone through the Chinese one but I…
