Since Mandarin is my native language, I have no trouble understanding the meaning verbally. However, I've never had any formal language in learning Chinese. Some my friends have asked me 'Wouldn't it be weird for you to converse in Mandarin but you can't read them?' Yes, I know that! I have the superpower to understand the heck you're trying to say. Take that! (and don't try to backstab me)
Having an upperhand to speak/listen to Mandarin, I still have troubles trying to read/write the Chinese characters. Same goes to English, whereby native-English speakers don't necessary have the best English in the form of words. That's why I'm still learning how to read them. I usually practice by watching Chinese reality shows, or listening to my favourite Chinese songs.
There are actually more than 50 dialects in China. The most commonly used Chinese language is Mandarin. So basically what we mention on speaking Chinese is speaking Mandarin. Cantonese would be the other case for Jacky Chan fanatic. For people who have no idea on how to start Chinese lesson,
1. Start listening to the TV shows!
2. Once you are heavily confused with verbal talk, I would consider you to try out Learn Chinese Ez.
3. Learn first 100 most common characters in Chinese. Emphasize heavily on the pronunciation.
4. Be careful with the tone, there are usually 4 tones for each pronunciation.
5. Learn radicals on why the words are placed in such ways. (There are some ridiculous words with no idea why it is placed such ways, only Chinese historians can depict them. =))
6. Start to learn from the basic. I would post some useful videos from Youtube to enhance your learning soon.
7. Be persevere! Don't give up.
It's not easy to learn Chinese language. I actually feel that no language is easy to learn without hardwork and perseverance. Hope I can share more ideas to enhance the language learning. It helps me and other bananas as well.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
My first post
Hello World!
I am Yew Hong, a banana. Hmm.... You must have recalled yourself with The Banana Songs from Despicable Me.
Minion holding a banana.
But no, not this one. I know Minion craze is severe now. Buying tonnes of Happy Meal just to get that plastic toys. But really, not about this, and I'm not crazy for that.
In Malaysia, the term 'Banana' is for Chinese people who don't have good command of Chinese language. It is like saying Englishman who cannot speak English. How pathetic is that?
This is basically due to the environment we live. Malaysia is a multi-racial country, so you can expect different perspective from every race. I was from national school all the way from primary to secondary. Therefore, I can say I was Malay-educated student. My English isn't as par as those pure bananas. I don't have countless vocabulary to put into my essay. Understandable writing is already a good sign for my essay writing. I live in Mandarin-speaking environment. Therefore, I can speak and listen pretty well, much better than my English. The problem is that I still cannot read Chinese characters. If I cannot read, definitely I cannot write as well. It was embarrassing when my Chinese friends laughed at my incompetence in this language proficiency.
For us to learn a language, we must understand the components to learn it effectively. There are 4 components of learning a language, just like English test in IELTS and TOEFL which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. But we must understand, in order to learn a language effectively, we must learn in this ascending order
Listening -> Speaking -> Reading -> Writing
Most people learn it the hard way, starting from reading to writing and then listening to speaking. This is what taught in most school in Asia. I believe the same concept applies globally. This is also the reason why we can see people who score well in their written test, but hardly utter a word during their conversation. Since I can speak basic Mandarin, I should move on to read Chinese characters now. Persistence with the correct material would be the best way to learn all the words.
The purpose for me to establish this blog is to gauge my performance in reading Chinese characters. Quite a large amount of Chinese people around KL area cannot speak basic Mandarin, let alone to read the Chinese characters. Nobody is born not to learn his mother language. I hope, by posting the correct materials and effective methods on learning Mandarin, it can help Chinese-Malaysians to pick up Mandarin as fast as they can.
Non-Malaysians are also welcome to learn with us too! See you.
I am Yew Hong, a banana. Hmm.... You must have recalled yourself with The Banana Songs from Despicable Me.
Minion holding a banana.
But no, not this one. I know Minion craze is severe now. Buying tonnes of Happy Meal just to get that plastic toys. But really, not about this, and I'm not crazy for that.
In Malaysia, the term 'Banana' is for Chinese people who don't have good command of Chinese language. It is like saying Englishman who cannot speak English. How pathetic is that?
This is basically due to the environment we live. Malaysia is a multi-racial country, so you can expect different perspective from every race. I was from national school all the way from primary to secondary. Therefore, I can say I was Malay-educated student. My English isn't as par as those pure bananas. I don't have countless vocabulary to put into my essay. Understandable writing is already a good sign for my essay writing. I live in Mandarin-speaking environment. Therefore, I can speak and listen pretty well, much better than my English. The problem is that I still cannot read Chinese characters. If I cannot read, definitely I cannot write as well. It was embarrassing when my Chinese friends laughed at my incompetence in this language proficiency.
For us to learn a language, we must understand the components to learn it effectively. There are 4 components of learning a language, just like English test in IELTS and TOEFL which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. But we must understand, in order to learn a language effectively, we must learn in this ascending order
Listening -> Speaking -> Reading -> Writing
Most people learn it the hard way, starting from reading to writing and then listening to speaking. This is what taught in most school in Asia. I believe the same concept applies globally. This is also the reason why we can see people who score well in their written test, but hardly utter a word during their conversation. Since I can speak basic Mandarin, I should move on to read Chinese characters now. Persistence with the correct material would be the best way to learn all the words.
The purpose for me to establish this blog is to gauge my performance in reading Chinese characters. Quite a large amount of Chinese people around KL area cannot speak basic Mandarin, let alone to read the Chinese characters. Nobody is born not to learn his mother language. I hope, by posting the correct materials and effective methods on learning Mandarin, it can help Chinese-Malaysians to pick up Mandarin as fast as they can.
Non-Malaysians are also welcome to learn with us too! See you.
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