learning chinese. HELP?
hey, i decided i might start learning chinese
the thing is that, some things dont make sense to me.
first of all, is pinyin ONLY written with english letters? so there’s no symbols or marks or anything for pinyin, except that its written in latin letters?
also, i read that simplified chinese i more used than traditional chinese. so, if i go to china, or any chinese speaking country, or if i watch a movie about china, everything that’s written in stores, streets, schools, books, EVERYTHING, is in simplified chinese?
also, how do u read chinese? any website that could help me? do u just learn chinese by MEMORIZING what each symbol is?
and what about writing? it seems to me like it would take me like 5 hours to only draw ONE symbol
and if i see a random symbol, how do i know how to pronounce it? and how do i know what it means?
any online chinese dictionaries?
Pinyin is written with using the Latin alphabet and tone marks. For example, the pinyin for “你好” is “nǐ hǎo.” For those who do not have the pinyin font on their computer, they opt to use numbers to distinguish tones as in “ni3 hao3.”
Simplified Chinese is used in Mainland China and in other countries that are not predominantly Chinese such as Canada or the United States. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, some parts of Malaysia and the Philippines, and can also be found in other non-predominantly Chinese countries (they are just a little harder to come by than simplified characters). Also, if you live in a non-Chinese country, but have a significant Chinese population that speaks Cantonese, for example, instead of Mandarin, you’ll probably have an easier time finding materials in traditional characters.
Yes, Chinese is more or less about memorization. Many characters, especially simplified characters, contain a sound component in the character that aids in pronunciation, but the exact pronunciation still has to be learned separately. Take, for example, the simplified version of “響” (to make a sound) which is “响” [xiǎng]. You can get an idea of how that simplified character sounds like if you are familiar with the character “向” [xiàng] (towards, to, in the direction of, etc.), although the tones they use are not the same.
There are specific rules for how to write a Chinese character. These help ensure that (1) the character is written accurately (2) the character is written as symmetrically as possible and (3) you are able to determine a character’s stroke count. The stroke count is necessary when you want to look up a character in a Chinese dictionary, especially if you do not know how to pronounce it. Most books dedicated to teaching Chinese characters to 2nd language learners will dedicate a small section to proper orthography, but if not, you can take a look here:
http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/chinese-characters.html
http://mandarin.about.com/od/writingmandarin/a/writebyhand.htm
As for online Chinese dictionaries:
http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html
http://www.nciku.com/
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php
eight in Chinese characters, learn Chinese online, write Chinese characters