Everyone's probably heard about what makes Mandarin hard (the tones, the characters, etc.). Well guess what? Mandarin is much easier in some regards as well: 1) Mandarin is SVO (subject-verb-object) just like English (e.g. 我吃饭 "I eat meal"). 2) Mandarin has no subject-verb agreement rule (e.g. 我跑，你跑，他跑，她跑 "I _run_, you _run_, he _run_, she _run_," not "he runs" and "she runs" because the verb never changes). 3) Mandarin has no plurals (e.g. 一本书，两本书，三本书 "one _book_, two _book_, three _book_"). 4) The numbering system is straightforward and has no odd names like "eleven" and "twelve" (e.g. 10： 十，11： 十一， 12： 十二， 13： 十三). 5) Nationalities are super easy: just add the character for person 人after the name of the country. No need to remember which ones end in "-an" (Mexican), which end in "-ese" (Chinese), or which end in "-ish" (Irish). (e.g. 中国人 = Chinese person, 美国人 = American person, 日本人 = Japanese person). 6) Prepositions are super easy. The same preposition can be used in multiple ways, and preposition pairs with opposite meanings are always direct opposites with no exceptions (e.g. 上 = up, above, on top of, before, previous; 下 = down, below, underneath, after, next). 7) Mandarin has no verb tenses (e.g. 我昨天去公园，我现在去公园，我明天去公园 "Yesterday I _go_ to the park, right now I _go_ to the park, tomorrow I _go_ to the park"). 8) Questions and answers are in the same order (e.g. 他是谁？ 他是John。 "He is who? He is John."). Simply replace the question word with the answer and leave the structure alone.
There are several things for how to learn Mandarin Decide exactly why you wish to learn Chinese Try to speak Chinese everyday Decide which method works for you the best. (I discovered about these and more on Magic mandarin blueprint website )
Indonesian much easy....... the most simple language in the world.. It have all 1-8 you pointed at................. plus no tones and use latin letter. The tones is hell nightmare, much more for someone who have hearing problem like me. Learn 1 year, very good at writing kanji, but fucking suck at tones..... give up
sKpDenis I would say Mandarin because almost 1 billion people are native speakers of Mandarin. It is the most common language in the world. The remaining people in China all learn Mandarin in school. There are 125 million Japanese speakers.
sKpDenis plus with Japanese you have to learn 3 different 'alphabets' all verbs have tenses and nouns, adjectives and verbs change when using polite or impolite forms of speech and when using some grammar patterns. Japanese is very difficult but I believe that mandarin is more useful than Japanese.
My unforgettable Story in China..I took a wrong flight to another city because my Chinese tones were not on point..I went to xianyang instead of Shenyang
A lot of people get sketched out by the thought of the learning Mandarin cause of all the characters. TIP to make life easier for yourself: Just learn to speak and to listen :) Mandarin is extremely easy to speak and is a much simpler language than English. Then, once you're decently proficient, you can start to learn to read and write if you want. But no one said you need to learn to read :) Focus on learning to speak and to listen. You'll find that as you learn more and more, you'll just start recognizing characters!
You might have just convinced me to learn Mandarin in the future. I'm learning Korean right now so I'll pick up Mandarin later so my head doesn't explode. Some people say Chinese languages are ugly, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Mandarin/Cantonese are beautiful langues. I love tonal languages (that goes for you too Vietnamese)
+걸왜 에반 mandarin is a beautiful language~ also if you're studying korean right now, you might find learning the grammar of Chinese to be fairly easy. a few words sound very similiar too due to Korea using Chinese characters before hangul was introduced to the public
I started learning Mandarin about a month ago. It's a very enjoyable process but, also very difficult. I'm 58 and it's harder to retain information that it was when I was young. I don't have any other Mandarin speakers to practice with but, I'm going to take a formal class starting in August of 2018. I live Chinese dramas and I'd love to be able to watch without subtitles.
Mandarin is actually not as difficult as some people make it out to be. It takes time to memorize vocabulary but the grammar and the fact that you don't conjugate verbs makes it very simple. My pronunciation is very good and I would dare to say better than most chinese that learn here in NY. But I have been told by many natives that somehow my pronunciation is really good. Some friends think I just have that skill. I don't know but I do feel that mandarin is actually relatively easy to learn. It will make you smarter and it will improve your memory. That's for SURE. One thing you will ALWAYS ALWAYS get is that you are very smart because you speak. I encourage you to learn. It's not as hard as you think.
Cool! I started to dabble with it because of Taiwanese friends. It's a happy thing to meet native speakers and see how they're so glad you can have a short conversation in their language. Sometimes they are studying your own language (fairly common for English and Spanish). Those moments are always memorable.
6 great reasons! I'm really enjoying learning Mandarin, especially learning to understand Chinese songs and the different styles of linguistic expression therein. Plus, having a musical ear is so useful for hearing tones - if only I could repeat them as well as I hear them lol. Add oil all Mandarin learners!
I started learning Mandarin about two weeks ago, and it really helped me bond with other people. It helped me a lot in Chinese stores, people get really surprised when I talk to cashiers; it leaves a good impression on people you know, and they learn to respect you more. I learned a lot while learning Chinese, it's really helpful! I'm glad my dad knows Mandarin, so he's harder on me than the teachers, and the best thing is, he often tells me stories in Mandarin, so I can learn to hold a conversation without sounding awkward while speaking Mandarin! Once you learn the tones, everything else is easy!
i know english cause i was born in the U.S and lived there for 10 yrs, also now live in colombia so i know spanish, also i go to a bilingual school and im learning mandarin right now im gonna take the hsk3 if anyone knows what that is its a test provided by the chinese government.
Seems like no Vietnamese out in the comment XD If I observe this right, Vietnamese has some very significant similar words to Mandarin or Chinese, I really cannot tell the tone of Mandarin apart, but I know that Vietnamese was famous for their "hard spoken" tones (which added to the normal abc alphabet) I'm willing to take Mandarin in High School because I found that yes, Mandarin is the second useful language other than English. Even though I heard about their writing and tones were hard, I like them over Spanish (which most California citizen learn because of large population of Mexican)
I born and grew up at Indonesia. My parents don't really speak mandarin with me. And I am living in Singapore now, a lot of Singaporean quite confuse why I can't speak mandarin even my race is Chinese LOL
I'm happy to watch this video,cuz I'm a Chinese.and if there r more people who r willing to learn mandarin,I swear to u that u won't regret doing so.welcome
I took Cantonese lessons in Toronto a few years ago -- and was the only long nose in the room. Everybody else was Chinese-Canadian... sort of. The fact is they were all from Hong Kong, Cambodia, Vietnam, and there may have been one or two mainlanders. And they all spike different Chineses. They came into class thinking it would be an easy way to pick up a first on their matriculation papers, but they stayed to learn a valuable new dialect: Toronto Cantonese is an important one because Toronto is one of the world's Cantonese centres now.
I should learn Mandarin. I live in one of the top four most populated cities and diverse. That, and a lot of the professors here speak Mandarin. Certainly convinced me.
Never heard of General Tsao until I started watching this channel... Oh, and nice to see the reprisal of Mike and the Yi and the ordering of the 包子 和 水饺。
True,I forgot about those areas. I meant some people I know speaks more mandarin than cantonese. Also some shows has more mandarin than cantonese so I thought I should learn it.
+걸왜 에반 Most Taiwanese people speak both Mandarin and the Southern Min dialect (閩南語), known locally in Taiwan as the "Taiwanese dialect" (臺語) since more than 70% of all Taiwanese came from what is the southern part of Fujian Province (福建省) where this dialect is spoken. And no, the Southern Min / Taiwanese dialect is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese / Mandarin.
I've been studying Mandarin for about a year, which is how I stumbled upon this channel. Based on my Internet history, Google is convinced I want to date Chinese women. I don't. I'm happily married. I guess Google is playing the percentages.
geoffrobinson Google also thinks that I love family guy. I just watch one Seth McFarland video and now my explore is full with quagmire, Meg and Chris. A lot of mature stuff.
and we can also study or learning chinese culture through CANTONESE, HAKKA, HOKKIEN , TEOCHEW, or even SHANGHAINESE！ 學習中華文化不一定得通過普通話mandarin, 學習中華文化可以通過閩南話 客家話 粵語 潮州話等等，而且真正能代表中華文化的是中國各個地區的地方語言。 the things that can really represent chinese culture is the regional language(hakka, teochew, cantonese, hokkien, taishanese, etc) from china！
i learn mandarin heavily in my school, we are going on exchange because my school was very surprised at our fluency. once you have the pinyin and the basic writing of the characters understood, its really a fun language
李梦婷 Well, I have already given up on that. I have passed all my chinese beginner courses and thats as far as I go. Not feeling motivated to study more xD
+Shinji D not remember exactly, but recognise. Actually, it s not only faces but objects as well. We dont realise it but we recognise a lot of stuff in our daily lives. With time, your brain gets used to the shapes found in chinese characters and it becomes easier.
hi,could you guys attached a subtitle for each video. I think it will attract millions of english learner to watch your videos and it is more interesting than other news
Ever since duolingo released its chinese course I've been on and off with it, from what I've seen is that it is a very simply but very contextual language, as in structuring sentences is quite easy buy finding a word with a complex meaning can be quite difficult, for example the word for "student" is something similar to "growing knowledge", sure when you start you just think of it as one word but once you start seeing what words mean it becomes confusing, especially when you speak languages that prioritize being clear with what you want to say like in spanish or french.
Im learning Korean at this moment, and since the Korean Write g system got some influence from the Chinese characters (writing system). I plan on learning Mandarin! I know it won't be easy but it's not hard to try!
The population is more important than the total number of countries that speak it. Hypothetically, let's say China split into 10 different countries. Does that magically increase the importance of Chinese even though the total number of speakers remains the same?
+Olivia.Emo Bobb I'm learning Korea. East Asian languages are considered the HARDEST languages to learn for English speakers. So tough, but so rewarding after years of hard work. I love it
all of that is so true!!! there´s chinese everywhere and if you speak mandarin you´ll get a job quickly (story of my life) but I didn´t know about the #5.....btw Felicia is there any way you guys can make a video teaching the tones in cantonese?
I'm originally from Taiwan & living in the States since I was about 15. I've met some strangers whom assumed I was a latino. At first, I'd ask them, "How do you know I'm a Latino?" After awhile, I'd ask, "How do you know Chinese speak Spanish?" Up to this point, their reaction was priceless. Now, I just ignore them, unless they speak English to me. When I was in college, I enlisted into US Army Reserve & planned to join ROTC as a MI linguistic in Mandarin. I was probably the only reservist among the national guards back then. But my plan didn't work out.
I'm taking Mandarin 1 at the moment, but I have also been studying Japanese and will be going to study abroad in Japan soon. I won't really be allowed to speak another language over there since it's complete immersion. Is it okay if I started learning Mandarin again while in college? For some reason I feel like I've started too late and I won't be able to speak well...
6. It is not useful in most countries, as English would be. 5. Cantonese for that. 4. I haggle in English, and walk away if price is not good. 3. True 2. Chinese culture has changed over the 5000 years, and all cultures are old as they evolve from previous cultures. And cantonese is useful to learn chinese culture. 1. Any language will make you smarter to the speaker. And they say biligual in any language makes you smarter.
+ZARAxELF95 Hmm, I'm always out to help people with learning Mandarin. I can't say there is one solve-all site, but there are few things that got me started! I pretty much started with TH-cam. Such as the initial videos from LearnChineseNow, Fluent in Mandarin.com is doing a great job with Chris on his channel and setting up an account on Interpals is always a good way to supplement what you learn. It's a bit of a journey, but the people of the Sinophonic world are very kind and always willing to help!!
How can I self teach myself? I'd prefer if I learnt lessons like do for French in school, like body parts, versatile and nouns, singular and plaural, past present and future tense. idk if this is a thing in the language but it'd be great if someone can tell me ways on self teaching any language, for me im trying to learn cantonese chinese but I also want to learn manderin chinese.
Im learning cantonese instead. I tried to learn a little bit of both, but mandaran is just to damn hard as far as pronunciation for me as a native english speaker. Most cantonese sounds are also in english whereas mandarin has all of these foreign sounds. I actually know a few chinese people who can speak both, but when i try to say something in Mandarin they look at me puzzled, but when i say them same thing in Cantonese they immediately know what im saying, so i frigured Id go with the easier one that came more naturally, where i am Canotonese is more common anyway... maybe when i become fluent in Cantonese I will attempt mandarin again.
I speak Mandarin and while it is the language with the most speakers, the vast majority are in China. So it's not very useful if you want to speak across a broad geographical area. However, Spanish and English each have about 50% of the native speakers compared to Mandarin, but are both spoken on multiple continents, in many nations. I don't see how it is more "widely" spoken than English if its speakers are, by a huge margin, in one country. (Yes, I know Mandarin is spoken outside of China in Singapore, Indonesia and etc. But those are usually only by the Chinese communities, where the majority of said country's non-Chinese citizens don't speak Mandarin. Even the ethnic Chinese there have to switch to a more widely spoken language, i.e. Indonesian in Indonesia, with their fellow citizens.)
china towns abroad they such as in london and most restaurants in my city in the UK speak cantonese not mandarin, actually you have to be careful to not try to talk mandarin to sb who doesn't even speak it. but there is a lot of young chinese people studying in my hometown so its good for practice. and when i first came to china i defintley made that 'sleep' and 'dumplings' mistake hahaha!!!!
But giiiirls... it's sooooooo difficuuult!!! I took a level 1 class and I'll say that having to learn everything by heart was a bit discouraging. I like having references and mandarin doesn't seem to have so many compared to other asian languages. At least in the writing system.
I learn mandarin at school, I enjoy learning it though, even if it's difficult and I forget the characters all the time. My class is a really small class so unfortunately I might not be able to take it any further once we stop :(
Concerned Hermit because the school needs a certain amount of people to continue teaching it, but I don't think everyone in my class wants to continue it.
this year i was the only person in my class for mandarin, nobody chose it from last year except me haha. so it was just me and the teacher. try and convince your school to keep the class by telling them that you really enjoy learning it! it would be a shame to cancel the class because only one person chose it.
I have a question: Since Mandarin uses tones to distinct words does that mean you can not speak in a sarcastic way or is it just different or more difficult to get right?
Frey Jäger The words you choose usually show your level of seriousness, I guess. Also at times, even Chinese would change the tone a little bit to show some sort of sarcasm, and you could most likely understand the conversation based context. Yeah, I know, it's weird as hell. They teach you tones, and then you find out sometimes you can't use them but will still be understood lool but anyway it's just rare cases.
Everyone's probably heard about what makes Mandarin hard (the tones, the characters, etc.). Well guess what? Mandarin is much easier in some regards as well:
1) Mandarin is SVO (subject-verb-object) just like English (e.g. 我吃饭 "I eat meal").
2) Mandarin has no subject-verb agreement rule (e.g. 我跑，你跑，他跑，她跑 "I _run_, you _run_, he _run_, she _run_," not "he runs" and "she runs" because the verb never changes).
3) Mandarin has no plurals (e.g. 一本书，两本书，三本书 "one _book_, two _book_, three _book_").
4) The numbering system is straightforward and has no odd names like "eleven" and "twelve" (e.g. 10： 十，11： 十一， 12： 十二， 13： 十三).
5) Nationalities are super easy: just add the character for person 人after the name of the country. No need to remember which ones end in "-an" (Mexican), which end in "-ese" (Chinese), or which end in "-ish" (Irish). (e.g. 中国人 = Chinese person, 美国人 = American person, 日本人 = Japanese person).
6) Prepositions are super easy. The same preposition can be used in multiple ways, and preposition pairs with opposite meanings are always direct opposites with no exceptions (e.g. 上 = up, above, on top of, before, previous; 下 = down, below, underneath, after, next).
7) Mandarin has no verb tenses (e.g. 我昨天去公园，我现在去公园，我明天去公园 "Yesterday I _go_ to the park, right now I _go_ to the park, tomorrow I _go_ to the park").
8) Questions and answers are in the same order (e.g. 他是谁？ 他是John。 "He is who? He is John."). Simply replace the question word with the answer and leave the structure alone.
That's awesome information, thank you! I am about to dive into learning Mandarin, whew...
There are several things for how to learn Mandarin
Decide exactly why you wish to learn Chinese
Try to speak Chinese everyday
Decide which method works for you the best.
(I discovered about these and more on Magic mandarin blueprint website )
Indonesian much easy....... the most simple language in the world..
It have all 1-8 you pointed at................. plus no tones and use latin letter.
The tones is hell nightmare, much more for someone who have hearing problem like me.
Learn 1 year, very good at writing kanji, but fucking suck at tones..... give up
sKpDenis I would say Mandarin because almost 1 billion people are native speakers of Mandarin. It is the most common language in the world. The remaining people in China all learn Mandarin in school. There are 125 million Japanese speakers.
sKpDenis plus with Japanese you have to learn 3 different 'alphabets' all verbs have tenses and nouns, adjectives and verbs change when using polite or impolite forms of speech and when using some grammar patterns. Japanese is very difficult but I believe that mandarin is more useful than Japanese.
My unforgettable Story in China..I took a wrong flight to another city because my Chinese tones were not on point..I went to xianyang instead of Shenyang
+WODE MAYA haha
lol same story))
+WODE MAYA hahaha
was because you are a stupid bitch
+Alex freeman Be a bit more respectful please.
A lot of people get sketched out by the thought of the learning Mandarin cause of all the characters.
TIP to make life easier for yourself: Just learn to speak and to listen :)
Mandarin is extremely easy to speak and is a much simpler language than English.
Then, once you're decently proficient, you can start to learn to read and write if you want.
But no one said you need to learn to read :) Focus on learning to speak and to listen. You'll find that as you learn more and more, you'll just start recognizing characters!
CantoMando 两年前的评论被我发现了😏
My plan is to move to japan or china, so i kinda need to learn to read
proud to have Chinese as my mother language
i have chinese has my mother language too…which is cantonese. haha
Nope
You might have just convinced me to learn Mandarin in the future. I'm learning Korean right now so I'll pick up Mandarin later so my head doesn't explode. Some people say Chinese languages are ugly, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Mandarin/Cantonese are beautiful langues. I love tonal languages (that goes for you too Vietnamese)
+걸왜 에반 mandarin is a beautiful language~ also if you're studying korean right now, you might find learning the grammar of Chinese to be fairly easy. a few words sound very similiar too due to Korea using Chinese characters before hangul was introduced to the public
+걸왜 에반 wow, a comment praising vietnamese! cant remember how many people in the internet bash it like its the ugliest thing in the world.
Tim Tran I have to hold back a smile when I hear Vietnamese. I love the sound of it.
glad you like its sound lol. not many people do. thats usually one of the main reasons why most people hate vpop.
Tim Tran I just had to search that up. It's no worse than kpop or jpop.
I started learning Mandarin about a month ago. It's a very enjoyable process but, also very difficult. I'm 58 and it's harder to retain information that it was when I was young. I don't have any other Mandarin speakers to practice with but, I'm going to take a formal class starting in August of 2018. I live Chinese dramas and I'd love to be able to watch without subtitles.
Mandarin is actually not as difficult as some people make it out to be. It takes time to memorize vocabulary but the grammar and the fact that you don't conjugate verbs makes it very simple. My pronunciation is very good and I would dare to say better than most chinese that learn here in NY. But I have been told by many natives that somehow my pronunciation is really good. Some friends think I just have that skill. I don't know but I do feel that mandarin is actually relatively easy to learn. It will make you smarter and it will improve your memory. That's for SURE.
One thing you will ALWAYS ALWAYS get is that you are very smart because you speak. I encourage you to learn. It's not as hard as you think.
Cool! I started to dabble with it because of Taiwanese friends. It's a happy thing to meet native speakers and see how they're so glad you can have a short conversation in their language. Sometimes they are studying your own language (fairly common for English and Spanish). Those moments are always memorable.
6 great reasons! I'm really enjoying learning Mandarin, especially learning to understand Chinese songs and the different styles of linguistic expression therein. Plus, having a musical ear is so useful for hearing tones - if only I could repeat them as well as I hear them lol. Add oil all Mandarin learners!
awesoome video!!!!! i took mandarin in college and I aced that class, i loved every bit of it!!!
I started learning Mandarin about two weeks ago, and it really helped me bond with other people. It helped me a lot in Chinese stores, people get really surprised when I talk to cashiers; it leaves a good impression on people you know, and they learn to respect you more. I learned a lot while learning Chinese, it's really helpful! I'm glad my dad knows Mandarin, so he's harder on me than the teachers, and the best thing is, he often tells me stories in Mandarin, so I can learn to hold a conversation without sounding awkward while speaking Mandarin! Once you learn the tones, everything else is easy!
The Dong language (侗語) in Southern China actually has 15 tones so...
I'm really enjoying OTGW and getting Double Chen in too.
Best of both worlds!
Felicia is a boss 😉
Right?!!
coward bitch
i know english cause i was born in the U.S and lived there for 10 yrs, also now live in colombia so i know spanish, also i go to a bilingual school and im learning mandarin right now im gonna take the hsk3 if anyone knows what that is its a test provided by the chinese government.
Wow, you're good to survive! Lol
Ha! I just started my studies at the Mandarin major three weeks ago! I'm feeling lucky!
I'm already ahead of you! Been learning since 1st grade!
Seems like no Vietnamese out in the comment XD If I observe this right, Vietnamese has some very significant similar words to Mandarin or Chinese, I really cannot tell the tone of Mandarin apart, but I know that Vietnamese was famous for their "hard spoken" tones (which added to the normal abc alphabet) I'm willing to take Mandarin in High School because I found that yes, Mandarin is the second useful language other than English. Even though I heard about their writing and tones were hard, I like them over Spanish (which most California citizen learn because of large population of Mexican)
Best OTGW video ever!!!
I born and grew up at Indonesia. My parents don't really speak mandarin with me. And I am living in Singapore now, a lot of Singaporean quite confuse why I can't speak mandarin even my race is Chinese LOL
I'm happy to watch this video,cuz I'm a Chinese.and if there r more people who r willing to learn mandarin,I swear to u that u won't regret doing so.welcome
New hosts are great!!
you did well in this video aaaaand dan was there somehow lol anyway keep up the good work
Great video,it really inspired me to keep learning Mandarin and showed me the true beauty of it.
Go deeper you'll definitely find more beauty in a different world :) good luck with your Chinese studying!
Concerned Hermit thank you
I took Cantonese lessons in Toronto a few years ago -- and was the only long nose in the room. Everybody else was Chinese-Canadian... sort of.
The fact is they were all from Hong Kong, Cambodia, Vietnam, and there may have been one or two mainlanders. And they all spike different Chineses. They came into class thinking it would be an easy way to pick up a first on their matriculation papers, but they stayed to learn a valuable new dialect: Toronto Cantonese is an important one because Toronto is one of the world's Cantonese centres now.
I should learn Mandarin. I live in one of the top four most populated cities and diverse. That, and a lot of the professors here speak Mandarin.
Certainly convinced me.
proud of having madarin as my monther language-- eh eager to learn english well!
You can use lang-8 to practice and learn English !
Never heard of General Tsao until I started watching this channel...
Oh, and nice to see the reprisal of Mike and the Yi and the ordering of the 包子 和 水饺。
Perfect timing, I'm trying to self-teach myself on how to speak mandarin. Turns out my cantonese isn't everyone's language in China
+annagong963 no but it is in hong kongxD
+annagong963 Canto is just an islander language, Macau and Hong Kong. I can't remember if Taiwanese speak Mandarin or Canto
True,I forgot about those areas. I meant some people I know speaks more mandarin than cantonese. Also some shows has more mandarin than cantonese so I thought I should learn it.
+걸왜 에반 mandarin
+걸왜 에반
Most Taiwanese people speak both Mandarin and the Southern Min dialect (閩南語), known locally in Taiwan as the "Taiwanese dialect" (臺語) since more than 70% of all Taiwanese came from what is the southern part of Fujian Province (福建省) where this dialect is spoken.
And no, the Southern Min / Taiwanese dialect is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese / Mandarin.
2:51 the name of this film?
I've been studying Mandarin for about a year, which is how I stumbled upon this channel. Based on my Internet history, Google is convinced I want to date Chinese women. I don't. I'm happily married. I guess Google is playing the percentages.
+geoffrobinson Don't stress, I get the same thing.
geoffrobinson Google also thinks that I love family guy. I just watch one Seth McFarland video and now my explore is full with quagmire, Meg and Chris. A lot of mature stuff.
lel
and we can also study or learning chinese culture through CANTONESE, HAKKA, HOKKIEN , TEOCHEW, or even SHANGHAINESE！
學習中華文化不一定得通過普通話mandarin,
學習中華文化可以通過閩南話 客家話 粵語 潮州話等等，而且真正能代表中華文化的是中國各個地區的地方語言。
the things that can really represent chinese culture is the regional language(hakka, teochew, cantonese, hokkien, taishanese, etc) from china！
i learn mandarin heavily in my school, we are going on exchange because my school was very surprised at our fluency. once you have the pinyin and the basic writing of the characters understood, its really a fun language
i just find it hard to memorize thousands of characters.....
You have to know how to "see" them first.
李梦婷 Well, I have already given up on that. I have passed all my chinese beginner courses and thats as far as I go. Not feeling motivated to study more xD
You have to see chracters like you recognise a human face. It s hard to explain
Chung David Try to remember thousands of human faces? Kinda hard lol
+Shinji D not remember exactly, but recognise. Actually, it s not only faces but objects as well. We dont realise it but we recognise a lot of stuff in our daily lives.
With time, your brain gets used to the shapes found in chinese characters and it becomes easier.
Mia I can relate to you, I'm Indonesian Chinese and never spoke to me in Mandarin. But I'm learning now because important for business.
hi,could you guys attached a subtitle for each video. I think it will attract millions of english learner to watch your videos and it is more interesting than other news
ladies, you need more 默契. 加油!
+Kai Who are you?
Well, you need more 识相. jia you
I am learning but once you start you open another bag full of dialects, Northern and Southern choice of words, and more poems like what Dan did
Thank you for this video! It is very fun and educational!
Great video!
Love you guys xx
Lol loved the video
I'm determine to learn Mandarin from now on. Thanks for the video 👍
Haggling makes me think of Thailand more, my mum always told me you MUST haggle when in Thailand or you are insulting the shopkeeper :p.
Great vid very interesting ty
Ever since duolingo released its chinese course I've been on and off with it, from what I've seen is that it is a very simply but very contextual language, as in structuring sentences is quite easy buy finding a word with a complex meaning can be quite difficult, for example the word for "student" is something similar to "growing knowledge", sure when you start you just think of it as one word but once you start seeing what words mean it becomes confusing, especially when you speak languages that prioritize being clear with what you want to say like in spanish or french.
BTW, great classic style OTGW vid :)
Thank you very much. I am learning Mandarin now.
4:33 Can someone post link to this video please?
Proud to be a Chinese.
+Richie Liu 你的吗。
+Michael Tsang din bu say!
Matt Schwartz humans are killing the earth. Why are you proud? We humans are the reason for negative forces against nature.
Hussein Kandil greetings from United States.
Hussein Kandil Is that a butt at the end?
I like how your hand gesture at the end told me it was ok to be crazy....lol
Im learning Korean at this moment, and since the Korean Write g system got some influence from the Chinese characters (writing system). I plan on learning Mandarin! I know it won't be easy but it's not hard to try!
I love that you used Firefly as a partial reason.
Well mandarin is most widely spoken because China's population is huge
Or you can say Chinese, there are lots of oversea Chinese
The population is more important than the total number of countries that speak it. Hypothetically, let's say China split into 10 different countries. Does that magically increase the importance of Chinese even though the total number of speakers remains the same?
I love your videos
I learn mandarin at school! I find it a little difficult (fun though), but I've heard that it can be very rewarding and useful too
+Olivia.Emo Bobb I'm learning Korea. East Asian languages are considered the HARDEST languages to learn for English speakers. So tough, but so rewarding after years of hard work. I love it
Ur not tot by the Confucius institute right but if u are don't believe anything thay tell
+FS Spring lol
finally someone admits 5000 year-long history of China
all of that is so true!!! there´s chinese everywhere and if you speak mandarin you´ll get a job quickly (story of my life) but I didn´t know about the #5.....btw Felicia is there any way you guys can make a video teaching the tones in cantonese?
Really help me a lot...thanks..Ahmad ADzrie for introducing me this awesome video!!!
This is great! So interesting that 1/5 people speak Mandarin!
Ooh, you mentioned Firefly. You're officially way cooler than that Ben guy over on that other channel...
I'm originally from Taiwan & living in the States since I was about 15. I've met some strangers whom assumed I was a latino. At first, I'd ask them, "How do you know I'm a Latino?" After awhile, I'd ask, "How do you know Chinese speak Spanish?" Up to this point, their reaction was priceless. Now, I just ignore them, unless they speak English to me. When I was in college, I enlisted into US Army Reserve & planned to join ROTC as a MI linguistic in Mandarin. I was probably the only reservist among the national guards back then. But my plan didn't work out.
yeah OTGW back on track on this eps.. do more on cantonese, Chen haven't covered this area yet.... btw I'm also Chen...
I'm taking Mandarin 1 at the moment, but I have also been studying Japanese and will be going to study abroad in Japan soon. I won't really be allowed to speak another language over there since it's complete immersion. Is it okay if I started learning Mandarin again while in college? For some reason I feel like I've started too late and I won't be able to speak well...
Never too late only if you care or not ;)
+エメイ I started learning Japanese at 78 and I'm now 81 and fluent.
Michael Tsang Wow!! That's so impressive and respectful!! 致敬！
+Michael Tsang 素晴らしい！
+Michael Tsang wow i am inspired. how did you learn? although i am learning mandarin, i hope to be fluent one day!!
im taking Chinese in highschool but when ever people ask me they make fun of me for taking the class.
thank you :-)
Penny Rain Once you grasp this language, you would have more opportunities than others.
Make fun of them when you get a better paying job than them.
Ignore the haters. What's better: knowing how to speak Mandarin or teasing someone because you're jealous and you don't?
you'll have the last laugh for sure :) I hope you're still learning and enjoying!
My teacher showed me this in high school today, great vid though.
6. It is not useful in most countries, as English would be.
5. Cantonese for that.
4. I haggle in English, and walk away if price is not good.
3. True
2. Chinese culture has changed over the 5000 years, and all cultures are old as they evolve from previous cultures. And cantonese is useful to learn chinese culture.
1. Any language will make you smarter to the speaker. And they say biligual in any language makes you smarter.
where can i learn mandarin on the internet? like the best site to learn from or something? :D
+ZARAxELF95
Hmm, I'm always out to help people with learning Mandarin. I can't say there is one solve-all site, but there are few things that got me started! I pretty much started with TH-cam. Such as the initial videos from LearnChineseNow, Fluent in Mandarin.com is doing a great job with Chris on his channel and setting up an account on Interpals is always a good way to supplement what you learn. It's a bit of a journey, but the people of the Sinophonic world are very kind and always willing to help!!
+ZARAxELF95 you can find lots of great channels on youtube that teaches you mandarin... good luck~
The Cantonese scene happened to me a couple of times. I can read basic simplified but can only speak canto.
k
The right side girl really look like Yui Hatano!
Like a Boss . Yeah
Awesome
I did not know that
Tones kill me. I need to work harder to say things correctly. Great vid.
How can I self teach myself? I'd prefer if I learnt lessons like do for French in school, like body parts, versatile and nouns, singular and plaural, past present and future tense. idk if this is a thing in the language but it'd be great if someone can tell me ways on self teaching any language, for me im trying to learn cantonese chinese but I also want to learn manderin chinese.
Im learning cantonese instead. I tried to learn a little bit of both, but mandaran is just to damn hard as far as pronunciation for me as a native english speaker. Most cantonese sounds are also in english whereas mandarin has all of these foreign sounds.
I actually know a few chinese people who can speak both, but when i try to say something in Mandarin they look at me puzzled, but when i say them same thing in Cantonese they immediately know what im saying, so i frigured Id go with the easier one that came more naturally, where i am Canotonese is more common anyway... maybe when i become fluent in Cantonese I will attempt mandarin again.
How about best resources to learn Mandarin?
Yea, they should do this!
+bae 48 get a chinese friend that is the best resource
song at 5:05?
I speak Mandarin and while it is the language with the most speakers, the vast majority are in China. So it's not very useful if you want to speak across a broad geographical area. However, Spanish and English each have about 50% of the native speakers compared to Mandarin, but are both spoken on multiple continents, in many nations. I don't see how it is more "widely" spoken than English if its speakers are, by a huge margin, in one country. (Yes, I know Mandarin is spoken outside of China in Singapore, Indonesia and etc. But those are usually only by the Chinese communities, where the majority of said country's non-Chinese citizens don't speak Mandarin. Even the ethnic Chinese there have to switch to a more widely spoken language, i.e. Indonesian in Indonesia, with their fellow citizens.)
china towns abroad they such as in london and most restaurants in my city in the UK speak cantonese not mandarin, actually you have to be careful to not try to talk mandarin to sb who doesn't even speak it.
but there is a lot of young chinese people studying in my hometown so its good for practice.
and when i first came to china i defintley made that 'sleep' and 'dumplings' mistake hahaha!!!!
I was about to quit but not anymore SO THANKS
Oh gosh the Firefly reference!
Why should you learn cantonese? Why you should learn hokkien or teochew? Why you should learn toisan , duzhou wenzhou shanghai?
Everything....and I mean everything is going to be difficult at first before it becomes easy. It's the same for learning any language.
I want to learn Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien/ Taiwanese.
let's learn cantonese!!!
Halo Ci Mia!! Salam dari Indonesia!
fine,I'll learn mandarin
But giiiirls... it's sooooooo difficuuult!!! I took a level 1 class and I'll say that having to learn everything by heart was a bit discouraging. I like having references and mandarin doesn't seem to have so many compared to other asian languages. At least in the writing system.
I learn mandarin at school, I enjoy learning it though, even if it's difficult and I forget the characters all the time. My class is a really small class so unfortunately I might not be able to take it any further once we stop :(
Why is that?
Concerned Hermit because the school needs a certain amount of people to continue teaching it, but I don't think everyone in my class wants to continue it.
+Your mums Bingu This doesn't mean you can't continue learning it outside of class.
RedStorm Mint I know, I would like to :), it I'll just be difficult
this year i was the only person in my class for mandarin, nobody chose it from last year except me haha. so it was just me and the teacher. try and convince your school to keep the class by telling them that you really enjoy learning it! it would be a shame to cancel the class because only one person chose it.
i liked this because the firefly reference
I speak Cantonese AND Mandarin, Hooray!
number 1 for me is i plan to live there.
I have a question:
Since Mandarin uses tones to distinct words does that mean you can not speak in a sarcastic way or is it just different or more difficult to get right?
Frey Jäger The words you choose usually show your level of seriousness, I guess. Also at times, even Chinese would change the tone a little bit to show some sort of sarcasm, and you could most likely understand the conversation based context. Yeah, I know, it's weird as hell. They teach you tones, and then you find out sometimes you can't use them but will still be understood lool but anyway it's just rare cases.
How did I get here? I'm living in Tokyo, studying Japanese.. Now I want to learn Mandarin! ^^
#4 is so true
Lmao the haggling part is hilarious
TONES KILLZ!! I REALLY GET MESSED UP WITH THOSE..
Counting to 3 in mandarin is one of the hardest things I've ever learned.
lol
It's just
-EE
-ER
-SAN
KarateandClub It's the tones. You say that to your average english speaking person and they'd mispronounce it and ignore the tones.
3:23 Wouldn't you need Classical Chinese rather than Mandarin to access most of what has been written in China's history?
More videos with acting please, they're so great!!!!
lol omg Felicia, I have the same reaction when aunties expect me to speak Mandarin.