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I need to learn mandarin within short time

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zzm9980
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Post by zzm9980 » Tue, 20 Mar 2012 8:44 am

YankStuckinSuiss wrote: from the Mainland immigrant community, preferably someone from as far north Shanghai as possible. :) Better accents. T
Agree with this. I can't understand half of Singaporeans that speak Mandarin, but have no trouble at all with most mainlanders.

I've used two text books, both quite good.

My previous teacher had us use this text book, and is probably slightly better of the two:
http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chines ... 064&sr=8-1

This one is also good, and published in part by the Chinese gov:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Practical-Chi ... 217&sr=1-1

Get the CDs too.

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YankStuckinSuiss
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Post by YankStuckinSuiss » Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:13 am

zzm9980 wrote:
YankStuckinSuiss wrote: from the Mainland immigrant community, preferably someone from as far north Shanghai as possible. :) Better accents. T
Agree with this. I can't understand half of Singaporeans that speak Mandarin, but have no trouble at all with most mainlanders.

I've used two text books, both quite good.

My previous teacher had us use this text book, and is probably slightly better of the two:
http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chines ... 064&sr=8-1

This one is also good, and published in part by the Chinese gov:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Practical-Chi ... 217&sr=1-1

Get the CDs too.

I've lived in Shanghai and Taipei before. The average Singaporean speaks very very bad Mandarin. And a lot of them cannot speak English well (depending on education level) sometimes I can't understand they are trying to say。 I have many Taiwanese friends who have been to Singapore. Being native Mandarin speakers they say they can usually understand people, but most Singaporeans have bad accents and lack the vocabulary to hold complex conversations in Mandarin. One of my friends who just came back two weeks ago said that it sounds like they just string a lot of words together and when they can't do that they fall back on English or sometimes mix up the Hokkien word with Mandarin. My friend speaks Taiyu (a branch of Hokkien) so he said it is not that big of a problem usually, but very strange to hear and he has to concentrate to understand. He said he prefers to speak English in Singapore, it is less confusing to him.

I do speak Mandarin a bit to some taxi drivers, but usually they run out of vocabulary faster than I do. The only people I have been able to speak to for more than a minute or two in Mandarin (and my Mandarin is horrible) are people at Hawker Stands who immigrated from China.

I would say it is easier to learn Mandarin in Hong Kong now to be honest.

:)
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Post by ecureilx » Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:38 am

YankStuckinSuiss wrote: I would say it is easier to learn Mandarin in Hong Kong now to be honest.
Now why does that sound funny ?

I used to host and assist Hongkong students, and every time I tried to get a Singaporean guy to communicate with the HKers' it was always the deer-in-headlight look .. Till we figured out that it is better to pick one of the HKer who is good in English and tell him/her so they relay to the rest of the gang in Canto ;)

Did things change so much in HK ? has it been fully amalgamated with China ? ;)

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Post by zzm9980 » Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:45 am

YankStuckinSuiss wrote:but most Singaporeans have bad accents and lack the vocabulary to hold complex conversations in Mandarin. One of my friends who just came back two weeks ago said that it sounds like they just string a lot of words together and when they can't do that they fall back on English or sometimes mix up the Hokkien word
Funny, swap the words "Mandarin" and "English" in the above quote and that's my opinion of quite a few Singaporeans speaking English.

I agree with Mandarin in Hong Kong. My Mandarin isn't hot anymore, but I could always get around and understand people there better than here. That's probably because so many people there are from mainland China, and not locals who think they speak good Mandarin. (or English! haha)

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Post by YankStuckinSuiss » Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:52 am

ecureilx wrote:
YankStuckinSuiss wrote: I would say it is easier to learn Mandarin in Hong Kong now to be honest.
Now why does that sound funny ?

I used to host and assist Hongkong students, and every time I tried to get a Singaporean guy to communicate with the HKers' it was always the deer-in-headlight look .. Till we figured out that it is better to pick one of the HKer who is good in English and tell him/her so they relay to the rest of the gang in Canto ;)

Did things change so much in HK ? has it been fully amalgamated with China ? ;)
yeah, until most Singaporeans speak Mandarin at home or everything in public is switched to Mandarin I doubt they will ever speak good Mandarin...so that will be "never". :)
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

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Post by nakatago » Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:31 pm

zzm9980 wrote:and not locals who think they speak good Mandarin. (or English! haha)
I lol'ed.
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Post by thismyvoice » Wed, 21 Mar 2012 8:52 am

YankStuckinSuiss wrote:
zzm9980 wrote:
YankStuckinSuiss wrote: from the Mainland immigrant community, preferably someone from as far north Shanghai as possible. :) Better accents. T
Agree with this. I can't understand half of Singaporeans that speak Mandarin, but have no trouble at all with most mainlanders.

I've used two text books, both quite good.

My previous teacher had us use this text book, and is probably slightly better of the two:
http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chines ... 064&sr=8-1

This one is also good, and published in part by the Chinese gov:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Practical-Chi ... 217&sr=1-1

Get the CDs too.

I've lived in Shanghai and Taipei before. The average Singaporean speaks very very bad Mandarin. And a lot of them cannot speak English well (depending on education level) sometimes I can't understand they are trying to say。 I have many Taiwanese friends who have been to Singapore. Being native Mandarin speakers they say they can usually understand people, but most Singaporeans have bad accents and lack the vocabulary to hold complex conversations in Mandarin. One of my friends who just came back two weeks ago said that it sounds like they just string a lot of words together and when they can't do that they fall back on English or sometimes mix up the Hokkien word with Mandarin. My friend speaks Taiyu (a branch of Hokkien) so he said it is not that big of a problem usually, but very strange to hear and he has to concentrate to understand. He said he prefers to speak English in Singapore, it is less confusing to him.

I do speak Mandarin a bit to some taxi drivers, but usually they run out of vocabulary faster than I do. The only people I have been able to speak to for more than a minute or two in Mandarin (and my Mandarin is horrible) are people at Hawker Stands who immigrated from China.

I would say it is easier to learn Mandarin in Hong Kong now to be honest.

:)
I am sad for Singapore. We have a yank here saying that average Singaporean speaks very very bad Mandarin. He is humble enough to admit he speaks horrible Mandarin himself, but still well enough to leave the local taxi driver lost for words.

:D

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Post by bobypf » Wed, 21 Mar 2012 9:59 am

I have a singaporean colleague who speaks great English. He's actually one of the few really good english speaking people I've met here. He also speaks Mandarin but he says he hates it and also that everyone must learn to speak good English in the first place. He told me once that he's disgusted to hear when young singporeans speak in Mandarin between them.

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Post by zzm9980 » Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:37 am

bobypf wrote:I have a singaporean colleague who speaks great English. He's actually one of the few really good english speaking people I've met here. He also speaks Mandarin but he says he hates it and also that everyone must learn to speak good English in the first place. He told me once that he's disgusted to hear when young singporeans speak in Mandarin between them.
I've noticed that of the people I've met, the ones that speak good English went to school overseas. US, Australia, etc. Makes sense I guess. The ones who remain only have other Singaporeans (who speak Mandarin mostly) and foreigners generally with poor English as classmates.

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Post by technoviking » Thu, 22 Mar 2012 6:50 pm

bobypf wrote:I have a singaporean colleague who speaks great English. He's actually one of the few really good english speaking people I've met here. He also speaks Mandarin but he says he hates it and also that everyone must learn to speak good English in the first place. He told me once that he's disgusted to hear when young singporeans speak in Mandarin between them.
that's silly, and maybe a little close-minded. why begrudge another language? what is so disgusting about hearing young Singaporeans speak Mandarin? and why pick on mandarin specifically?

the exact statistics are not at hand, but a majority of ethnic Chinese in Singapore speak Chinese at home. yet the exposure hasn't really helped singaporeans here speak better chinese. so it's not true that, as YankStuckinSuiss implied above, if more spoke chinese here the chinese will get better. in fact the same brand of localized chinese (or english, for that matter) that the government is trying to get rid of will still continue to propagate through the community. the education system that you see today only came into existence maybe at most forty years ago. so we have a whole generation of older speakers who picked up chinese/english through channels other than school, and then this form of language is passed down to the newer generations. but there is a mildly discernible difference between the chinese spoken by the generation above me and the generation below me. you can attribute that to education or government campaigns and programs. regardless of where that improvement is coming from, singapore is probably going to need a few more decades before the language spoken here will reach an acceptable standard.

still, the chinese here will probably never be anything like mainland Mandarin, surely. that'll happen when quebecois becomes français first.

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Re: chinese (mandarin) language course

Post by finn115 » Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:10 pm

ladbamba wrote:Thanks for the suggestion. My boyfriend and I found an affordable, and yet a nice language school. We both enrolled already. The language school's name is Inligua ( http://www.inlingua.com/ ), and it is very accessible to us. It is located near Sommerset MRT Stn. and is situated at Orchard Building. Our class just started last Tues. So in case some of you still want to enroll I think you still can make-up, and I think they will still accept. Class is every Tuesday 7:00 pm. By the way, the course only cost 295sgd (INCLUSIVE of registration, course materials, and GST already). NICE! :)
Hi,

Has anybody enrolled @ www.inlingua.com for any language courses. I'm interested in learning elementary Mandarin but not sure how good/effective this institute is?

Thanks!!!

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Post by durian123 » Wed, 18 Apr 2012 6:47 pm

[quote="bobypf"]I have a singaporean colleague who speaks great English. He's actually one of the few really good english speaking people I've met here. He also speaks Mandarin but he says he hates it and also that everyone must learn to speak good English in the first place. He told me once that he's disgusted to hear when young singporeans speak in Mandarin between them.[/quote]

Although Singaporean English and Singaporean Mandarin are different from Standard English and Standard Mandarin, that doesn't make the them wrong, let alone "disgusting."

Americans and Brits, Southern Briths and Northern Brits, Germans and Swiss-Germans... in fact pretty much anybody I care to think of, speaks different versions of a similar language. I'm not sure there even is such a thing as "good English."

Let's calm down and recognise that it's OK for people to speak different languages, even though that doesn't make it super convenient for those of us trying to learn "Chinese."

Note: I think Singlish is a great example of the evolution of a new language.

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Post by nakatago » Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:41 am

Zephyr82 wrote:Try ....

Why are you pushing the same thing over and over? Do you have any stake with them? I deleted your other posts.

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Post by Anuja3 » Wed, 07 Aug 2013 4:19 pm

Hello, Anyone looking to sign up for basic Mandarin at Inligua (near Somerset)? I was keen on starting the class,however, they don't have the minimum number of students to start conducting this month's class. They do offer group tuitions, so if anyone interested in forming a small group email me at [email protected].

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Re: I need to learn mandarin within short time

Post by Frank Randal » Fri, 14 Jul 2017 4:55 pm

The short time is not very clear definition, anyway, I personally think Mandarin is not as easy as you think. Here are some tips for you :
First you'll want to set up a detailed study plan for yourself, focusing on maximizing vocab and pronunciation intake. You'll want to use a variety of different learning styles in order to keep your mind from getting bored (and not taking in as much). Are you planning to learn speaking-only with Pinyin, or do you plan to incorporate character-recognition into your plan as well? Depending on your time frame, trying to learn Characters on top of everything else could quickly overload/whelm you and actually hinder your learning. I recommend focusing on accurate pronunciation (speaking/listening) as much as possible, and worrying about writing/reading once you have more time.
Hope it helps.

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