There is no doubt that Chinese is one of the more difficult languages for English speakers to learn. The approach I recommend can be summarised as follows:
Start with learning spoken Chinese, initially emphasising pronunciation as it is hard to remember words if you have trouble with pronunciation. When you start put much less emphasis on reading and writing. As you begin to expand your ability to understand and speak Chinese you will naturally begin to absorb characters which accompany most learning materials. I recommend podcasts as a great way to get exposure at your own convenience. The key to language learning lies in constant revision at least daily and ideally multiple times per day, not binge studying once a week.
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What is you learning motivation?
There is no right or wrong way to learn Chinese, however you before you begin you need to understand your motivations. Consider the following questions:
- Why do you want to learn Chinese?
- Do you want to learn to learn conversational Chinese (speak and listen) or do you also want to be able to read and/or write?
- If you wish to learn to read and write do you want to learn traditional characters , simplified characters or both?
If you are a little lost, please refer to my introduction to Chinese post, which provides a brief introduction to Chinese as a language and briefly covers dialects, tones, characters and words. Without understanding what the language is it is hard to know what you want to get out of learning and find nailing down a goal difficult.
I’ll tackle the above motivation questions one at a time.
Firstly why do you want to learn Chinese? There are many reasons for learning a language, however the most common reasons are
- You want to travel to a Chinese speaking country for work or leisure
- You intend on doing business in a Chinese speaking country or with Chinese speakers in general
- Your spouse or significant other speaks Chinese and you wish to learn
- You see opportunities that could arise from learning Chinese for work or business
- You are curious about the language
No matter what your motivation, it is important to identify whether you are learning for ths short term, for purposes such as a holiday, or for the long term to become proficient in the language. It is perfectly okay to learn a language with a goal of being able to speak some basic phases for a short trip to a foreign country, you do not need to dedicate your life to learning it if your outcome is very short term, in which case you might decided to dedicate 30 minutes a day for the next 3 months. Equally, it’s okay to decide that you have a long term goal, but will not be able to dedicate hours and hours a week, but rather chip away at it, in which case deciding you’ll spend 10 minutes a day slowly chipping away is not wrong – and certainly better than spending 70 minutes every Sunday morning in a single session, but more on that below.
Fundamentally all I’m asking here is for you to be clear of your goals so you can hold yourself to account for your efforts. You may find you enjoy the language so much you want to continue speaking it after your holiday and increase your efforts, or equally you may decide that you aren’t getting out of it what you thought. Again either is acceptable, however I would recommend giving it a go and realising from the beginning that learning a language is a long process, but one that you should be able to enjoy.
Secondly, should you learn Mandarin or another Chinese dialect?
- If your interest lies in mainland China or Taiwan, you will want to learn Mandarin
- If your interest lies in Hong Kong, Macau or southern China Cantonese are options, however keep in mind that you will be able to use Mandarin to communicate with many people in most of these places.
Ultimately Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more than a billion people and as such is a very useful language to to learn with a lot of language learning resources available to help learners.
My focus is on Mandarin Chinese, so I’ll assume that this is what you want to learn, however much of my experience applies equally to dialects.
Secondly, should you learn to speak and listen or read or read and write?
The heart answer to this question will depend on your motivation for learning Chinese. If you wish to be able to travel to China for leisure then a few words of spoken Mandarin will probably suit your needs, especially as you are unlikely to have the time to spend hundreds or thousands of hours studying. Learning a few characters of Chinese would be useful to help you find the toilets or the exits of restaurants, but you can get away with only knowing a handful of characters and can in reality avoid learning any at all if you don’t wish to.
If you are travelling to China for business, understanding a bit more spoken Chinese and some characters may save you embarrassment and will be appreciated by your hosts or clients. I would emphasise that some cultural understanding is probably just as important in these context than just language skills. For brief business trips, taking a similar approach to the holiday maker would be useful whereby I would focus on learning some words of Mandarin and a few useful characters.
Alternatively, if you intend on staying in China for a longer period of time, are frequently doing business in China or are learning Chinese for personal reasons or intend, then it is up to you how far you wish to take it. I always recommend verbal skills over writing, however if you have an interested in being able to read or write, I’d still suggest learning the basics of spoken Mandarin first and only then focus on your written skills.
If you are learning Chinese for personal reasons, I still recommend learning spoken Chinese first and work on reading and writing skills as secondary priorities.
Thirdly and finally, should you learn traditional or simplified Chinese characters? If you don’t know the difference, please refer to my introduction post that covers this entitled What is Chinese and why should I learn it? My answer to this is almost always simplified unless you intend on focusing your attention on the geographical areas of Macau, Hong Kong or Taiwan, all of which which use traditional characters. Traditional characters are beautiful and have more meaning than their simplified cousins, however I feel it is best for a learner to start with simplified and absorb traditional characters through exposure to other content such as Taiwanese books and media.
Should I learn Mandarin, Cantonese or another dialect?
普通话 or 廣東話 ?
If your interest is in mainland China or Taiwan, then Mandarin Chinese is the obvious choice, the difference being that Taiwan uses traditional characters while mainland China uses simplified characters. If your interest lies in Hong Kong then Cantonese may be a more suitable option, note that Cantonese uses traditional Chinese characters. The table below provides a good insight in to which dialects and written forms of Chinese are spoken where
| Location | Primary Spoken Form | Primary Written Form | Other significant dialects | Notes |
| Mainland China | Mandarin Chinese | Simplified | Shanghanese, Hakka, Cantonese | China has many dialects. All Chinese learn Mandarin Chinese with simplified characters at school |
| Taiwan | Mandarin Chinese | Traditional | Taiwanese (Hakka) | Taiwan has never adopted the simplified characters used on the mainland |
| Hong Kong | Cantonese | Traditional | Mandarin | |
| Macau | Cantonese | Traditional | Mandarin | |
| Singapore | Mandarin | Simplified | Hokkien, Cantonese, | Mandarin is one of four official languages in Singapore. The other languages are not Chinese dialects. |
| Malaysia | Varies | Simplified | Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka | Most Malaysian ethnic Chinese can speak Mandarin. Chinese is not an official language of Malaysia |
Don’t memorise language vocabulary lists
Simply memorising words in a quest to learn a language does not provide you with the ability to form sentences. This is a mistake that many learners make, especially those who are more analytical in nature; this is completely the wrong approach which easily learns to frustration at putting in so much effort but still not being able to speak and ultimately can result in burning out and giving up.
The human brain is wired for spoken language and language processing, a capability we developed 100,000 years ago. Reading and writing however are something we must all learn and not something that comes naturally. It is for this reason that I recommend you start with speaking and listening – it is natural.
I have noticed an interesting phenomena which can happen to learners of Chinese when memorising vocabulary; you might think that you are memorising a mapping of a given character or word and what it means in English, for example
What can happen is that you instead end up memorising the pronunciation of the word:
The net result is an interim step
Thus instead of recognising that the word
In your path to relentlessly memorising vocabulary lists and slowly added more vocabulary, predominantly from the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi HSK lists, you may discover discovered:
- There are always always more words that you won’t understand so attempting to somehow know all words is fruitless. Learning a language is a journey, not a destination, thus you can’t simply memorise all possible vocabulary
- Learning vocabulary lists doesn’t enable you to use that vocabulary. The result after memorising countless characters is the ability to read Chinese sentence aloud, typically being able to pronounce the words (see my comment above about remembering sounds over meaning), but often forgetting the meaning of the word and as I didn’t understand Chinese grammar the sentences meaning was lost on me
Chinese Pronunciation is key
You ability to commit words to memory is improved when you have the ability to pronounce the words, as such it is important when learning any new language to begin by ensuring you understand pronunciation. This does not mean you focus purely on pronunciation at the expense of learning basic phrases or sentences, as such an approach will lead to rapid fatigue and result in loss of motivation to continue learning. Rather than force yourself to go through every initial and final in the chinese language exclusively, instead I suggest that you start by splitting your time evenly between pronunciation and learning useful phrases and words. When you learn a new word make an effort to understand the pronunciation, as you learn more words you will become familiar with the pronunciations in Chinese (initials, finals and tones).
So what is an initial and final in Chinese? Chinese is made up of 21 initials 38 finals, which I won’t go into here in detail, however to explain every character in Mandarin Chinese is made up of an initial, a final and a tone, where an initial is the first half of the pronunciation, the final is the last half and the tone dictates which one of four tones (or five including neutral) should be used in the characters pronunciation. If you focus on ensuring your pronunciation of initials and finals is correct, it will greatly improve your ability to remember, understand and speak in Chinese.
Persistent and consistency
When it comes to learning a language persistent and consistency is the key. Research shows that you are better off spending 15 minutes a day studying a language than to spend an 1-2 hours every Sunday morning. The reasons for this are
- Constant revision improves language retention
- Frequent study results in higher motivation, reducing your chances of giving up
- Spaced Repetition System (SRS) relies on the science that tells us that revising a word just as you are about to forget it leads to higher retention; this cannot be achieved by a once a week study session.
So when is the best time of day to revise and practice learning a language? Science tells us that it is best to revise in the evening before sleeping. Ultimately however frequent, at least once a day, revision of a language is the most important over the time of day. I personally see no point revising a language when you are so tired that you can hardly keep your eyes open.
At the other end of the scale, as I’ve already alluded to, is packing all your study in to one session. This can lead to fatigue and poor learning outcomes. Research has shown that learning a language once a week gives you poor outcomes and can lead to giving up. It is better to try and squeeze in some revision through the course of your day than to do nothing at all
Learning to speak Chinese without learning to read and write
Learning to speak Chinese without any appreciation of the language can leave you lost, this is what caused me to initially put far too much focus on learning characters and not enough emphasis on speaking and listening. However if you intend on disregarding learning any Chinese characters then the best approach is to accept the words and sounds for what they are, for example, when someone tells you that hello is ”nǐ hǎo“, you will need to be able to accept the word for what it is without questioning the characters behind it.
Millions of children around the world from migrant parents learn to speak their mother tongue from their parents without learning to write. Consider all the Chinese migrants around the world who speak to their children born outside China in Chinese, but those children never learn to write. It is not uncommon in countries such as Malaysia for ethnic Chinese Children to learn to speak multiple Chinese dialects without ever being able to write as the standard government schools teach in the Malay and English languages, not in Chinese (yes there are Chinese schools, but that is besides the point).
For this reason, there is nothing wrong with embracing the ability to speak Chinese without expending the huge efforts required to read and write.
Advantages to learning to read Chinese
While I’ve already said that not learning to read and write is completely okay, learning to at least read some Chinese characters will help reinforce your speaking ability. To again use the example of “nǐ hǎo” (hello), by learning to read Chinese it will provide a better understanding when you realise that hello is made up of the characters for “you” and ‘good”. Learning to read is great, but I’d suggest spending 80% of your time on speaking and listening and 20% on reading until you build your speaking and listening proficiency.
Once you can read it will open up a whole new world. Unless you can already read another language you won’t appreciate the amazing sense of knowledge, understanding and – dare I say – power that comes from being able to look at a book, website, restaurant menu or even a sign and understanding what it means. If you are living or visiting a Chinese speaking country, not being able to read makes you essentially illiterate, all the signs are just meaningless mumbo jumbo. Once you begin to understands what at least some of the words mean you begin to understand that there is an internet café over there (
Ultimately if you want to be able to able to do more with Chinese than go to restaurants and chat casually, reading is a tool that you need to embrace once you’ve gained a basic level of spoken proficiency.
Advantages to learning to write Chinese
In the way that learning to read Chinese reinforces your ability so speak, learning to write will reinforce your ability to read. When starting to learn Chinese some choose to focus on reading, initially completely disregarding writing the characters. This can lead to the assumption that characters were made up of essentially random parts that had no meaning, which in fact the components of characters are vital to understanding meaning, pronunciation and memorisation – after all it is easier to memorise a character as a group of familiar components rather than random squiggles on a page.
Memorising characters without writing them can easily deteriorate in to a situation where you begin confusing similar words; for example
Why is it so easy to mistake different Chinese words? Graham Rawlinson in 1976 discovered that a reader could understand a sentence even if the words were jumbled so long as the first and last letter were left in place. Take for example this sentence: “Yteaersdy I wnet to the mkraet to puschare a blttoe of mlik” – you are most likely understand this despite the characters being jumbled up. The fact that we recognise words by shape means that as a Chinese language learner it is easy to slip into the habit of recognising shapes of characters but missing the subtle differences and thereby misidentifying individual characters.
So what does this mean?
Firstly, learning to write gives you the discipline to understand how characters are formed and differentiate between similar characters. By learning to write you will began to appreciate and the radicals (sub-components) used in the characters and thus better differential the meaning without memorising meaningless squiggles characters.
Secondly, once you start understanding multi-character words, of which most words are more than one character, you will probably find that the context of the sentence and surrounding characters help you remember the meaning of the word.
How long to spend studying Chinese every day
Depending on how quickly you need to learn Chinese and what your learning goals are I would suggest the minimum time to spend studying Chinese every day is 10 minutes and up to an hour. If you are a full time student, work only part time or don’t have a family to take care of then you can of course spend longer, but I would start with between 10 minutes and an hour a day. If you have more time it is better to distribute that over the course of the day than to do a single one hour session.
When learning I would suggest taking a break or alternate your learning method every 20-30 minutes, or 60 minutes maximum. I found that spending too much time in a single session studying Chinese, especially from a book is mentally taxing.
For example a study routine might look like his:
Morning:
- 10 minutes podcast
- 10 practising writing and reading characters and words
- 10 minutes video
- 10 minutes podcast
Afternoon:
- Repeat your morning schedule
What does this all mean?
I suggest you get started with as much exposure to spoken Chinese as possible. Elementary podcasts from ChiensePod and Chinese101 are excellent places to start. As you progress through podcasts you should look at the accompanying material, which will lead you to begin to expose yourself to written Chinese. I’d also suggest fluentu as a great source of Chinese content.
As your learning progresses most of these resources have more difficult levels such as Intermediate and Advanced that allow you to step you the difficulty inline with your proficiency.
I strongly encourage you to find and even create opportunities to speak Chinese with real people, be that at work or via online services.
Happy learning and remember:
Learning a language is journey, not a destination