Teachers are much better. Once you have developed the wrong intonations, and a bad accent, it is very hard to correct it. Chinese isn't the easiest language. School and face to face learning is much better. I speak Cantonese fluently. At age 10, I started learning Mandarin, which is very different, and even 10 years later, I still have a funny accent when I speak Mandarin.
its easy to learn just hard to say start learning its vast becoming the second biggest language in the world, its easier for me to learn because i love here but im sure you will do ok, i downloaded Chinese mandarin tapes of the net to begin with, but now i know most mandarin and Chinese and some shanghinesse
Uhhh. I sorta beg to differ. "Teachers are much better." I guess if you didn't know anyone that would be the way to go and if you were totally clueless about the language, a teacher could help get you started in the right direction. But i noticed that classes leave very important things out. Language classes are too... sanitary(?)
like knowing exactly what to say - they're good for that, but knowing HOW to say it... does that make sense?
Like if you were to come into my neighborhood and speak Spanish like the way it's taught in classes, sure people will understand you - sort of. but they'll probably think something was wrong with you.
LOL In Spanish, Leche Means milk. Well here it's also slang for the word luck or Lucky.
LOL A guy, after leaving Spanish classes goes into a store here and buys a scratch off lottery ticket and wins something. I dunno, 5 bucks. Then, in Spanish some dude tells him that he wants his milk. The Student guy think he's some sort of nut-case and his body language shows that to the dude. He gives the dude a funny look... a look that looks insulting to the guy. And now to his cousin Chuy and Homie Mike that just showed up. So they beat the crap outta Student guy for
thinking he's some sort of **** that thinks he's the Sh1t cause he won 5 bucks.
Wow, the more I think of it language classes could be dangerous.
Ignorance really IS bliss.
ok ok Actually, I think learning another language is cool... Good luck!
I won't have time for some class, only for private teacher so it is bit inconvenient really, also I find reading and writing to be more priority than speaking, but of course better learn all in once so there is no so much weird wrong habits developing.
if you just care about reading/writing, then a book will likely be fine. as someone who taught himself japanese (and then later took classes and got much better, and did so faster in class), you can do just fine from books and audio tapes.
but...you have to be very disciplined about it. you basically have to make yourself practice a lot. also, make sure that that the sources are teaching you the correct stroke order for the characters, because that is how you look up characters you don't know in a dictionary.
and to racer y, you don't think that the student in your example will have the same problem if they learned the language from a book? if you have a teacher, particularly one that is a native speaker, they can add more info about grammar and the meaning of words that might get left out of the printed material.
i completely understand not being able to take classes, but you should try and find a local group that you can go to occasionally that will be able to help you out. you can only learn so much from a book.
Knowing bit more of culture and habits helps forming more sensible sentences, imo.
So at least for me learning language is learning also culture and so I can see how some teachers are worthless as they teach how to form sentences in same way you would in English for example, which I believe to be quite wrong way. But also some other guides can be misleading in this.
Btw, why www.21cn.com is so slow now, is it my ISP or are they having trouble again? :P
Laughed my arse off today as according to Babelfish 人气 means human spirit, oddly it is used on web pages similar way to view count, I think real translation would be popularity or something close to that instead
rén, rú and qí I can recognize now (well I mix rén and rú when looking too quickly, need to learn look differently), but it does not help much to now which is rén if one does not know what to do with it, alone it is not much but when combined with something else it becomes meaningful, quite interesting way of building words, differs so much from what I'm used to that it takes lot of thinking, which is good What it is, 58000 symbols more to learn and that does not help not much yet and is mostly waste of time
Maybe useful page to learn what to do with symbols and to learn discover logic behind language, has some audiotapes so good to put usb pen drive and listen in car where I sit 10-20hours in a week.
I really don't know, being a native speaker means I can never understand how hard it is for forigners to understand our language structure, let alone would I know how should it be taught.
I think teacher is one thing, exposing yourself to the language (and I mean proper beijing standard Mandarin) on a daily basis is really important for you to build up the vocabulary. How can you get that in Finland, frankly I have no idea!
It is fairly easy to find stuff, but how to separate different dialects is then very hard. For example here is news clip from accident, there are interviews with subtitles, but no idea if subtitles are because they speak different dialect or just for some other reason.
From difficulty, it is about as difficult as if you would need to pour water to glass same time as you drive bicycle and talk someone at your native language speaker who is riding bike side of you.
English is easy as it is not necessarily to be as precise, one needs to concentrate on one thing at time there, where it seems to be that in Chinese language it requires bit more of thought put into it, it feels more mathematical.
It takes just time, I guess in 5 years I can learn basics
actually i was interested in a new language as well...
although i thought japanese would be more interesting
havent got around to look for good sources yet, must do that some time
Maybe for those who can't hear but we have almost always have subtitles. Sometime it's an excerpt or a newsflash, or just advertising for penis enlargement (it's real!!! there once were ads of penis enlargement running across the screen when I watch some Chinese Soccer league).
The dialect used by broadcasters in channels like CCTV are very accurate, however in interviews, especially with taiwan people or the general less educated public, it's can be hard to make out whether they are indeed the same language.
Pick language you think you may need and if you have good reason to learn it you can keep working with it even there will be times it can be really frustrating.
Right, so it just feels difficult, but is not really, good
Found also that Finnish should be 3rd most difficult language and Chinese 8th, so hard to trust any of experts really, well that is meaningless.
Anyway think about this:
Most popular you tube video has approx 73 Million views, which is added in April 2006, when it's Chinese competitor www.56.com has video that is viewed 123 Million times and it was added 24th of October 2007, now remember that you tube has users all over the world, when www.56.com is only available in Chinese and has not much users other than Chinese speaking people.
That huge is Chinese world today and you can think about how much information it is one misses if he can't understand this language, specially when soon quite big part of future technology is invented there
I think it is not worse reason to study this language, keeps doors open so to say
New link, my bookmarks is full so I just paste hear Nah, might be use for someone later on. http://www.uta.fi/~gz59973/
What it is, 58000 symbols more to learn and that does not help not much yet and is mostly waste of time 
