Does anyone know a good program that teaches conversational Mandarin Chinese?


誰是否知道幫助教會話普通話的一個好節目？

謝謝

Stephen, have you tried Rosetta Stone? They make a lot of good language learning programs, and I think I've seen Mandarin on their list.

Speaking of languages, I'm so excited. DH is giving me a CD course to learn Gaelic Irish for my birthday. I've always wanted to learn it, and finally found a publisher that offers it. I'm just going to load it up on my iPod and learn Gaelic on my morning power walks.

I speak fluent Chinese. But Cantonese not Mandarin so I can't offer to teach you a sentence a day lol. My mandarin is a little bit rusty.

Another good way to learn Mandarin is to watch lots of chinese movies with the subtitles. You'll pick it up sooner or later, and it's fun too. Also, there's chinese school in most big cities. It's an afternoon/evening class mostly taught in Chinatown. I took the classes for a few semester to learn to write better in Chinese.

Also, another place you can check is adult night school. I've seen Chinese and Spanish offered in their catalog.

Kathy

Thanks to you both for your responses.

The reason I'm looking into Mandarin is because it seems to be the most used in Chinese culture.

Am I correct on this?... I'm looking for the most "useful" one.

I have audio CD course from Pimsleur. But first i have to find it. Give me a few days to search my 700 GigaBytes of data on hard disks and about 300 GB on DVDs and then i will upload it somewhere for you. I'll send you PM.

Stephen,

I worked in Beijing for a year in the 1980s and learned to speak basic Mandarin before I went by studying the AudioForum set of language tapes and working with a tutor twice a week. In three months, I was good enough to deal with basic travel and shopping situations. By the end of the year, I could carry on a decent conversation with a stranger while traveling by myself and could just barely read the newspaper.

Now I can still speak and understand but can't remember how to read the characters.

Which version of Chinese to learn depends on what you want to do with it.

In North American Chinatowns, Cantonese dominates. In China, you can get by all over the country with Mandarin, but most of the people in the southern part of the country speak Cantonese. They speak Mandarin in Taiwan.

If you learn Mandarin, you won't understand a word of Cantonese and vice versa, but the written language is still the same.

Marcia Yudkin

Thanks Marcia.

Just wish it wasn't so complicated (choosing).

I would like to use it locally and also overseas.

I guess my next move is to discuss this my local Chinese people and get their input.

From what I understand, Marketer Declan Dunn is fluent in Chinese, but I'm not sure which... guess I have to ask him.

Thanks everyone for your input.

You can try these sites, they were recommended on a language-learning form:

Chinese-forums.com - Powered by vBulletin

Learn Chinese

Might be useful

Thanks Liette,
I'll go check them out!