Beginners guide to learning Mandarin – step by step

Welcome! This purpose of this blog is to act as a guide to help anyone who is trying to learn Mandarin and will be of particular use to those who are native English speakers. I am by no means fluent in this language and am still learning today. As a gauge of my proficiency, by official standards I am roughly level 4 HSK (I haven’t sat an official test). What that means practically, I’m alright at the language — nothing spectacular, I still make plenty of mistakes, but I can say a little more than ni hao.

Why would you want to learn the language from someone who isn’t fluent?

Great Question. My advice, you should learn from someone who is. So why should I read this? If you are someone who is just starting out or has been learning for a few months this is for you. This blog will help you fast track those tiresome first 6–12 months by giving you tips and tricks, identifying common errors and how to get around them as well as providing a bank of resources and guide to how you should approach your beginning stage of mandarin learning. Bonus: if you are a native English speaker this will be particularly useful to you as many of the tips and tricks will be based on making connections with the English language.

My Mandarin Journey: My parents spoke to me in Mandarin when I was growing up but slowly transitioned to more English and Cantonese as I got older. I went to Chinese school but as most ABC (Australian/American Born Chinese) kids who do so, never really paid attention to it. So, at about age 21 my Mandarin was at the level that I could understand enough to survive in China and speak to the equivalent level of someone who was about roughly 7 years old. Also, I couldn’t read or write at all aside from the first few numbers (一二三)，hello（你好）, water（水）/ fire （火）. I studied a semester abroad at Beijing Normal University and prior to that did some self-learning of the language to prepare myself. I watched some TV shows and occasionally tried to improve my vocabulary with the help of apps like Pleco and Duolingo. Fast forward a few years and I’d say I’m roughly at HSK level 4 now which in practical terms means that I’m not great, but I can communicate decently in the language.

How do people like to eat their burgers? One bite at a time — the same way I would recommend to learn a language. Bite sized chunks are what I found to be the most effective way to learning a language.

It’s difficult and especially in Mandarin (if you are coming from an English-speaking background) to absorb a lot of information as the structure of the language is completely different to English. There really isn’t a lot of similarity between the two languages that you could easily make the connection with to say Spanish where you have cognates (which are basically words that are really similar) like:

Spanish

Attention =Atención

Public = Público

Curious =Curioso

Whereas in Mandarin this would be…

Mandarin

Attention = 注意

Public = 公共

Curious = 好奇

Yep…. real easy to make the connection between those ones huh?

So where does this leave you if your beginning on your journey or thinking about starting it? Well there really isn’t any way around it — learning Mandarin is going to take a lot of time and effort. There is no learn it in 30 days or learn mandarin quick. Nope. That stuff really doesn’t exist, at least in my opinion. I do think there are some people who can learn it faster than others and things like a nack for languages or a good memory can accelerate the process, but even then, it really does boil down to time and effort.

Wait..I am going to have to put time and effort into learning this?

Well I don’t really want to put all that time and effort in…what should I do? Well…. there aren’t too many options for you there then. One way to look at it is that you didn’t learn your native language overnight or in a few months so give yourself a reasonable amount of time to learn the language. When I say reasonable, be generous, because from my experience of talking with others who are fluent and a quick google search, it can take anywhere from 3–5 years to become proficient in the language.

Ok fine I might try it and see how I’ll go… awesome so you’ve decided to give it a go. This blog will be structured in bite sized pieces and easily digestible lessons. It will be very practical and will guide you each step along the way. Bonus you will learn some of the Chinese culture along the way! Mandarin as a second language is growing in popularity and if you are one of those who is thinking to or is on the path to learning it, I hope you can find some use from this blog. 