Learn Chinese on your own

What makes Chinese unlike other languages#

We are talking about Putonghua, standard Mandarin, the variety foreigners learn. It has four tones and a light neutral one. A tone is the movement of pitch on a syllable, and it changes meaning: mā, má, mǎ and mà are four different words. For an English speaker this is unusual: in English, pitch colours a whole sentence — "you're coming?" rising, "you're coming." falling — but never changes what a single syllable means.

The writing is not directly tied to pronunciation: you cannot reliably read a word from its character. So the sound is written in Latin letters — pinyin with tone marks. Pinyin is a crutch at the start and a tool for life: you type Chinese on your phone and look words up in the dictionary through it. Beware that pinyin letters do not sound like English ones: q is close to "ch", x to "sh", and c to the "ts" in "cats".

The grammar, on the other hand, is friendly. Verbs do not change for person or tense, nouns have no plural or gender, there are no articles. Meaning rests on word order, particles such as 了 and 过, and measure words: between a number and a noun comes a measure word, much like "a loaf of bread" or "a sheet of paper" in English, only for every noun — 一本书 "one book", 三个人 "three people".

The first six weeks: sound only#

Do not rush to the characters. First learn the pinyin syllable table: initials, finals and how they combine. Separately drill the sounds English does not have: the retroflex zh, ch, sh, r, the palatal j, q, x, and the vowel ü (say "ee" with rounded lips).

Train tones in pairs of syllables, not one at a time: in real speech syllables link up, and a third tone before another third tone turns into a second. A handy exercise is the table of twenty "tone + tone" combinations, said aloud on a recording and compared with a native speaker. Fight the English habit of putting a falling intonation at the end of every statement — it turns a final first tone into a fourth. The stage is done when you can tell the tones of unfamiliar two-syllable words by ear at least eight times out of ten.

Characters: how to learn them without drowning#

A character is made of components, and some of them are radicals — meaning elements used to classify characters in dictionaries. The traditional system has 214 radicals; you do not need all of them, but the fifty most frequent make memorising much easier: 氵 hints at water, 口 at the mouth or speech, 木 at a tree or wood.

Learn characters through words, not one by one: 学 is remembered inside 学生 "student" and 学习 "to study". Five to ten new characters a day plus reviewing old ones with flashcards is enough. Writing by hand is worth it for at least the first few hundred — that is how stroke order sticks and similar characters such as 土 and 士 stay apart. After that many people move to recognition and typing through pinyin.

Decide in advance which characters you learn: simplified (mainland China) or traditional (Taiwan, Hong Kong). HSK and most textbooks use simplified.

Months two to six: sentences, measure words, listening#

Take grammar as patterns: 是 for "to be", 有 for "to have" and "there is", 在 for location, questions with 吗 and 什么, the negations 不 and 没, completion with 了, experience with 过. For each pattern write five sentences about yourself in characters and pinyin.

Build listening on learner materials that include text and pinyin: first listen with the support, then without it. Shadow short phrases aloud after the speaker, watching the tones of the whole phrase rather than single syllables.

How to keep notes for Chinese#

Keep four fields for every word: characters, pinyin with tone marks, translation and an example. The tone is the first thing you forget without a record, so always mark it, even when you think you remember. A separate sheet for similar-looking characters and for word pairs that differ only in tone. On flashcards two directions help: character → sound and meaning, sound → character. Review them with spaced repetition.

How to tell you are making progress#

The benchmark is the HSK levels, the official exam of Chinese as a foreign language: each level has published word lists and sample papers. Check against the list once a month: how many of its words you recognise by ear and in writing. You do not have to sit the exam — the list itself is a good map. Mandarin is in the hardest category for English speakers in the US Foreign Service Institute ranking, so measure progress in months, not weeks.

Step-by-step plan

1. Weeks 1–6 — pinyin and tonesThe syllable table, the hard sounds, twenty tone pairs aloud on a recording; telling tones apart by ear in 8 words out of 10.
2. Weeks 4–10 — radicals and the first charactersFifty frequent radicals, 5–10 characters a day inside words, writing by hand.
3. Months 3–4 — basic patterns是, 有, 在, questions with 吗, negations 不 and 没, measure words; five sentences of your own for each.
4. Months 5–6 — listening and checking against HSKMaterials with text and pinyin, shadowing, a monthly check against your level's word list.

Check yourself

Sources

• MDBGFree online Chinese–English dictionary with pinyin and character breakdowns
  free
• PlecoPhone dictionary: handwriting recognition, stroke order
  free
• AnkiSpaced repetition flashcards for words and characters
  free

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