Today we will talk to you about how to build a process independent learning Chinese and where to start online study Chinese language. If you are looking for secret methods to learn Chinese in one day, this is NOT the place for you. In the article I tell personal experience self-study that helps me communicate on a basic level while living in China. Obviously, this article will not be written in one day. As new ones are received useful knowledge about independent learning of the Chinese language, I will supplement the existing sections. Good luck in learning the beautiful and interesting Chinese language!

Contents of the article "Online learning Chinese":

Why are you studying Chinese?

As in any business, before you start, you need to understand why are you doing this?. Learning a foreign language can be exciting, or it can be unbearable torture. Decide what you need it for Chinese and set specific goals. Without a clear understanding of what you want to achieve in the end, the process of learning any language can drag on for many years. And remember, learning a language is state of mind. Receive pleasure from the process, then the results will not keep you waiting.

Polyglot program with Dmitry Petrov

You may know that the Culture channel has been filming and publishing episodes of the Polyglot program for a long time. The essence of the project is that people with zero knowledge of a particular foreign language “sit down at their desks” and within 16 lessons gain basic knowledge of the language they are studying. In the summer of 2016 it was mounted and presented online Chinese language course.

Pros and cons of learning Chinese online with Polyglot:

  • Dmitry Petrov, as a person fluent in several languages ​​and a teacher with many years of experience, works according to a well-proven program.
  • No water. Only studied useful phrases and popular expressions.
  • The lessons are divided by topic, which helps you master the material.
  • The program involves 8 other people, creating a feeling of group study.
  • Some lessons are taught by a guest native speaker from China. It is possible to be sure of the correct pronunciation.
  • Free training
  • Hieroglyphs are practically not studied. There is only one lesson.
  • Most of the lessons are taught by Petrov himself. As a non-native Chinese speaker, he does not have perfect pronunciation. You need to check your pronunciation using third-party methods.

I highly recommend Polyglot to start. Of course, after 16 lessons you will not learn to speak fluently, much less understand, Chinese. Nevertheless, after completing half the course, with the proper approach, you will be able to write short texts about yourself, will you be able to introduce yourself?, tell about your family, ask for directions to the right place etc. At first, in China, the knowledge I gained here was really useful to me.

Petrov talks about many nuances of learning the Chinese language from scratch, gives analogies and associations. The main thing is that he presents the material in such a way that it is easier for us, Russian people, to understand it. After all, the Chinese and Russian languages ​​have little in common, don’t they?

You can check the methods yourself online studying Chinese language from scratch using Petrov's method. Here is the first lesson in his series. At the end of the article you will find an archive with all course materials.

A textbook for learning Chinese from scratch Assimil Chinese

Collection of Assimil Chinese materials for me recommended by foreigners, on at the moment living in China and studying Chinese on their own. I really liked the manual, the training was structured logically, step by step. Please note this manual is in English. Assimil Chinese materials include:

  • Assimil Chinese With Ease Vol 1-2 (2005). These are two books where you step by step understand the meaning and pronunciation of Chinese sounds and words, do written exercises, and also learn dialogues in Chinese.
  • Assimil Writing Chinese With Ease. This manual outlines the method of writing hieroglyphs.
  • Audio. A selection of audio podcasts that complement Assimil Chinese With Ease Vol 1-2 (2005).

The essence of the method of learning Chinese on your own using Assimil

In this guide, we start with the basics and step by step go deeper into learning the Chinese language. What I like about this manual is that learning the Chinese language goes in several directions at once. Studying popular words and phrases, execution writing exercises, audition audio podcasts from native Chinese speakers. If you wish, you can simultaneously analyze the textbook on hieroglyphs, then add writing to the listed skills. All audio podcasts are duplicated in textbooks in English and pinyin(transliteration system for Chinese characters, highlighted in the screenshot below).

Assimil developers emphasize that the optimal method for self-learning Chinese from scratch is to study about 30 minutes every day, from time to time returning to the material covered, repeating it. It is also recommended to download audio materials to your player or phone and, if possible, listen to them and repeat them as often as possible. Thus improving your Chinese speaking skills. The manual contains more 100 audio podcasts. You can download all the necessary materials at

Useful phrases in Chinese

As far as possible, I will fill the article with common phrases in Chinese that may be useful to you both when traveling around China and just for reference. All audio files are read by a Chinese woman, so you can be sure of the correct pronunciation. However, it is worth remembering that China has many dialects and the same phrases may sound differently in different regions of the country. You can download phrases and numbers in Chinese at. Chinese characters are described in

Useful phrases for traveling in China

Hello. - 你 好 (nǐ hǎ o)

How are you? - 你好吗？ (nǐ hǎ o ma？)

Goodbye. - 再 见 (zài jiàn)

What is your name? - 您 贵 姓 (nín guì xìng)

Do you have.. - 有 没 有 (yǒ u méi yǒ u)

I would like.. - 我 要 (wǒ yào)

What is the price? - 多 少 钱 (duō shǎ o qián)

It's too expensive. - 太 贵 了 (tài guì le)

Big. - 大 (dà)

Small. - 小 (xiǎ o)

Today. - 今天 (jīntiān)

Tomorrow. - 明天 (míngtiān)

Yesterday. - 昨天 (zuótiān)

I don't need it. - 不 要 (bú yào)

Agree or true. - 对 (duì)

Disagree or incorrect. - 不 对 (bú duì)

Yes. - 是 (shì)

No. - 不 是 (bú shì)

Thank you. - 谢 谢 (xiè xiè)

My pleasure. - 不 用 谢 (bú yòng xiè)

Where is.. - 在 哪 里 (zài nǎ li)

Toilet. - 厕 所 (cè suǒ)

How long in time.. - 多 久 (duō jiǔ)

Here. - 这 里 (zhè lǐ)

There. - 那 里 (nàli)

Go straight. - 前 (qian)

Turn left. - 左 (zuǒ)

Turn right. - 右 (yòu)

Stop. - 停 (ting)

I don't understand. - 我 听 不 懂 (wǒ tīng bù dǒ ng)

Numbers

30 (etc. according to meaning)

Days of the week

Monday. - 星期一 (xīngqī yī)

Tuesday. - 星期二 (xīngqī èr)

Wednesday. - 星期三 (xīngqī sān)

Thursday. - 星期四 (xīngqī sì)

Friday. - 星期五 (xīngqī wǔ)

Saturday. - 星期六 (xīngqī liù)

Resurrection. - 星期天 (xīngqī tiān)

How to say I love you in Chinese?

People often ask how to say I love you in Chinese. Very simple. To say I love you in Chinese, just say the following:

I love you. - 我爱你 (wǒ ài nǐ)

Chinese language characters. Getting Started Materials

Learning characters turned out to be much more difficult and quite boring than learning spoken Chinese. Every day I try to study 1-2 characters in order to understand Chinese writing at least at a basic level. As for me, speaking is much more important, however, knowing what is written on store signs and being able to explain in writing what you want is also not superfluous knowledge. In addition, hieroglyphs are an excellent workout for the brain. So, how did they advise me to learn Chinese through hieroglyphs and what materials do I use to study hieroglyphs?

It is probably logical to start studying hieroglyphs with this table. In front of you 214 most popular hieroglyphic keys. Having studied them, even with a complete lack of knowledge of hieroglyphs, it will be possible to general outline understand the meaning of what is written in Chinese. Not all of the hieroglyphic keys are used independently, so it is better to concentrate on the spelling and meaning. It is not necessary to know how they are read. Keys can be memorized while learning spoken Chinese.

It is important to immediately remember the order in which hieroglyphic keys are written. They are written from left to right, top to bottom. Subsequently, when studying Chinese characters, it will be much easier for you. Alternative spellings can sometimes be seen to the right of the main key images. This is also worth remembering. This is what the table of hieroglyphic keys looks like, and you can download it from the link in:

Chinese language characters. Assimil tutorial

Learning hieroglyphs by Assimil Writing Chinese With Ease involves learning 800 most common elements of Chinese characters. Step by step, you will study the elements and put in your head the meaning of certain hieroglyphs. This book is recommended after completing the first two. In my opinion, if you have experience in studying a foreign language on your own, you can study the materials at the same time. Depends on your abilities, mood and time. The textbook provides explanations basic rules structure of hieroglyphs, maintaining a balance of size and other components.

Other materials for self-studying Chinese

Below I’ll tell you about materials on self-learning Chinese from scratch, which were recommended by people, but which I myself have not yet used. didn't use it. At this stage, I have enough materials for independent online learning of the Chinese language from scratch, I haven’t gotten around to the rest yet. It is likely that some of them may be quite useful.

Speshnev's phonetic course and Textbook of spoken Chinese speech 301

One of the advantages is that both textbooks in Russian. But how to study Chinese using Speshnev’s course is a mystery to me. Dry presentation, two audio podcasts of an hour and a half each, where clearly a non-native speaker draws sounds... in general, I was not impressed.

  • A Practical Chinese Grammar for Foreigners 《外国人实用汉语语法》 Beijing Language and Cultural University Press
  • HSK Exam Grammar 《 HSK应试语法》 The Peking University Press
  • Road to Success 《成功之路》 Beijing Language and Cultural University Press

Applications for self-paced online learning of Chinese

I haven't gotten to the apps yet. One guy from New Zealand, currently living in Chengdu, recommended the application Pleco. Judging by the description, the application can be useful for staging speech and developing common expressions. There are also functions for independently writing a particular hieroglyph, after which the application shows the meaning of the hieroglyph. It's a useful thing.

Website busuu.com I have recommended it many times to my friends for online learning of a particular language. At the moment, in the arsenal of the developers of the site busuu.com 12 languages ​​studied. The learning process itself is not without its disadvantages, but there are obvious advantages. One of the main ones is a large reach of the target audience and the opportunity to receive corrections of written exercises directly from the Chinese, as well as communicate with them for free via video.

Link to download materials for self-study of Chinese

That's all for today. I hope you found something useful for yourself and it will help you get started self-study Chinese language.

List of files for download:

  • All episodes of the video course "Polyglot" with Dmitry Petrov
  • Assimil Chinese manual and audio podcasts for it
  • Table of hieroglyphic keys
  • Numbers and common phrases in Chinese

How do you learn Chinese and what successes have you achieved?? Tell us in the comments!!!

  • About the sights of Guangzhou there is

2.5 (23 voted. Vote too!!!)

Ni hao! Why might you need to learn Chinese on your own? Well, for example, you, like me, want to go to China on your own. Read more about this. And the majority of the Chinese do not speak not only Russian, but also English! The exception is the cities bordering Russia, where almost the entire population speaks Russian. And Beijing, where you may (or may not) meet an English-speaking Chinese. But in general, NOT speaking any language other than their own, there are many more Chinese. And for the most part, the inscriptions in China, oddly enough, are also in Chinese. Therefore, if you want to at least a little orient yourself in what is happening, then learn Chinese on your own! Otherwise, you’ll definitely “stick” somewhere!

I would like to immediately dispel one myth. This myth says that Chinese is one of the most difficult languages ​​to learn! This is wrong! This is one of the easiest languages! At least it's conversational! With writing it’s a little more difficult, but even here it’s not so bad. If you don't believe me, read on!

I need to learn Chinese in a month

As I already wrote here, the need to learn Chinese arose “for work.” But I didn’t have time to really start learning Chinese on my own, since I had a trip to China planned. In a month!

I needed to start speaking some Chinese very quickly. And even better, study hieroglyphs in order to understand a little what is written!

And I began this difficult task - to learn Chinese on my own in a month!

Is Chinese difficult?

Well, in general, it is a myth that the Chinese language is very difficult. Let's look at spoken and written languages. What are the “nice things” and “nice things” :) here and there

Oral Chinese.

It's actually very simple. In Chinese it is very easy to construct a phrase in the past or future tense (compare with English:). In most cases, this can generally be understood from the context, and the phrase itself is constructed as in the present tense. The words themselves are short. Easy to remember.

There are no articles in Chinese. No plural. No birth. All this is clear from the context.

Chinese phrases follow strict rules. Moreover, these rules are quite simple. It is very difficult to confuse something! The order of words in a sentence is strictly fixed!

As for the tonality that beginners are so intimidated with...

Don't worry! You will be understood.. And you will understand from the context what they are saying.. This is actually NOT a problem! Even for those who had a bear dancing on their ears :) I’ll tell you about this a little further...

Translation of the article by Lingholic

When I started learning Chinese in 2009, I followed the “traditional” path of learning a foreign language. I attended classes, took notes, sat in a cramped apartment in downtown Taipei, sketching out hundreds of characters. The training was progressing, but I was exhausted and bored. I lacked the motivation to go to class, knowing that each of them ended with a homework assignment consisting of many written exercises. Is this a familiar situation?

I was getting ready to quit my studies when one day I accidentally overheard my classmates talking about an online podcast they were listening to. It turned out that there are 3 or 4 programs that are used to createvirtual classrooms.Those who want to learn Chinese gather there. I tested these programs and liked them so much that after 2-3 years I created a virtual Chinese class for myself.

Now I will share with you some ways to create such virtual training rooms. I hope this will help you regain your motivation, optimize your learning, and have fun on your journey to becoming fluent in Chinese. Agreed?

8 sites and programs for learning Chinese - learn Chinese yourself from scratch

In a world where smartphones are everywhere and high-speed Internet is just a click away, learning foreign languages ​​has changed radically. Today it is not necessary to study in classrooms; Mobile applications and websites make it possible to study anytime and anywhere. So no more excuses about lack of time!

I used the following eight methods on my way from knowing no Chinese to being almost fluent in Chinese within a year. Why don't you try them out and form your own opinion about them?

So let's begin.

  1. ChinesePod

If you're serious about learning Chinese and still haven't used this portal, you're missing out. ChinesePod started out as a regular podcast, but has grown into a popular platform that features a variety of content. The ChinesePod archive contains 3500+ lessons with dialogues and grammar comments, vocabulary and grammar exercises. Online teaching available. Among so many lessons, it’s easy to find the one you need. It's nice that they are all based on life situations— buying a SIM card in a store, booking hotels.

Listening to podcasts in Chinese will greatly improve your understanding of it. In addition, this is a great option to fill the time on the way to work or school.

  1. ABCs of Chinese

ABCs of Chinese is a site that uses a method of memorizing characters using pictures. This method is an alternative to cramming and endless hours of calligraphy on paper.

Here's how ABCs of Chinese talks about itself:

“The fundamental idea of ​​the ABC of Chinese curriculum is that hieroglyphs are pictures (images). When you look at , you realize that this is not a random set of lines. It is a stylized pictogram or symbol. Master the basic elements (building blocks) that make up most hieroglyphs, and then move on.”

Check out their YouTube channel - there's a lot of cool stuff there.

  1. Pleco

To the student foreign language A dictionary is needed. This is vital for Chinese learners. The Pleco app is a favorite among dictionaries. The number of settings and functions in it is head and shoulders above its competitors. Best of all, it's free on Android and iOS.

Pleco dictionary entries provide the following information: a range of word meanings, examples of use in context, spelling order. The user saves the word as a card if he wants to repeat it later. Pleco has another great thing - it can recognize a hieroglyph when you point the camera and gives an instant translation.

  1. Nciku

Next on the list of cool dictionaries is Nciku.com. It's simple online dictionary, but here's what caught my attention: when searching for a word, he gave an example of its use. This was very useful to me when I was learning Chinese, because I often got confused in the contexts of using a certain word. I prefer to use Nciku on my computer and Pleco on my smartphone when traveling.

Some of us have amazing memory skills, but most people don't. This is where Anki comes to the rescue. These are applications for remembering information on cards. Anki analyzes the user's responses and decides which cards should be shown more often.

In Anki, you create a set of flashcards by topic, language, and so on. I had topics on names of animals, fish, food, slang, and words that I had difficulty using in my life. You can add pictures, sound and articles to cards. Such a useful application, available on computer, Android and iOS.

  1. Language Exchange

The more colloquial speech, the better your knowledge of a foreign language. Facebook constantly hosts events called “language exchange” - a place where native speakers talk to foreign language learners. So use social media to find the event you're looking for and get going!

Except Facebook There are a couple other platforms for communication. LiveMocha presents learning in levels that represent the stages of learning a foreign language.

My Language Exchange- my favorite site. 1 million people from all countries have registered on it.

Are you looking for a cool app to communicate in a foreign language? Try it HelloTalk.

Tip: Don't forget about ChinesePod lessons when communicating with Chinese people. Print 2 copies of the lesson and learn it together! This will be great practice, and you won’t have to sit through boring textbooks.

  1. TV shows and films

I won't tell you how many hours I spent watching Chinese cartoons, women's talk shows and other mind-numbing TV programs. No matter how boring and unpleasant these TV shows are, watching them increases vocabulary, improves grammar without memorizing rules, improves listening skills and gives an order of magnitude better understanding of the language.

There's a nuance here. You probably don't want to watch a technical video. Choose videos with dialogues. If you come across an unfamiliar word, pause the video and look up the translation from the dictionary. Memorize frequently used phrases.

Find videos and films on Youku And Tudou, these are two large portals. This is how I search for videos:

  1. Perapera

With this plugin, I was able to confidently use Chinese websites and even pay bills (remember, I live in Taiwan).

I hope that the sites, programs and applications I offer will be useful to you in your studies. Even if you study with a teacher, these methods will speed up your learning of Chinese.

Video

Watch a video about ways to learn Chinese.

Milena Karlova has been a Chinese language teacher for a long time; she gives private lessons. She created the textbook “Self-Teacher. Chinese for Beginners”, in which he shares his knowledge with readers. The book will help you master this amazing, but at the same time complex language. It is becoming increasingly popular and is likely to one day become a world language.

Using your knowledge of the language, you can successfully conduct business negotiations, communicate with native speakers and study the culture of the country; you can easily travel without worrying about communication difficulties.

The textbook provides detailed information about the basics of the Chinese language, its features and some difficult cases. There is literally everything about hieroglyphs here, it is described what their meaning is, how to depict them correctly, there are copybooks. Using phonetic material, you can work on pronunciation, which at the first stages of learning seems very difficult. The book consists of many lessons, each of which includes tasks and exercises to reinforce new material.

The author gradually, very smoothly introduces the subject, so that the classes do not become too difficult or boring. The information is presented logically and consistently, making it easy to digest. This book will answer many questions related to interesting features Chinese language, and in a few months you will be able to read simple texts.

On our website you can download the book "Self-instruction manual. Chinese for beginners" by Karlova Milena for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.

The decision to start studying new language may be caused by both professional necessity and the desire to comply with the trends of the times. If in the last century and the century before last, fluency in French or German was the standard for educated person, then today English confidently holds the palm. But a new player appeared in the arena and began to gradually push back its competitors. Its name is Chinese.

The Chinese language, despite all its complexity, is recent years is confidently increasing the number of its “subscribers”. Every year, an increasing number of foreigners move to China to live, work, and learn the language. This, of course, is not connected with the great culture or eventful history of China, but with its economy. The new economic miracle of China, which became a magnet for laid-off workers around the world during the crisis of 2008, forced many inquisitive minds to turn their gaze to it and ask the question: “Should I learn Chinese?”

In order to understand whether it is worth taking up Chinese or not, you need to answer yourself two questions:

1. Why do I need Chinese?
2. How much time am I willing to spend on it?

The motives for learning Chinese can be very different.

  1. Broaden your horizons, learn something new.
  2. Learn another foreign language (for show, for a resume, to raise self-esteem).
  3. Get to know the culture of China, read philosophical treatises and ancient Chinese poetry in the original language.
  4. Watch films by Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Bruce Lee in original dubbing.
  5. Do business with China.
  6. Enter a Chinese university.
  7. Emigrate with your family to China.
  8. I want to learn some language, but somehow I’m not drawn to European ones.
  9. I would like to learn how to communicate on a daily level with my fellow Chinese students.

At this stage, the most important thing is to determine your motives. Their understanding will change the content of the wording “learn Chinese.” All of the reasons listed above for learning Chinese will require you to use several different preparation methods and different quantities time, so it’s worth clarifying the picture in advance.

Determining your goals in learning Chinese

  1. If you are learning Chinese “for fun”, it will be enough to sign up for some courses and listen to podcasts, ask your Chinese friends to teach you hieroglyphs. At this level, a cheerful dialogue with a Chinese person in the spirit of “Hello, how are you?” may even be considered the finishing point in learning Chinese.
  2. If a person wants to learn a language for show or to feel cooler, here everything turns out to be very blurry. How to determine the “ceiling” and goal? Free reading of the morning newspapers? Reading fiction without a dictionary? Or understanding TV news and casual conversations with a Chinese political scientist? If you do not define your goal in learning Chinese, you will never achieve a feeling of saturation and completion. With this approach, you can learn a language all your life, but never achieve the goal (after all, there is none!).
  3. If a person wants, for example, to read in the original Nobel laureate Mo Yan or other Chinese literature, then emphasis should be placed on written Chinese. If the goal is to read, then oral Chinese with its pronunciation and listening can be safely relegated to the background, freeing up time for sayings, phraseological units, fanciful literary words and the history of China.
  4. In order to watch Chinese movies in the original language, good listening and knowledge of the language will be required. Spoken Chinese will still be important, especially pronunciation, because good listening is only possible if a person speaks well. Watching films requires extensive preparation of an adept of the Chinese language, and the only concession it gives is that you can stop the film and look at an unfamiliar word (which cannot be done during a conversation). For those who want to watch Chinese films in the original language, it is advisable to also decide on the film genre. For laconic action films, a more everyday vocabulary is suitable, which can be mastered in a relatively short time, while in historical epics you will have to drink such pretentious constructions and archaic words that you will have to spend several years to understand at least half of the film.
  5. For businessmen, everything is pretty straightforward. Here you need good conversational Chinese (even with relatively poor pronunciation), the ability to understand and operate Chinese numbers, knowledge of terminology in the field of logistics and an understanding of the specifics of doing business with China. Even if you are not going to negotiate with the Chinese yourself, but are planning to hire a professional translator for these purposes, it still makes sense to get better at Chinese. Firstly, you will generally understand the essence of what your translator and partner are talking about, and secondly, you will calmly do without the services of an interpreter in China, which is not very suitable for the life of foreigners.
  6. If you plan to go to university in China, then you will need to take the scope for delivery HSK(similar to TOEFL for Chinese). To do this, you will need to get better at taking the HSK, which can take a relatively short time. Two of my smart friends passed HSK levels 8–9 (out of 12), without even going to the Middle Kingdom. But going to university after passing the HSK at levels 4–6 is one thing, but studying there along with the Chinese is something completely different. In order to read handwritten characters on the blackboard and understand the non-standard pronunciation of Chinese teachers, passing the HSK will not be enough. This is why many applicants enroll in preparatory courses lasting 1-2 years. And even this preparation is often not enough. So you should be aware of the fact that higher education in China, this is a multi-year epic that will require a full commitment of time and effort over several years.
  7. In the case of emigration to the Celestial Empire, everything is quite simple. Your task is to master the basics of Chinese, which will make your comfortable life possible. The good news is that once you master Chinese at some level, you will no longer need to spend time maintaining it - your level will be consistently low.
  8. If you just want to learn some foreign language, for example, to develop memory, then Chinese is not the best best choice, because this language requires much more time and effort than, for example, Spanish or even German. You can’t take it on a whim: for minimal progress in Chinese you will need at least 3-4 hours of study a day. If you study less, you will not feel progress, which means that the desire to learn the language will gradually disappear.
  9. To communicate with Chinese friends, you will still have to work hard and invest at least many months of intensive training. As I already said, there is no quick start in Chinese, so the naive “How do you say this in Chinese?” You won’t be able to master anything sensible.

Once you have decided on your motive for learning Chinese, it's time to answer the second question (about time) for yourself.

Am I ready to spend so many hours a day learning Chinese for x number of months/years? When answering this question, it may turn out that your appetite for Chinese is not commensurate with the time you are willing to spend on it. For example, if you want to learn Chinese to watch movies, but you only have 1-2 hours of Chinese per day, then this dubious undertaking may drag on for many years without producing any tangible results.

The main difficulty of Chinese lies in the characters, of which there are thousands. And not all of them are as simple and logical to remember as, for example, 人 (ren - person), where you can clearly see a long-legged walking man. Or, for example, 口 (kǒu - mouth), which looks like a mouth. Having learned these two hieroglyphs, the student will be pleasantly surprised to learn that these two hieroglyphs together - 人口 (renkǒu)- means "population". How logical!

But these simple hieroglyphs, which Chinese children begin to understand even before they master the skill of walking, like a drop in the ocean that you drink in the first months of learning Chinese. I won’t talk about tone, pronunciation, vocabulary and other pitfalls in learning Chinese now - this is a topic for a separate article.

Pitfalls in learning Chinese

The main trap of Chinese is that, having overcome the first threshold in the form of basic hieroglyphs, more or less tonal pronunciation and at least some listening, a person, with due diligence and provided that he lives in China, will show tangible progress in learning Chinese, and it will seem to him that it will always be like this. This first “take-off” period can last a year or two. Every next six months it will seem that all you have to do is push a little, that another six months - and Chinese is yours. But somewhere in the third year, for some reason, it turns out that learning Chinese becomes more and more difficult.

Usually, after 3–5 years, sinologists begin to become overwhelmed by the awareness of their situation. Someone goes on a binge, realizing that the burden turned out to be too heavy, someone leaves the Celestial Empire in tears, someone is looking for new meanings for their stay in China, and someone pumps themselves up with a huge dose of optimism and continues this unequal battle. Only the most persistent survive, and they become half-Chinese with their Eastern thinking and traditions.

Another “pleasant” surprise about Chinese is that when you are in China, you will very rarely hear good, quality Mandarin ( official language Celestial Empire). In the vast and densely populated China, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of local dialects that leave their mark on the pronunciation of the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom. During the entire 5 years that I spent in China, I met at most a dozen Chinese who spoke pure Chinese, and they worked on TV. Even my Chinese teacher was not without sin: she pronounced the th sound where there should have been an s sound.

A good illustration of how different Putonghua can sound is an episode from one show where even the host speaks good, but not quite standard, Putonghua with a southern flavor, every now and then using the sound “dz” instead of “j”.

At the time of participating in this TV show, I had been studying Chinese for about 2.5 years, and for the first year and a half I studied on average 8 hours a day.

In the time it takes you to achieve good level in Chinese (a very vague concept, by the way), you could high level master 2–3 European languages. Therefore, before “diving” into Chinese, you should first weigh the pros and cons and figure out whether the game is worth the candle.