misshark, you around?

[basilosaurus]

I got pointed to an online language study thing, similar to rosetta (livemocha), and was working on beginner Chinese.

Um, it's hard. Like really hard. H was helping me and said the phrases in the beginning of the first lesson were things from the end of a beginner college semester course. Also, he said their accent was weird. He may have just been trying to get in my pants, but he said mine was better than theirs. He knows I'm a sucker for flattery

Do you have any better suggestions? Free of course!

[brandienee]

(Disclaimer: I am not Misshark, so take what I say with a huge grain of salt)

DH is using Rosetta Stone for Chinese right now, he likes it, but he took 2 years of Chinese in college. I would be learning it too if I weren't going off and learning a fancy European language for school.

We get Chinese news through our cable network, do you have anything similar? You could listen to that for accent help. I am no other help. I have no idea what free resources there are out there. Maybe a "learn Chinese" podcast.

[basilosaurus]

Thanks, brandie. What language are you learning? And for what school?

Yeah, we get Chinese tv (H watches way too often for my taste!). I feel like I won't have much of a problem with the correct accent once I know more than a few phrases if H's praise is any indication.

Wish I could get Rosetta for free. According to H it's way easier than what I was doing. Like they start with single words instead of the 8 word phrases I was working on.

[brandienee]

I am taking French at Rutgers. Our little offshoot campus doesn't offer Chinese.

Do you know about the Military Discount with Rosetta Stone? I've heard that it is pretty amazing. It might be worth it to check it out. But it goes into phrases pretty quickly.

[Deleted]

Rosetta Stone is free when you rent it from the base library!!!

[basilosaurus]

H has intermittently gotten free access to rosetta. At one point I remember he could access all the languages. I could probably ask him to look into it again. He'd love to go through it with me.

[basilosaurus]

So, apparently the AF no longer has the contract that allowed H access (he called literally 2 minutes after I sent the email asking. I told you he's excited!). But he's looking into the library. Overseas, they had the online program, and there was a multi-month wait for it. No idea what the situation is locally, though.

[misshark122]

Hey! Sibil, are you in Hawaii? I guess you said free, but I know there are tons of Chinese speakers in Hawaii and I'd totally try to find a reasonably priced tutor.

But if you don't want to go that route, we do have Rosetta stone and yeah it comes from the perspective of teaching you like a baby would learn language. It also has a microphone you speak into and pronounce the words and it will tell you if you are saying it accurately - I haven't tried it since after DLI, but used it before DLI. I think it's a decent program to get started but I don't know how you could really learn an entire language that way. I guess I am just a really big fan of formal programs because for me personally I can't imagine learning Chinese any other way! But for starting out, I think it would probably be great.

DLI on the other hand gives you lists of vocab, you memorize them, and then you do listening practice and eventually pick up on all the words used in a sentence.

Now I want to go to this livemocha and see what level I think its at!

[misshark122]

Also at DLI we used to use ChinesePod. It's not free but I don't think it's crazily priced or anything. They have beginner portions.... I do think it is more advanced than just starting with one word though.

[basilosaurus]

Yeah, H just told me he thinks he has the whole ChinesePod. I'd thought he only had the more advanced sections.

I'm not looking for flunecy, just some beginning familiarity. Basically, it's for fun, to see if I can do it, and honestly to bond over with H. That probably sounds really weird.

livemocha had nín jiào shén me míng zi? at the beginning. That's a lot of fast words to absorb when I'm beginning with only a knowledge of ni hao, wo ai ni, and xing ba ke. But, hey, I figure those 3 things will get me far!

[brandienee]

Aug 24, 2012 18:45:12 GMT -5 basilosaurus said:

Yeah, H just told me he thinks he has the whole ChinesePod. I'd thought he only had the more advanced sections.

I'm not looking for flunecy, just some beginning familiarity. Basically, it's for fun, to see if I can do it, and honestly to bond over with H. That probably sounds really weird.

livemocha had nín jiào shén me míng zi? at the beginning. That's a lot of fast words to absorb when I'm beginning with only a knowledge of ni hao, wo ai ni, and xing ba ke. But, hey, I figure those 3 things will get me far!

I might be weird, because this is the reason I want to learn as well.

[misshark122]

I think a lot of places teach chinese like that maybe so you get the word order. There are a lot of phrases and what they call "grammar patterns" (it's not really a grammar pattern per say, more of a way of saying something) where if you dissect it word by word, it doesn't make sense and it's not something you could come up with by stringing words you know together. A lot of chinese is like that so I think that's why some places start with phrases. DLI did that, too. But if you want to start small then I think rosetta stone is for sure your best bet! And rosetta stone works in different things with it as well, like, it won't just teach you how to say car, it will throw in the measure word with it too (like yi liang qiche).