On November 03 2009 17:12 knadolny wrote:
Perhaps I can lend my insight into learning Chinese. I spent my first two years in America learning basic Chinese at Cornell University. Cornell has an amazing program by the way. I found learning a foundation was a must before going to China to learn Chinese.

Also I began studying the traditional characters than moved to simplified. If you want to learn both then do it. It will only help you, but traditional is not a must on the mainland (except for karaoke songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan) The Chinese government is thinking of going back and complicating the characters. If you study traditional now you might be a step a head.

Now to your question: Where to study Chinese in China?

I studied at Beijing Language and Culture University. I met my wife there and would not trade that experience for the world, but there are a few things to keep in mind. When you study in Beijing you need to have personal initiative to get out there and make Chinese friends. Many people just hang out with expats and their fellow "foreigners" in Beijing. Your Chinese will not improve your Chinese if you speak English all the time. That said I studied in Beijing and became immersed in the language and culture while in Beijing. I just hung out with Koreans, Japanese and Chinese who could not speak English.

Famous schools for learning Chinese are worthless. If you tell me you studied Chinese at Peking University that means nothing. Their program is not so great from what I hear. There are many foreign universities that run Chinese learning programs at the famous universities in Beijing. This does not mean you're signing up for this program though. The price tag will tell you whether it's Chinese run or American run.

Whether you study in Shandong, Chengdu, Harbin, Beijing, or Shanghai is all up to you. What do you want out of your time in China? Beijing is definitely a cultural hub with Shanghai being a financial/economic hub. If you want the hustle and bustle go to one of those cities. (all cities are basically bustling in China, but some more than others).

As with anything in life, you will get out of China exactly what you put into it. You can find an alcove of foreigners in almost any city in China. At the same time you can also find a billion Chinese people all over the country.

I loved my experience in Beijing, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for you.

I hope this helps.

Sorry to all the Taiwanese, HKers, and traditional Chinese learners that my book (see link) is in simplified Chinese. I'm considering a traditional Chinese version and will make one if I get enough demand.

Cheers,

Kevin
www.capturingchinese.com

This guy either found this TL blog from searching randomly on Google or was lurking TL and signed up just today so he could make this post. That is awesome.

madnessman

United States1581 Posts

November 03 2009 14:26 GMT

#84

I read simplified but I do recognize the basic traditional characters. If you plan on learning Japanese learn traditional. It's really cool knowing Chinese and living in Japan because there are a bunch of random words which match up really well. Library in chinese is tu shu guan and to sho gan in Japanese.

520

United States2822 Posts

November 03 2009 14:30 GMT

#85

On November 03 2009 23:26 madnessman wrote:
I read simplified but I do recognize the basic traditional characters. If you plan on learning Japanese learn traditional. It's really cool knowing Chinese and living in Japan because there are a bunch of random words which match up really well. Library in chinese is tu shu guan and to sho gan in Japanese.

And 도서관 (to seo gwan) in Korean. Of course there's going to be a lot of similar vocabulary, both Japan and Korea are still under China's cultural influence sphere.

But Japanese has a lot of simplified characters too. They simplified the characters their own way, so some of them will be different than both Traditional and Simplified characters. Some of them are the same though (the most notable one off the top of my head is 學 (traditional) vs. 学 (Japanese, simplified))

madnessman

United States1581 Posts

November 03 2009 14:35 GMT

#86

Japan uses the simplified version xue? I've actually never really specifically noticed that. Oops!

haduken

Australia8267 Posts

November 03 2009 16:29 GMT

#87

On November 03 2009 23:35 madnessman wrote:
Japan uses the simplified version xue? I've actually never really specifically noticed that. Oops!

I believe Kanji was based on the traditional Chinese vocabulary but evolved after years of Japanese usage. Not really a surprise, simplified hanzi was introduced less than 50 years ago.

Some character will have different strokes and different meaning but the most of the common Kanji still retained traditional Hanzi writting style.

haduken

Australia8267 Posts

November 03 2009 16:37 GMT

#88

Simplied hanzi is made for public usage in a time where education is expense and people needed an easier way to adopt literacy.

Now days, it doesn't really matters that much.

You will find literacy and language majored grads mastering traditional Chinese so it is definately not a dying skill.

I think most people can read simple/traditional scripts after some time learning the other. writting is harder to adapt.

knadolny

3 Posts

November 04 2009 03:21 GMT

#89

I agree. I live in Japan now (with my wife who I met while studying Chinese in Beijing). I'm learning Japanese now and the Chinese background makes my life so much easier.

I'm surprised though. Japanese sometimes uses the simplified character, sometimes the traditional one, and sometimes they have their very own versions.

Studying Chinese will help your Japanese whichever (simplified or traditional) you decide to study.

Plus I went to Vietnam once and translated their Chinese characters that they couldn't read anymore. It was a nice feeling.

United States496 Posts

November 04 2009 04:16 GMT

#90

I agree. Once you got Chinese, it's easier to read Japanese Kanji but still the grammar is VERY different (Japanese grammar is GOLD. Absolutely GENIUS and this is a French telling it so believe me, it's true) so don't think you'll learn any real Japanese by learning Chinese.
It's like saying you know English and so it's easier to learn French. Yeah, some similarities but still two different languages.

Btw, go Beijing.

Matoo-

Canada1397 Posts

November 04 2009 22:11 GMT

#91

On November 03 2009 03:41 Orlandu wrote:
...

That's what I call an elaborate answer =p thank you and the others as well.

Actually I'm not even sure why I mentioned SH. My current top consists of BJ, Dalian, and Hangzhou. BJ is the easy choice of course but I dunno. The more I think about it the more I want to have a go at a "smaller" city. I'm really not in sucker for capital cities and stuff in general.

About getting completely immersed with non-english speaking people, it would certainly yield the best results in terms of raw chinese skill progression. But as a fellow nerd a huge part of my life involves english, and since building friendships and having fun is also important to me I don't want to completely isolate myself from english-speaking people. It might slow down my progression a little but I'm 100% sure I have what it takes to keep improving like crazy at chinese so that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Also, rest assured that I'm NOT going to hang out with expats all the time... if at all. I've spent the last two years working around the world and I've quite grown to hate the typical expatriate mentality. I could spend dozens of lines saying how much is sucks, but let's just say that I won't ever let myself get sucked into that.

I might go back to engineering after some time (I've been holding a job as an engineer for two years now), so it's also better if the place I go to offers a lot of job opportunities as well. That's a powerful argument in favor of BJ, since most foreign companies tend to hold their headquarters in the biggest cities rather than in the smaller ones, and salary-wise as an expatriate foreign companies (esp. french ones in my case) >>> local companies most of the time. However my job isn't so important in my life anyway, and that reminds me too much of all the people moving to Paris area to get a job and hating it so fuck this. I don't even know if I'll get back at engineering one day anyway.

knadolny

3 Posts

November 05 2009 13:29 GMT

#92

Hey Matoo,

I'm actually an engineer as well and the one who found my wife in Beijing. I now do engineering here in Japan. I actually spent one summer in Dalian and it's a really charming city. Afterward I moved to Beijing to study for a year. During my time in Beijing I kept comparing the two and Dalian is really a great city to be in. A lot of the models are from there (I believe) and the clubs are fun. The Japanese have a strong presence there so you get an expat feeling of a different flavor.

I spent some time in Hangzhou and absolutely loved the place as well. It's strung out with canals and a big lake there (xi hu). I took a boat trip from Suzhou to Hangzhou on my way there.

Don't get carried away though. Dalian and Hangzhou are both huge cities. As for engineering, Hangzhou is just an hour or so away from Shanghai which has more foreign companies then Beijing. Dalian is a short flight from Beijing but a long train ride since it's a bit isolated on that peninsula.

Enjoy your time there. I'm sure it's a lot different then when I was there just a few years ago. I can't wait to get back.

Kevin
www.capturingchinese.com