Learning Mandarin Chinese series

I went through my drawers today and saw all my old notebooks from the time I was enthusiastically learning Chinese. I was thinking why not publish some of the stuff I learned. It may not be the best Learning Mandarin course you'll find online, but I'll supply you with some nice useful phrases. It's good if you already have some knowledge of Chinese, at least the basics, because I won't go into all of them thoroughly and explain every detail. I'll focus on the useful phrases.

I remember when I started dating a Chinese girl, I wanted to impress her with some lovely Chinese phrases. And I kept googling and browsing the internet to find something useful. It was not easy - it took me a lot of time and effort to get what I want. But I still keep some of these phrases on various Word.docs or even in notebooks. Later when I stayed in Malaysia, I bought various language guides and dictionaries. I'll give you some nice examples from that books as well.

I also have to say, I learned a lot from my girlfriend and from her family. Especially the kids taught me a lot, because their Chinese is not so advanced and they mostly talk about the usual every day things. A lot of times I heard same phrases every day. I asked the kids to tell me how it's pronounced properly. Then I wrote it down in pinyin (romanized Chinese) and memorized it. Once I learned it, I could strike a simple conversation with the kids, mostly about food or who's going where or coming back when.

And the last thing that really helped me was my Nokia E66 that my Chinese sisters bought for me. I can use Chinese signs (converted from pinyin) and I messaged with my ex girlfriend and her sisters many times in Chinese. Maybe I'll post about how to write a Chinese text message some time in the future. Until then, let the fun begin. Let's start from scratch.

[Photos by MKL, 2009]