Learning Mandarin through Video Clips

Perhaps I should add the words “for free” at the end of the title above.

I started taking up Mandarin lessons seriously some five years ago using YouTube videos and google translate. I did not engage any tutor as I was then able to speak a smattering of Mandarin from memories of the past, living in Singapore for the first half of my life. During those colonial days of Singapore, the education system was such that you either go to the English stream or the Chinese stream and my mother decided that it was best for my career to be studying English. Before Singapore’s self-governing status in 1959, all English-speaking Singaporeans were given so much work opportunities that there was no necessity for Singaporeans to learn Mandarin. We were then fluent in English (especially in Singlish) and at the same time were able to communicate with friends and schoolmates in the vernacular Chinese dialects of Cantonese and Hokkien and also able to converse in Malay with our Malay friends. Society treated us, English-speaking Singaporeans as one class above all others who could not fill in an English application form to apply for basic social amenities like public housing or water facility.

With the above as a backdrop, I started to master Mandarin in my early seventies, in a country so far away from Singapore as New Zealand. What was my motivation? The most direct incentive was that, as a real estate agent, I had to deal with the many new skilled migrants coming from China.

I am sharing here my experience in the learning curve to help all my English-speaking friends to master the Mandarin language to a point where they can engage in a meaningful conversation with their neighbours and friends from China.

I am still picking up Mandarin words and phrases from YouTube to this day.

 

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For the start, my advice to all English-speaking friends is to stop trying to learn the Chinese characters. This can be difficult as the Chinese characters are pictorial and they have no bearing as to how they sound. I started learning Mandarin by with master the anglicised “ping-yin” or “pin-yin” instead.

Quotation from https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php

“Hanyu Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Mandarin Chinese sounds into the Roman alphabet. It was invented in 1950s, and adopted as a standard in mainland China in 1958. Pinyin is used for several purposes, such as teaching Chinese, transcribing names and places into the Roman alphabet, and used as an input method for typing Chinese characters.

“Pinyin is not the only system devised to transcribe Chinese sounds into roman letters. An older system called Wade-Giles was used in the first half of the 20th century, and it has left its mark on the English language. For instance, 功夫 is romanized as “kungfu” in Wade-Giles, but “gongfu” in Pinyin. Also, 北京 (the capital of China) was in the past romanized as “Peking”, but is “Beijing” in Pinyin. It is a common misconception that the city changed names, but the sound never changed, only how we spell the sound with letters.”

The first thing to understand is that the Chinese written script is monosyllabic. In other words, each character has only one sound. For instance, “I am here” is translated as “我在这里” or in pinyin “Wǒ zài zhè li” or literally ‘I am here inside’. I am using the website:

https://translate.google.com

to translate here.

This website is good in that we can tap on the voice icon to listen to how the Mandarin characters are pronounced.

 

Let us start to trace the steps required to master of the Mandarin language, using a video on a famous Chinese karaoke song to illustrate. I found this song by searching “chinese karaoke songs with lyrics” from YouTube.

https://youtu.be/-B5gAczFJps

The title of this song is “The moon represents my heart” (月亮代表了我的心 -Yuè liàng dài biǎo le wǒ de xīn) by the famous Taiwan singer Teresa Teng.

 

 

 

The next stage in our learning process is for us to think of a topic that we are interested, like the former Prime Minister of Singapore, The Honourable Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. Search for his speeches from the internet YouTube. The reason why this choice is a wise one is the fact that he learned the Mandarin Language at a later stage of his life and therefore he can become our role model.

Take a look at the Mandarin he spoke in the year 2013. This video is chosen as an example because there is an English translation at the bottom of the screen.

https://youtu.be/Y5dYTzOuGzE

Video Title: Lee Kuan Yew on the importance of bilingualism.

As we watch this video, let us pause at appropriate stages to listen to how certain English words and phrases are spoken. If appropriate, we shall use the translate.google.com to listen further and to practice.

For instance, at 0:30 of the video, there is this sentence in English (at the bottom of the screen).

“Singapore faces the difficult challenge of attaining bilingualism.”

Using translate.google.com, we got the Chinese version of this sentence (in Chinese characters):

新加坡面临着实现双语的艰巨挑战。

Then there is the pin-yin version at the bottom of the right hand box, thus:

Xīnjiāpō miàn lín zhuó shíxiàn shuāngyǔ de jiānjù tiǎozhàn.

Remembering that there is only one sound per Chinese character, we can deduce that:

新加坡 is Xin jia po = Singapore

面临着 is mian lin zhuo = faces

实现 is shi xian = reality

双语的 is shuang yu de = bilingualism

艰巨挑战 is jian ju tiao zhan = huge challenge

 

Kindly proceed to dissect the words, phrases, and sentences in the same way as the above using translate.google.com and we are on our road to succeed in mastering the Mandarin Language. As earlier advised, it may not be appropriate at the stage to think of the Chinese characters. Think only in the form of pin-yin as a starter. Mastering Chinese characters can come later, much later.

 

 

Finally, we can listen to Mr. Lee again, now in our familiar English Language and, similarly we can use translate.google.com again to help us pronounce the Chinese translations. Use the transcript icon to get the English spoken and then ‘copy and paste’ into translate.google.com

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0_WPUxlvu8

Topic: “GE 2006: Dialogue with LKY - Part 1/4”

 

 

Transcript at 00:58 to 01:13 -

 

for Singapore today well if we didn’t

 

Jīntiān duìyú xīnjiāpō lái shuō, rúguǒ wǒmen méiyǒu

00:58
Yǒu xuǎnjǔ hé guóhuì yìyuán hé bùzhǎng bàn
01:03
Nàme bùbì zài xù yuē
01:09
Nǐ huì dédào mǎnzú hé nǐ
01:13
Biàn dé xūruò, nǐ biàn dé fǔbài