Chinese

Waldgaenger

I've been wondering... What's the Chinese course like? I'm more or less set on it, i'm just curious about the pace, how much you end up learning, how many characters you're expected to learn as you go, that sort of thing. And how were your experiences learning to distinguish between the tones? I'm a little concerned about that, more so than with learning the hanzi.

eZe^

My friend is doing Chinese and Spanish. She really enjoys it, infact, her degree is taking 4 years to complete, because you spend your 3rd year over in Shanghai. She's basically completely fluent, left last August, and is returning in July. Sounded like an amazing experience, and she really enjoys her course.

Waldgaenger

Bump.

lilmissprincess

I was wondering this myself, was perusing the prospectus this morning, thinking of doing Drama and Theatre Studies with English and Chinese Studies....

Skapoot

I studied Japanese in the university of Limerick, and am thinking of doing Chinese Studies this coming year in UCC. so its going to be a bit of a change.


If theres anyone out there who studies this would you mind telling me a bit about the language.

In Japanese there is Hiragana Katakana and Kanji.

As far as i know the Chinese have Hanzi(unsure how to spell). Which is what the Japanese derived Kanji from.

Japanese was simple enough using Kana - Hiragana and Katakana. But I dont know if the Mandarin have something similar to it in order to help pronounce the Hanzi?

e.g Hiragana was used for japanese words. Katakana was used for english/foreign words. Is there any of that in the Mandarin language

Any input would be helpful thanks !!

antamadan

I think spending a year in China would do it. A friend did that and seems pretty fluent