How to learn Chinese on my own efficiently?

China is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. The most common language in China is Standard Chinese, that is known by several names, simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ[b] or also 中文; Zhōngwén, especially for the written language. Most linguists classify all of the variations of spoken Chinese that form the Sinitic branch as the Sino-Tibetan language family(spoken by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China) and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. The relationship between Chinese and the other Sino-Tibetan languages is still unclear and an area of active research, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that there is no written documentation concerning the division between proto-Sino-Tibetan and Chinese. In addition, many of the languages that would allow the reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan are very poorly documented or understood.

About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world’s population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.

It is a language rooted in central Mandarin, however, the total amount of languages spoken in China is 302, according to the last Ethnologue survey. This is also the national language.

71% of Chinese speak a variety of Mandarin also call “Putonghua”(Also adopted as a second language by those who speak other Chinese dialects), which is close to being a lingua franca in the Mandarin-speaking parts of China(Northern China, in Sichuan, and, actually, in a broad arc from the northeast (Manchuria) to the southwest (Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their native language, as well as the rest of the mainland, though less so. The mountains and rivers of southern China may have promoted linguistic diversity. While the prevalence of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely the result of geography, namely the plains of north China, the presence of Mandarin in Sichuan is largely due to a plague in the 12th century, which may have been related to the Black Death, depopulating the area, leading to later settlement from north China. There are more than 70 million people belonging to 55 different national minorities living in China, and while each minority has its own spoken language, many minority groups do not have any distinguishable written form for their languages.

Listen to Chinese as much as possible. The first month or maybe two, just focus on listening, any audio material you can lay your hands on!

Start out with realistic goals for yourself. Assess the amount of time you will be able to invest genuinely and do not try to go overboard by learning the toughest of the tough content because that will only deter and discourage you from learning further.

Identify the learning method that works best for you There are multiple ways people have been successfully learning but all such techniques are not suitable for everyone and may not work for you. Therefore I suggest you identify that unique method through which you can learn faster and better.

Try the Pomodoro technique of learning, to train yourself. Invest 45 minutes for about 3 to 4 times a day, everyday, rather than learning at a stretch of four to five hours over the weekends.

focusing on listening. Just get used to the sounds. 

Watch Chinese movies, Talk Shows, and TV shows to get lots of Chinese content to listen to. Watch English movies with Chinese subtitles and Chinese movies in English subtitles.

Read whatever you are listening to, using a phonetic writing system, such as Pinyin, in order to get a better sense of what you are hearing. You will have to learn the characters eventually but you can leave the characters out initially. Instead, try to get a little momentum in the language.

Train your ear. Get accustomed to the individual sounds of the language, to learn to differentiate words from each other, and even have a few words and phrases reverberating in your brain.

Podcasts and audiobooks are great resources. Use them to fill your spare time effectively, waiting in a queue, walking your dog, working out in the gym, washing your car and so on and so forth.

Use apps like Memrise and Anki that use a Spaced Repetition System to help you learn faster and improve your day-to-day spoken words in vocabulary so as to empower you to start small conversations to express yourself. You could choose to learn from the existing decks or create your own fresh decks.

Learn Chinese characters diligently You may need to put more than usual effort to learn thus one, but trust me, it is worth every effort!

Use LingQ The Mandarin Chinese mini-stories at LingQ is an example of the kind of point of view stories, with a great deal of repetition of high-frequency verbs, that are available today. These were not available to me 50 years ago. 

Recognize and focus on patterns rather than grammar rules. It is recommended that the learners of the Chinese language focus on patterns, write them out, speak them aloud to themselves when speaking or writing, and identify them when listening and reading. Learners are warned against getting caught up in complicated grammar and suggested focusing on patterns. 

Read a lot. From books to articles to newspapers andy thing available to you. Books such as Intermediate Reader in Modern Chinese, Harriet Mills and P.S. Ni or 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture. It could help you improve your learning.

Use a free grammar resource to help supplement your learning. To aid to Chinese learning learners could look at LingQ’s Chinese grammar resource.

Use Alec Tronic or online Chinese dictionaries to look up for words you don’t understand

Get good video/audio resources that speak slow or exaggerate intonations

Readers found listening to traditional Chinese comic dialogues, such as Xiang Sheng, 相声, a great way to get the hang of the language and its tones. One of the challenges of Mandarin is the tones. You learn the tone of each character as you acquire new vocabulary, but it is difficult to remember these when speaking. It is important to internalize the tones as part of phrases. Listening helps you do this. You can’t learn it theoretically.

Speak a lot to your pet, to plants, your teacher, conversation partner and don’t get deterred. The individual sounds of Mandarin are not difficult for an English speaker but getting the tones right is a challenge. Don’t bother about tones to begin with, just get the hang of a fluent flow(with/without mistakes) to converse.

Use the Shadowing technique to practise. Practice imitating what you are listening to. Find texts for which you have the audio. Listen to a phrase or sentence, then try to imitate the intonation, without worrying too much about individual sounds. You may even want to record yourself to compare. Don’t bother about mastering pronunciation right from the beginning. We cannot pronounce what we don’t hear, nor imitate sounds and intonation that don’t resonate with us. In order to build up the ability to hear the language, we need to listen to multiple resources over and over again. You can’t rush this process. Instead, trust the fact that you will gradually and naturally get better. 

These tips are great and easy to follow. Chinese characters and language do have patterns, and keeping an eye out for it will help you understand your language learning better. Reading a lot will also boost your learning in so many ways, as the more you are exposed to the language, the better your brain will receive it. The Chinese language is not as hard as it looks. Agreed the huge vocabulary is intimidating, but there are several techniques and concepts to master the language quickly and easily. Look for patterns that the Chinese use to express things rather than mugging up and destroying your spirit of learning by slowing it through focussing on learning through grammar! Yes, Chinese sentences have less flexibility in structure and the grammar is uncomplicated and easy. Once you learn a verb you can use it and the sentence pattern is the same. For example Yesterday, I read. Today, I read, Tomorrow, I read. One cannot put yesterday after eat but it is easier to learn than many languages as you just learn patterns and then fill in the blanks.

There are also no declensions, conjugations, genders, verb aspects, complicated tenses or other sources of confusion that are found in many European languages. 

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