pandandesign Posted January 2, 2014 Report Share Posted January 2, 2014 I have started learning Chinese when I was 3 years old, which I would have a textbook as a reference because it taught me basic characters in Chinese. When I first learned Chinese, I would learn the Pinying, which helped me to pronounce some of the Chinese characters before I started to learn how to write them. Pinying has a four different levels of tones, which also depends on which word associated with it. What's the first thing you should start to learn Chinese? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baburra Posted January 2, 2014 Report Share Posted January 2, 2014 I agree. I had a similar experience, and we were taught the Chinese alphabet initially too before moving on to the words both written and spoken. I think it's the best way to start, since if you already know the alphabet then you can just learn on your own from there from books that put the alphabet next to the corresponding word so you'll know how it's read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linguaholic Posted January 2, 2014 Report Share Posted January 2, 2014 I would just like to point out here that there is of course no Chinese alphabet. Please be careful with your terminology. Baburra is referring to the same thing as pandandesign, namely Pinyin. Please note that is spelled Pinyin and not Pinying. Pinyin (拼音） is the official phonetic system for transcribing the sound of Chinese characters into Latin script, and as the others have pointed out here, it is indeed a helpful "device" (mainly for foreigners) to learn the language. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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