Learn to speak and read Mandarin/Chinese quickly?
Thought I throw this out there to the HK/China-based WSO monkeys...
I'd like to pick up Mandarin and be able to read (and hopefully write) Chinese - to be functional enough for finance at the junior levels. As of right now, I can read some basic words here and there (traditional Chinese), but not enough to read a newspaper. I can also speak Cantonese (intermediate but not business/native level).
I'd like to get a rough gauge on how long you think this would take (I'm guessing 1-3 years?). And also some suggestions on effective ways to study. I know Rosetta Stone has been used successfully for other languages - but is it any good for Chinese?
I feel like it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing - to retain a difficult language, I need to be in Asia to use it daily, but I can't get there till I learn Chinese...





http://www.alljapaneseallthet
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/
Do what this guy did.
to be able to speak fluently
to be able to speak fluently to the point where natives dont look at you and just laugh..probably 1 year of nonstop conversations in Mandarin
to be able to read any newspaper fluently and understand the cultural/slang/humors- probably 2 years on top of it
to be able to write...good luck, a lot chinese natives can't even write every word. I forgot how to write long time ago even though I live in Asia for more than a decade. To be able to type mandarin on computer though, is much easier...
tylderdurden
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/
Do what this guy did.
Great site - this guy invested a serious amount of time a day though (18+ hrs, albeit to fun stuff like comics and anime) and was a student.
I have noticed that I pick up words fairly well following along for Mandarin karaoke. Retention of Chinese is a bitch though.