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I want to learn Chinese

ic, that explains the multiple measures because not everybody loves japan... ok less than 720 mins to go...
 
I've decided that I would like to learn mandarin, I just took a look at the wikipedia page as an introduction.

simply put the tones scare me, any recommendations for learning them?

on a side note : kraystone, I read your comic blog, it is pretty cool.
 
Lots and lots of listening. It's especially helpful if you have text to go with the speech.
 
I see, for those of you who can speak Chinese, how long did it take for the tones to become second nature (assuming they do eventually).

Edit:
Also, I am currently learning Japanese. Am I crazy for trying to take them both on at the same time?
 
I'd wait until I were comfortable with Japanese first, or just do Chinese for now. Either way, I think doing them both at the same time mostly from the beginning wouldn't be too helpful. My Japanese is fairly advanced, but I have problems remembering readings of characters every now and then because of having focused on them in Chinese so much, and sometimes I'll be reading a Japanese text and read a word in Chinese just because I'm used to it. So pick one, do it well, then move to the other one would be my advice.
 
Ok, thank you. My fear was that learning the same character as bot kanji and hanzi at the same time would get confusing. so I will continue will Japanese for now.
 
well, good for you. Learning Chinese is difficult. You can go to tieba.baidu.com. Los of Chinese posts.
 
I read a few days ago in a newspaper that Goran Malmkvist, member of the Swedish Academy who selects the nobel literature prize, and who has been a professor in chinese since 1959, said:
"chinese is an easy language, there's no tenses, just the syntax and the words are like ready made bricks you have to fit into the exact right place in a sentence. This however is all the more important".

Was his description accurate?

I think that japanese in comparison, rather than consisting of ready made bricks, is like an old castle where layer upon layer has been added in different building materials and using different techniques.
 
@Macrobiotic: Hi I'm currently studying Chinese as my major. And so far, in term of tenses, Chinese IS a lot easier than Japanese. You could simply put the words in places and you can already converse in Chinese, unlike Japanese which needs you to memorize all the -ke.
 
my native language also English.... but trying to learn Chinese because of my girlfriend.
 
I am come from hong kong . I know traditional chinese and poor english .
 
Hello, I'm Chinese. If you want to learn Chinese, I think you should go to China. Chinese is a beautiful language. You will fall in love with Chinese culture and cuisine.
 
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