I’ve been thinking about learning Chinese for a while now, which is why I’ve been learning the characters on zhongwen.com. But rather than wait until I’m done with that site to start learning things I could use today, I could, well, start today.
But where to start…
The experiment!
As the title of the post suggests, I am going to learn Mandarin Chinese without the use of Pinyin.
Why without pinyin?
Mainly because I think it’s easier to learn a new set of characters (like Zhuyin) than to associate weird new sounds to letters I already know.
The Other Side of the Experiment!
Another thing I am focusing on for learning Chinese is emphasizing audio-based learning. Lots of listening and speaking. Yes, that’s right. Speaking “before I’m ready”. Mostly repeating words and short phrases, but I think it is working and I will write a follow-up post about my progress with this audio approach.
Any tools or products I use will be listed in the ever-expanding Chinese resources page.
I just wanted to write a short intro to show everyone a small portion of what I’ve been up to.
Have any tips, comments, warnings, questions? Disagree with my approach? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment below.
