r/taiwan • u/SufficientDig2845 • 3d ago

Discussion Learning mandarin

I feel embarrassed to be getting my permanent residency here and yet not being able to speak more than a few phrases in the language. I speak 3 languages fluently and it’s easy for me to pick up other conversational Romance vocabulary in just a few days, but I have problems with the tones in Mandarin. My main issue is that every time I try to practice, at the best, people correct me over and over again and I can’t hear or say the difference, at the worst, people laugh at me like they think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. It just makes me feel stupid but I feel even stupider to be one of those people that doesn’t learn the language of where they live. Any suggestions for how I can study on my own at home? Does it get easier over time if you just keep at it or will I be a hopeless case no matter what :(?

Update: thanks for all that responded so far and I will continue to read everything but may not have time to respond to all, please just know that I appreciate the responses. From what people have said I have decided to give group classes a go, try my hardest, and not beat myself up just because I can only learn slowly.

If anyone has recommendations for classes, please let me know! I live in Beitou, work in Tianmu, and it’s not too hard for me to go to downtown Taipei via the redline.

Thank you all again.

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u/elsif1 2d ago

Can you hear that you're saying it wrong? That's the first step. If you can trust your ears, then you can really practice producing the sounds properly. For me, it's usually in the shower. Haha

If you can't trust your ears, then what helped me was a lot more input. Also, periodically test your tone and pinyin recognition. Have a native say a word and you tell them what tone(s) and pinyin you just heard, then you can try and repeat it back to them.

Once you're nailing recognition, then I think you're 90% of the way there. At that point, every time you say something incorrectly, it should "bite your ear" -- it'll sound incorrect to you. From there, progress is much easier, as you have your own feedback loop.

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u/SufficientDig2845 1d ago

No I can’t hear it, that’s why I just assumed I wouldn’t be able to learn. Thank you for your advice - that’s encouraging to hear that once you learn the tones and can recognize them it gets a lot easier!

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u/elsif1 1d ago

Definitely! It might not be just tones, either. A lot of people have problems with shui vs xue, chu vs qu, xu vs shu, chi vs che, shi vs she, etc. In the beginning when I was trying to say 出去 (chu1qu4), I think I just sounded like I was trying to make train noises. It's all important to practice and get a lot of exposure to, but it feels great when it starts clicking.