

Best way to learn Chinese ( Mandarin ) - cggaurav

Can anyone suggest the cheapest and the quickest way to start learning conversational Chinese online?
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gexla
I suggest Chinesepod. The service is relatively cheap, there are a ton of
resources for learning there and the podcasts are generally much more
interesting than Pimsleur and other methods. I signed up for Chinesepod a
little bit before I took a college class for Mandarin and I believed
Chinesepod to be better for learning the vocab and characters. The college
class was obviously better for pronunciation and real conversation because we
had a great instructor and podcasts don't give feedback. You could supplement
Chinesepod with remote conversations and tutors though. I believe they also
have a network for this sort of thing. It's the cheapest option I know of.

If you have no funds at all, then you could probably find people willing to
have conversation with you for free through the net and teach you some things
in exchange for you offering the same with English.

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boyter
+1 For the recommendation of Chinesepod. Dimsum
<http://www.mandarintools.com/dimsum.html> is pretty good for translation and
the like. The other thing to do is install QQ and talk to Chinese students and
the like.

Honestly though, the cheapest way would be get a job in China, get yourself a
Chinese girlfriend/boyfriend and don't hang out with expats. Pick somewhere
other then Shanghai or Beijing, (Haerbin is a good choice) and immerse
yourself in the culture. Also you need to accept you wont be fluent unless you
do this for 5 years+

Why cheapest? Well its pretty cheap to live in China. You spend more money in
any western country living then you would in a smaller city in China, and you
can dedicate yourself to learning the language.

