I’ll be travelling to Beijing in just under two weeks time. As I’ll be there for a week and meeting with lots of different people I would like to learn the (very!) basics before I go. Does anyone know of any good (and free) audio resources for Mandarin please?
Diolch!
Not strictly free (first few lessons are free, the rest are $15 every 45 days), but they use a method pretty similar to that of SSI, if memory serves, and they seemed decent to my highly questionable judgement ;). Other than that, there’s always the foreign service institute stuff.
I thought this was going to say ‘I’ll be travelling to Beijing in just under two weeks time - can you get SaySomethinginMandarin ready today, please?’…
Heledd: Allet ti awgrymu 'falle rhyw brawddegau defnyddiol? 
Huw
Aran - I thought this was going to say ‘I’ll be travelling to Beijing in just under two weeks time - can you get SaySomethinginMandarin ready today, please?’…
I did contemplate it, for all of 5 seconds, but I thought I’d be nice tonight 
@hectorgrey - thanks for the link. While the style of Chineselearnonline is SSIW - esque, it doesn’t have the intensity of SSIW for drilling the phrases into your brain. The free lessons should give me enough to say “Hello”, “thank you”, etc which is all I really need.
I used FSI’s Chinese Basic Course – http://fsi-language-courses.org – , which is free and comprehensive but probably a bit overkill for what you want. I would try to see if your library has the Michel Thomas Chinese course available, you could easily finish it within 2 weeks and it’d give you at least some basics. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to know, i’d be glad to help out. You can also listen to podcasts at Chinese Pod, the beginner/elementary lessons contain lots of useful touristy phrases. I can’t remember if you have to pay for them now, i think you might get a week or two free to listen to and download the podcasts.
Here are some simple phrases:
你好！ - ni2 hao3 - hello!
你怎么样？ - zen3 me5 yang4 - how are things?
谢谢 - xie4 xie4 - thanks!
我要… - wo3 yao4 - I want…
我不要… - wo3 bu2 yao4 - I don’t want…
这个 - zhe4 ge5 - this (one)
那个 - na4 ge5 - that (one)
不用了，谢谢 - bu2 yong4 le5, xie4 xie4 - that’s ok (don’t worry about it, it’s not necessary), thanks
太贵了，可以便宜点儿？ - tai4 gui4 le5, ke2 yi3 pian2 yi5 dianr3 - that’s too expensive, can you lower the price any?
对 - dui4 - right, yes
不 - bu4 - no
The numbers after the letters are the tones. The first tone (1) is a high steady tone, 2 is a rising tone (as if asking a question), 3 is a low tone that lowers then rises, 4 is a strong falling tone, and 5 is a neutral tone that isn’t pronounced as strongly.
Do you have any plans to continue studying Chinese after you get back? It seems a bit overwhelming at first but is surprisingly similar to English in its structure and word order.
Thanks Ricardo. The FSI course looks a bit daunting at first glance, but I’m sure it would be useful if I decide to learn conversational Chinese. Most of this trip will be business with interpreters available, but I want to learn the basics to be polite. I may be spending another week in a different part of China in the Autumn and if I’ll be going to China regularly then I may consider learning the language further.
Ah, well if it’s for business it might not be as casual. One phrase you might find useful is 请问，您姓什么？ (qing3 wen4, nin2 xing4 shen2 me5? - May I ask what your name is?), even though you might not understand what their name is. In Chinese, the family name comes first and the given name, usually one character, comes second. If someone’s name is 王 (wang2), you might refer to them as 王先生 (wang2 xian1 sheng5), kinda like Mr. Wang, literally Wang Mr.
People will also probably ask you where you’re from (你是哪国人/你来自哪里/你是哪里的/etc., there are a ton of ways to ask this). You can answer 我是英国人 (wo3 shi4 ying1 guo2 ren2 - I’m English) or perhaps 我是威尔士人 (wo3 shi4 wei1 er3 shi4 ren2 - I am Welsh) If you don’t know what someone asked you, it’s probably “Where are you from?” When i was in China i just instinctively answered that question whenever someone started talking to me and it seemed to serve me pretty well.
Ah, and one last important phrase is 不好意思，我听不懂！(bu4 hao3 yi4 si5, wo3 ting1 bu4 dong3 - I’m sorry, i don’t understand)
Anyway, i hope you have a nice time there. For some useful phrases and things, i think podcasts are really the way to go. The Michel Thomas course, if you can find it at your library, would also be pretty useful and doesn’t take that long to go through.
Hi Sarah
If you want a course that is similar to SSIW then I recommend
http://www.languagepod101.com/
I learnt Mandarin at school and I think this is a pretty interesting and fun course. This should cover all the basics and is an easy downloadable format. Not sure at what point it stops being free though, but there is a trial period which should be long enough for you to get some basics. As for your concern about intensity of learning, not sure you’ll find any course out there with the SSIW intensity, which is why I rate this course so much.
Ricardo -
I See FSI is back up and running - and free - again. I used FSI many years ago to learn some Swedish and also brush up my German, but then it disappeared, and when it came back it wasn’t free any more, but had a charge to download it, or so I was told. Now it seems to have popped back up and is free again. The courses are very comprehensive but they do not use the repetitive format like SSIW and I just didn’t learn as much with them.
Ricardo wrote: 你怎么样？ - zen3 me5 yang4 - how are things?
You’ve got a ni3 at the start there which isn’t in the transcription
Anyway, for my 2p’s worth - fascinating though characters are, I think they’re definitely out of scope if you just want to get by for a week. Listening and repeating SSi-style is obviously the way to go, and I found Pimsleur good for that.
And if you do find written notes useful for remembering, I’d definitely recommend ditching the crazy tone numbers and go for the diacritic style of pinyin - e.g. I’m sure everyone can agree that nǐ zěnme yàng? is far more readable than ni3 zen3 me5 yang4, and the shape of the accents give a clear hint as to the “shape” of the tone.
You should be careful with the 101 sites though - they spam your email inbox quite heavily, and they constantly hassle you for money.
Kinetic - Anyway, for my 2p’s worth - fascinating though characters are, I think they’re definitely out of scope if you just want to get by for a week. Listening and repeating SSi-style is obviously the way to go, and I found Pimsleur good for that.
And if you do find written notes useful for remembering, I’d definitely recommend ditching the crazy tone numbers and go for the diacritic style of pinyin - e.g. I’m sure everyone can agree that nǐ zěnme yàng? is far more readable than ni3 zen3 me5 yang4, and the shape of the accents give a clear hint as to the “shape” of the tone.
Thanks Ifan, from the suggestions here, the first seems to fit what I’m looking for. The Chineselearnonline course uses pinyin notation and that makes more sense to me than using the tone notation. As fascinating as written Chinese is, that’s something for a rainy day 
I’ll have a cheat sheet with written information in case I get lost, but its looking like a week of pre-organised business meetings and dinners!
You’re right Hector - my advice would be to sign up with an auxiliary email account you can ditch after you’ve downloaded the lessons. It’s the closest to SSIW I have found, having said that.