Chinese

I have been learning Mandarin as a hobby for almost three years now. I've studied in many ways, in both Brisbane and Sydney.

Brisbane Chinese Schools

In Brisbane, I am aware of just three main schools for informally learning Chinese (i.e., excluding high-schools or university):

1. Institute of Modern Languages. The IML runs languages courses for adults. They're not very intensive since most of their clients are full-time workers who are taking the subject as a hobby but don't have too much time to study in detail. However, many of the teachers are very good, and the courses have been perfect for me.
2. Chungtian / Zhongtian Temple. The Zhongtian temple has four campuses and runs chinese courses for children of chinese speaking parents. They accept young adults in the children's classes, and I think they also offer adult courses too. The courses here are casual, but the daily exposure that the Chinese children have makes the environment quite challenging for a learner. Also, because of their Taiwanese affiliations, most of their classes use Traditional script (though, I'm in a class that uses Simplified script).
3. Miao Miao. Miao Miao is apparently the largest Chinese school in Brisbane. They run courses for children and adults (like the Zhongtian temple), but are affiliated with mainland China so they use the Simplified script. I attended one of their adult courses - the teacher and the texts were very good, however there were so few adult learners that everybody who wasn't a beginner was in a single class. This meant that everybody was at quite different levels of fluency - sometimes this made things interesting, but other times this proved to be a problem. Of coure, your experiences will vary, and I suspect that our class was quite an exception.

Sydney Chinese Schools

In Sydney, I am aware of four main ways for informally learning Chinese (i.e., excluding high-schools or university):

1. University of Sydney, Centre for Continuing Education. Based at the University of Sydney, this school runs many adult classes (everything from Egyptian Hieroglyphics to Philosophy). Their Chinese program appears to be the most popular in Sydney so there are many students and many different grades of classes. But, to be honest, I've been a little disappointed with their classes - they're good, but not quite as well run as The Language Exchange.
2. The Language Exchange. Lx is a spin-off from UTS InSearch, and the classes are run from one of UTS's buildings right in the heart of Sydney's Chinatown. I found The Language Exchange to be extremely professional, and the courses were very good. However, they only have beginner to lower intermediate level classes - you'll probably need to switch to another school after a year or two.
3. La Lingua. Conveniently located just north of the Queen Victoria Building, this is my favorite Chinese language school. They've got a nice friendly atmosphere, the classes seem well run and they cater to all skill levels.
4. Community Schools. These community schools are typically run on Saturday or Sundays, and are aimed at Chinese families who would like their children to learn Chinese. However, many of these schools also run adult classes. Take a look at the list, and Google search for the school's website. I've not yet had any personal experiences with these schools.

Chinese Language

Chinese is, so far, the language that I most enjoy learning. I don't have quite as much interest in learning romance or germanic languages because their similarity to English makes it quite easy to pick up a large vocabularly quite quickly. I'd prefer a challenge. The ideographic (or logographic) script of Chinese is so unique by comparison, and provides a huge part of my fascination in the language.

A friend, Ryan, likes to call Chinese "Lego-Language" because words can be assembled together like lego to make new words. For example, the Chinese word for "grammar" is made from the character for "language" followed by the character for "law". Similarly, the word for "computer" is made from the characters for "electric" and "brain" (by the way, an interesting article about the Crisis = Danger + Opportunity myth can be found here). Sure, English has words like "autograph" and "internet" that could be similarly broken down, but Chinese is different - when I learn Chinese it feels like I'm playing with "language lego" - compared to learning, say, French, which feels more like learning primary-school times tables and basic arithmetic again.

I guess it is a little hard to convey my interest with just a couple of paragraphs - but I think what makes Chinese so enjoyable for me is that the language simultaneously shows a great deal of logic, regularity and order, while at the same time having a very distinct human character.

If you've not studied Chinese before, and are interested in reading a bit about the language, I would recommend reading the Wikipedia articles on Chinese language and grammar, as well as the Omniglot articles on mandarin and chinese script.

Learning Chinese

My two favourite study resources for learning Chinese are as follows:

• www.zhongwen.com. Zhongwen.com is a really useful online dictionary. It has everything - searching by many intuitive methods, information on character construction, stroke order, meanings and links to other useful reference sites.
• Rosetta Stone Mandarin. RosettaStone creates interactive "immersion" language courses, they're quite expensive and unfortunately you can't buy the CDs in Australia (as far as I know - I picked it up in the USA because I couldn't find it anywhere here), but they are also very good. I probably wouldn't recommend using the CDs in isolation, but they're a fantastic way of getting additional exposure to the language. I've used cheap products that claim to do a similar thing, but none of them compared to Rosetta Stone.

Tutor Wanted

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Feedback

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