Learning Mandarin in 4 Weeks
In just under 4 weeks I will be moving to Taiwan to teach for a year. I have never spoken any Mandarin in my life. I'm going to start with this chart from DigMandarin: It teaches the tones associated with pinyin characters. I'm hoping I can use my other languages skills to make this process easier. I speak intermediate Spanish (which I've primarily taught myself, along with immersion), and I have studied French and Italian. I was also taught to reach Hebrew as a child, but I only recognize words I use to read the Torah. I think my knowledge of Hebrew will make it easier for me to grasp the concept of using characters and transcribing them to pinyin (an alphabet that looks like english but isn't pronounced as English speakers pronounce it). I am waiting on the official contract from my school. I will have set travel alerts for cheap flights on all my favorite ticketing sites (JustFly.com, Momondo.com, Kayak.com, and flights.google.com). In the next month I...