8 Tips for Learning Mandarin Chinese
MY ETHNICALLY CHINESE FAMILY spoke neither Mandarin nor Cantonese at home, and I grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, with English as my first language. But when I was seven, my parents suddenly felt guilty their daughter had only an English tongue. I started weekly Mandarin Chinese lessons. All the other kids in class had been exposed to the language from infanthood, and just two hours of Mandarin instruction per week in my otherwise English-language existence was ineffective. Despite my best intentions, I ended up dropping out in the fifth grade.