Is it possible to learn Chinese without teachers?

Chinese is a group of language varieties that form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages. About 1.2 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world’s population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.The multiple spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language due to their lack of mutual intelligibility. 

To be able to effectively discuss the topic of today:  “Is it possible to learn Chinese without teachers let’s go ahead and define a few things such as the Chinese script, the Chinese word pronunciation, the tones used in speech, the importance of sound, and define Fluency and its levels.

Chinese Script

Chinese characters are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. They are known as kanji.The beginning of these characters was at least 3000 years ago, making them one of the oldest writing systems in the world that is still used today.

which are written symbols that represent words instead of sounds. Most earlier Chinese characters were pictographs, which are simple pictures used to mean some kind of thing or idea. Today, very few modern Chinese characters are pure pictographs, but are a combination of two or more simple characters, also known as radicals. While many radicals and characters show a word’s meaning, some give hints of the word’s pronunciation instead.The Chinese script includes pictograph,simple or complex ideogram, Phonetic loan characters, Semantic-phonetic compounds, Transformed cognates, and more.

Chinese word pronunciation 

The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant, or consonant+glide; zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. Most syllables tend to be open syllables in Mandarin, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, the retroflex approximant /ɻ /, and voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/, or /ʔ/. Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others are limited to only /n/, /ŋ/ and /ɻ /. The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but not as many as in the Middle Chinese.

Tones in speech

All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. While a few dialects of may have as few as three tones, some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. An exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch-accent system! 

The importance of sound

Language is learned through exposure to sounds. An infant picks up words he/she hears in their environment spoken by many people. Language development is chiefly dependent on ones listening skills’. And in turn, listening skills influence a person’s ability to read, write and improves their social skills and interactions.

Fluency and its levels defined

Fluency in French is a need-based personal opinion. Language proficiency or linguistic proficiency is the ability of an individual to speak or perform in a language. For some being able to hold an understandable basic conversation with their business clients or friends could mean fluency, for others, however, it could mean being able to manoeuvre their way around while travelling, or an advanced skill level that allows you to engage in meaningful conversations, and for the others fluency could we actually talk like a native French speaker. Whatever be your personal parameter or need, it is important to note that there are different levels of fluency available. Following are the fluency levels 

• Beginner (A1) is essential “tourist Language”
• Advanced Beginner (A2) is pretty much where college “Reading a Language for Graduate Students”
• Intermediate Speaker (B1)
• Advanced Speaker(B2)
• Advanced speakers of French can 
• Expert Speaker (C1)
• Language Mastery(C2)

We all know, that to learn a new skill, the first thing you need is to set a realistic goal for yourself, – define what you want and how early you need it, besides a compelling intent, an unshakeable determination and the willingness to go beyond the ordinary to accomplish your goals, coupled with determination, commitment and smart efforts channelised straight to the target goal.

While simply speaking a language shows the knowledge of a particular language but speaking a language fluently shows perfection. At the same time, listening to an indecipherable stream of words isn’t much help either: it’s frustrating and you don’t learn much as you can’t follow! Without a teacher, it’s difficult to know if you’re focusing on the right stuff. But here’s the thing: teachers don’t know what’s best for you either.

What makes Chinese easy is the fact that it has no tenses, no cases, no genders and simple grammar. In terms of grammatical complexity, Chinese is really one of the easiest languages there is to learn. It does not feature complicated constructs like cases and genders and treats tenses in a very simplistic way. Furthermore, unlike other East Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese, the language is free from complicated honorific grammar. With respect to tones, while important, they are not necessarily critical to understanding. In actual fact, Chinese people tend to use context more than tone to understand what you are talking about in any given sentence.

When you consider how long learners of other languages focus on verb conjugation and genders, you will begin to understand that this is an area where Chinese learners can rapidly outpace learners of other languages. Even the difficulty of characters and tones is exaggerated about Mandarin Chinese. People will often dismiss Chinese by saying weird things, however, the truth is that characters are not random pictures, but a reasonably organized system of radicals and phonetic elements that isn’t too hard to understand. In addition, a learner really only needs to know 2000-3000 characters to have a reasonable degree of fluency.

In fact, you would never be able to speak like a native Chinese if you follow all the grammatical rules!! Most Native Chinese are unaware of most grammatical rules!

Now comes the most interesting part you have dived head-on into learning Chinese, on your own. You have all the resources available online and you can go ahead with media-assisted learning techniques are a huge help when it comes to learning Chinese. You go online to search for answers to learn from for real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and train with personalized language learning lessons. Basically everything and anything that can give you lots and lots of listening practice. You will probably repeat after the dialogues enough number of times to get the pronunciation right, the accent right. You have now got the accent right, you are not quite well aware of how to pronounce these words. You will go online you will find some online pre-recorded sessions for some sort of online apps or any other online resources which can help you which actually claim to help you read Chinese and learn it. You will go ahead make an effort to try to do that, however, that is exactly where you get stumped and mind you, that’s not the only area you will get stumped, reading is as important as listening, speaking or writing!

Digital dictionary programs like Pleco and brilliant character-learning programs such as Memrise and Anki will indeed give you an edge in your learning to an extent and prove useful, only if you are being trained by a teacher in the mainstream. Online resources are only supportive resources. They cannot be used as mainstream training. If you do not get a chance to talk with a native speaker who can correct you or a teacher who can actually pinpoint your key improvement areas then you will never be able to learn to talk fluently, read or write the Chinese alphabets and then it’s basically a lost game despite your efforts! Language learning is not just about speaking it language learning is also about reading at writing at speaking it and training your ear for it! 

• Learning Chinese on your own is definitely possible, but it depends on what you mean by “on my own.” If, for you, this means “without a formal teacher/tutor,” then yes, it’s more difficult but still reasonable.
• If “learning Chinese on my own” means “without any Chinese friends,” then it’s very unlikely.
• Learning Chinese Without Chinese Friends Is a dictionary, a textbook, and a mobile phone app enough? They’ll be extremely helpful, but probably not sufficient to help you achieve fluency. When you attempt to create your own sentences in Chinese, who will confirm if they’re correct or not?

Thus, there is a 100% possibility/probability that YES is the answer to your question; but remember the road to learning is going to test your patience, motivation, and commitment. Learning through listening also isn’t a foolproof technique if you want to pick up Chinese while we are all grown up because, you have lost the “language learning” brain cells you had as kids, so in my suggestion, you’d better learn from a teacher. And it would be so stupid not to make use of their knowledge.

In the end, I only wish to say that while you may be able to pick up the Chinese accent from repeating after dialogues by just watching online movies, hearing audiobooks, watching TV shows, talk shows, video blogs, you must understand you may never be able to master reading and writing!  Those two areas important aspects as speaking and hearing. Chinese script Kanji is not a very friendly script that you can learn on your own first of all and even though it has been simplified it still remains a challenge for a non-Chinese learner to get it right. In the event your goal is to learn only business Chinese to talk to your clients or learn for the sake of travelling to Chinese countries then you may not really require any reading or writing skills or trainer. However, the moment you need to read a word or write anything in Chinese you will need to have an expert or a trainer to teach you the tricks of the trade. In short, what we are saying is it is not impossible to learn Chinese but it is not possible to master it either on your own. If you want to learn Chinese to a level of fluency then you certainly need to have a trainer for a teacher train you.

Obviously, having an experienced Chinese teacher is monumentally beneficial, especially if you’re a beginner. They’ve studied the best methods for teaching those learning Chinese as a second language, and are better equipped to answer your questions. They’ll also be more adept in grading their language in a way that you can understand.

And while a Chinese person may want to practice speaking your native tongue with you, a teacher will be willing to speak with you completely in Chinese.

If learning Chinese is important to you, don’t be afraid to invest in a good teacher!