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Master Mandarin Fast: A Simple, Effective Method Using Duolingo, Anki, and Essential Vocabulary

Are you ready to start learning Mandarin but feeling overwhelmed by where to begin? Don’t worry—I’ve got you covered! After experimenting with various methods, I’ve developed a straightforward and efficient approach that combines the power of Duolingo, Anki, and essential vocabulary to help you start speaking and understanding Mandarin quickly. Here’s how it works and why it’s effective: 1. Why Start with Duolingo? Duolingo is a fantastic tool for beginners. It’s free, easy to use, and provides a structured way to learn basic vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures. The gamified approach keeps you motivated, and the bite-sized lessons make it easy to fit learning into your daily routine. While Duolingo alone won’t make you fluent, it’s an excellent starting point to build a foundation in Mandarin. 2. Supercharge Your Learning with Anki Once you’ve started learning with Duolingo, the next step is to reinforce and retain what you’ve learned. This is where Anki comes in. Anki is ...
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Learning Chinese/Mandarin with subtitles - day 1

Today was my first day in Learning  Mandarin with subtitles. As I explained it before, I've decided to study first the movie To Live - 活着 (huózhe). 
Today I could study 20 cards, and I decomposed each character, what I'm going to do with most of the cards.

The sentences seemed hard to me as I didn't analyze any subtitles line, so I found many long sentences which should be divide into two or more lines. But the idea is to practice, and not to spend too much time editing, so I'll deal with it as it is.

Example of one sentence in my 或者 Deck:

我[说]龙二，你 [这个] 皮影班主怎么弄的？
(wǒ shuō lóng èr, nǐ zhège pí yǐng bānzhǔ zěnme nòng de?)

But on my ears, it seems like the character Fugui only says: 我龙二，你皮影皮影班主怎么浓的

And my notes about the sentence was:

我[说]龙二 
我 [wŏ] = I 
说 [shuō] = speak, say
龙二 [lóng èr] = Long'er [Dragon II] 
"I say Long'er"
你[这个]皮影班主怎么弄的？
你 [nĭ] = you
这个 [zhège] = this; this one
皮影 [píyĭng] = marionetes 
皮影 [pí] = leather, sking
影 [yĭng] = picture; image; film; movie; photograph; reflection; shadow; trace
班主 [bānzhŭ] = leader of a theatrical troupe
怎么 [zĕme] = how?; what?; why?
弄 [nòng] = manage, deal with
的 [de] = possissive particle
Something like: how did you get this leader of shadow's marionette?


For that reason, I took so long to finish the twenty cards, and I needed, of course, to look for them on Yellow Bridge dictionary

One interesting point I notice is that I just start to intuitively understand some grammar points. Of course, I know a wee little thing in Mandarin because I've just read four units of The Assimil Course. But nothing near to able to understand without any deep analysis of the sentence.

Let's see if tomorrow I'll be able to understand some of these cards I saw today. An important note is to keep that I am not trying to repeat (speak) the dialogues (this is one thing I will first practice with some pronunciation deck, learning all those tones and pinyin). The goal is just to listen and "guess" what the man is saying.
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