Learning Mandarin

Pedro S. Silva II learned Chinese through self-study after being assigned to learn the language in the military. He found Chinese difficult at first due to large differences from English in the writing system, pronunciation, and culture. However, he was able to learn by focusing first on sounds, pronunciation, characters and culture without worrying about meanings. He would listen to tapes, read aloud, and copy characters to familiarize himself with the language. Eventually he was able to recognize words without translation. Chinese characters are composed of radicals and follow a stroke order, like puzzles, which helped him learn the over 30,000 characters.