I started learning Chinese using Colloquial Chinese by Kan Qian. This seemed like a good idea to me, as it is how I would have approached any other language to date.

However, the languages I have dealt with up until now have been Indo-European and have used the Roman / Latin alphabet. Although I have made some small progress in Chinese using the book, I think that I need to start with absolute basics.

I plan to simply learn some everyday words in isolation without placing them in a sentence. I can then focus on how words are made up, before moving on to how Chinese sentences are made up.

I feel that although I can continue the way I am going by learning it all at the same time, I will ultimately have ended up doing a half-assed job.

So, I’m going to be more thorough and meticulous in my study as any confidence I have in learning closely related languages to English will disappear fairly rapidly once I am out of my depth with wholly dissimilar languages.