Chinese language

Does anyone here speak it?

Yes,
Cantonese(mother tongue)
Japanese(advanced diploma)
English(I'll try my best)
so?

Aside from Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, and ChinesePod, what are your suggestions for best grasping the language? Or are those the only three that I need? (Zhongwen.com for writing, of course.) I am trying to learn Mandarin. I know a little bit, enough to survive, but I want to expand my horizons. Maybe I'm missing something important?

>>3
make a Chinese friend.
http://www.friendsabroad.com

get as much practice with a native as you can.
but Chinese people tend to um... lie. well its more like they will tell you what you want to hear. Its a politeness thing i think.
Basically they will tell you that you are doing good, when you actually suck, so you need to read between the lines a bit.

>>4
Duh. Even if it's true and painfully obvious, anyone with at least a bit of social sense won't just say "Oh God you suck so fucking much" right to someone's face in any culture.

>>5
Yeah, of course only an asshole would say it like that, but - assuming of course I'm not dealing with a Chinese person or whatever - if I suck at something I want to get better at I expect to be told so, and if I was working with someone who sucked I would tell them what they're failing at so they could improve. I'm pretty sure most people I know feel the same.

>>5
different places have different mind sets. some cultures would be frightfully honest because they want to help you.

>>7
And what cultures might these be?

>>8
answer this question

>>8
well im Croatian. ill let you know when you fuck up. I will try and phrases it kindly. It would be useless to lie to you.

Arabs, especially the women, are very abrupt, by European standards, but they are also just trying to help.

my point was that, Chinese tend not to tell you these things, and will be like "good work!, keep it up" even is say you pronounce hou4 as hou2 or something. they are just trying to encourage you, but it becomes annoying somethings.

>>10

没错。 中国人想鼓励你学汉语，所以他们一般不是很诚实...

>>11
translation for everyone
   
That's right. Chinese people would like to encourage you to learn Chinese, they are generally not very honest

sage

>>13
doesn't know how to sage

>>14
Should age more