How to Start Learning Chinese with Norajoy Wilson

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Want to learn Chinese and not sure where to start? Or tried and got stuck like me and looking for more structure, well here you go!

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas holiday, i am still full from the massive amount of turkey I had ….
Survey results have been more interest in Mainland china and selling chinese factory goods globally, so I’ll work on more shows for that in the new year – China focus in 2015
My New years resolution is to learn Chinese on a deeper level, I have been at the basic level to travel and “get by” for years but I need to get in deeper

So many of you know recently my startup Social Agent app startup merged with UnchainedApps company – and One interesting side side effect is one of their main apps is called WrittenChinese.com to help foreigners learn chinese! So today I bring on Nora, she is the product manager at Unchained Apps and also the driving force behind the Written Chinese app – she’s an american who speaks really good Chinese and will give us all some pointers so let’s listen in!

Topics Covered in this Episode

• Glad to have more women on the show! Welcome Nora!
• Can you introduce yourself Nora to our listeners
• Introduce Gigabud/ Unchained apps
• Mike mentions joined the company, merged w/ Social Agent
• Why did you come to China?
• You speak Chinese pretty well – how did you do it?
• What are some other ways people can learn Chinese ?
• how much time should someone invest
• I know you always say the Written part or learning Chinese Characters is important for people to learn, but most of us just want to learn spoken to get by – can you share a bit here?
• So our company together, Gigabud has an app for learning Chinese (Written Chinese), maybe you can plug it here
• So we just got you started with a podcast – 2 White Chicks in China – can you explain that to everyone?
• Ways people can reach out to you – linkedin, email, etc

People / Companies / Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Written Chinese
• University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Gigabud Limited – app incubator (no website)
• Unchained Apps Limited – productivity apps
• Social Agent app
• Chengdu – Central Chinese City Nora spent first year in
• Sichuan / Szechuan Chicken
• Chinese characters – over 3,000 characters in Chinese language
• Chinese bigrams – sets of 2 Chinese characters together that mean 1 English word.
• Download Written Chinese .com’s Free Bigram and Character Mobile App
• Train ear for Chinese Tones with her Chinese tone trainer
• Chinese radicals – shapes / pieces of characters that are the foundation of the characters.
• Pinyin – Roman Characters “conversion” to Chinese characters.
• Start page – WrittenChinese.com/start
• Video series – Scavenger Sundays on Youtube
• Nora has a new podcast – 2 White Chicks in China, check it out and send them questions on China life.
• Reaching out to Nora – on Facebook
• Reaching out to Nora – on Linkedin
• Email her at nora @ writtenchinese.com

Episode Length 34:43

Thanks Nora for coming on the show! So for many many years I always skipped learning characters thinking that it was impossible and not needed, but since cooperating with Written Chinese I am using the app and learning characters – which does set a foundation for speaking. I think of the character when I am speaking and I ask my wife Wendy more intelligent questions about words by relating them to the character. Some examples are – Hau, which means good, the character is a mix of the word woman and child – pretty amazing right?

Anyway, I do believe we all need to better learn Chinese not just for business in China, but more and more Chinese are traveling and living all around the world – taking some time to understand the language will differentiate you a lot and they are so happy to hear even the worst efforts for speaking Chinese.

If you have any feedback about the app – let me know – I’m a marketing and BD dude for the company now and trying to help the company improve downloads and user activity – it’s free to try and has in app purchases for more detailed features.

so hope everyone had a great 2014 and is excited for the new year, let’s stay positive and keep on learning! Cheers

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