Anyone have any suggestions on what to buy to help learn a little Chinese which would be helpful in travelling? I bought Travel talk CD by Penton Overseas already. Also bought Mandarin Chinese Deluxe for computer. That's a bit overload though, too much to learn.
Thanks!

I too am trying to learn Chinese and a friend told me about Pimsleur Cantonese lessons on CD. It is amazing. I've also heard from others who have used these CDs to learn other languages.

BettyinToronto,
I think I've heard of that series. Is it a quick way to pick up words useful for travellers?

Thanks!

BettyinToronto,
Someone gave me this web site. It's downloadable and FREE!!

www.byki.com

I thought it was really great for travellers.

One thing I discovered during my sometimes laughable attempts to use some Mandarin phrases was that accurate sounding is absolutely essential. You may be able to get away with less-than-perfect pronunciation in European languages, but not in a tonal language like Chinese or Vietnamese, so you need to get on top of the basics. Just taking a word and pronouncing it the way it looks won't work. Any syllable will have several meanings depending on the tone used.

Some vowel sounds aren't as they seem anyway - for instance 'feng shui' is pronounced something like 'fung shway' 'dong' like 'doong' and 'zhou' like 'joe'.

But it really is worth making the effort, if only to be able to say 'hello' and 'thank you'.

Thanks, Neil. I know exactly what you mean. That's what makes it so tough. We'll try, but we will probably get many a puzzled look.

Just get the essentials correctly:

Hello = Nihao, Thank you = Xiexie, Goodbye = Zaijien, Bathroom = Chesuo, How much = Duoshao, No = Bu, Don't want = Buyao

Thanks, short and sweet.