How to Learn Chinese: Where to Start And How to Keep Going.
- Chinese Fluency – Cantonese
- Business Intro — Chinese (Mandarin, China)
- Chinese Fluency – (Mandarin, China)
- Other Chinese courses
So you wanna know where to start when learning Chinese, or how to gain momentum and push through to fluency? Read on, dear reader…
Despite being only a mere mortal like yourself (in that I am not yet fluent in Chinese, – but it is only a matter of time) I am quite experienced in learning languages and have developed strategies and techniques that have saved me literally hours, days, months, maybe even years. These I will share with you today, so that you may learn from my past mistakes and less time studying and more picking up Chinese chicks!
Mentality
Okay, so, if I could impart only one thing on you it would be that confidence is half the battle.
If you spend too much time worrying about whether you will ever reach fluency, firstly, that is time you will not be spending injecting Chinese into your brain, but secondly, and most importantly, it will become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – you won’t enjoy the process, will associate Chinese with stress and essentially never become fluent.
This ‘blind faith’, as an atheist, is something that doesn’t come naturally to me. But you really have no choice but to take my word for it that if you:
- Put in the time (listening, writing and, eventually, speaking)
- Enjoy yourself
- Believe you will become fluent
“But, Chinese is such a hard language compared to French or Spanish!”
Don’t get sucked into this idea.
Chinese is not harder, Chinese is just far more different to English than most European languages are. Plenty of Westerners have managed to tame the beast. Off the top of my head, take Steve Kaufmann or Luca Lampariello, for example.
In fact, I would argue that Chinese is actually objectively easier and more logical than any other language I’ve come across (with the exception of Chinese characters – logical in theory, but struggle city in practice for anyone trying to learn it who doesn’t use it every day).
Consider these things:
- Rather than having completely separate words for related concepts,
one character in Chinese will represent a ‘concept’ that will manifest
itself in a huge number of multi-syllable words, ie:
工 (gōng) – representing the idea of ‘work’, present in other words such as 工作 (to work), 工厂(factory/plant), 工地 (workplace), 工匠 (craftsman), 工力 (craftsmanship), 工业 (industry), the list goes on.
- No conjugations. No tenses. No cases. No plurals. No gender.
Therefore, no memorising ‘je peux, tu peux, il peut, nous pouvons’. ‘Nuff said.
- No long words – say goodbye to ‘anticonstitutionnellement’, ‘Unkameradschaftlichkeit’ and ‘electroencefalografistas’.
Also, don’t be afraid of tones. They can be learned naturally through extensive listening.
Approach
Two Language Gurus: Head to Head
Here is what I would advise for those beginning their Chinese studies, and for those already on the path.
Beginners
Learning Chinese can be struggle city. But only if you don’t have fun while you’re doing it!
- Get some materials. Textbooks are okay, as long as they have dialogs with a recorded version. If you’ve got the dough, ChinesePod is great.
- Do a significant amount of input (reading and listening) with this beginner material. This is the hard bit, where the language gradually becomes less ‘foreign’ – in other words, you get used to the language. To make rapid progress, try to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day (an hour is better).
- Work the language into your life. I’m not really an advocate of ignoring your friends and family who don’t speak the language, or listening to the language while you’re talking to them and while you sleep (per AJATT), or changing the language on your computer and phone into Chinese – this is too annoying for me. Instead, make use of dead time. Do you daydream on the train/bus? Now you listen to Chinese. Do you wait in lines? Now you listen to Chinese while you wait in lines. Do you walk the dog? Paint your house? Daydream? Listen to Chinese while you do these things. You’ll see how easy it is. I would estimate that the average person has about 1-2 hours a day of dead time, this meaning time they do NOTHING else. If you studied Chinese only in the time you otherwise would be wasting, you will see massive progress. Now imagine if you fit some Chinese into your free time, too?
- Two words. Mini goals. Learn 30 words a week, and then step it up after a couple of weeks. Listen to 30 minutes of Chinese a day – then step it up to an hour incrementally. I’m soon to write an entire post over on my own blog dedicated to explaining the importance of mini goals.
- Characters. Forget about them for the first month. After that though, they are important. Spend 15 minutes a day learning them. Although it may seem tedious, it’s worth learning the radicals first, or as you encounter them – this will enable you to quite accurately guess new characters later on.
- Get an SRS. Do your reps daily, and add sentences whenever you can. Also, I
