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12 Months of Mandarin

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Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#141

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

pastage wrote: post #56
joshdavham wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with the show, but, you can't learn any language in one month. That is a myth. The reason for this is actually mathematical. To understand a language you need to know at least a couple thousand words and you can't realistically learn thousands of words in a month. That takes time.

The state department says 88 weeks for Japanese[1]. A month is a long time with full immersion, getting the basics right will get you far enough that people will help you with the rest. I could communicate relatively well with two weeks of immersion but I did not finnish learning it in 100 weeks. [1] https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/

Yeah I highly doubt you could “communicate fairly well” in Japanese after two weeks. You might have memorized some standard phrases, sure. But two weeks would not even be enough when going from Dutch to German or English to French.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#142

Post by Apocryphon »

pessimizer wrote: post #116
Apfel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm someone who was perfectly able to use anki and learn chinese to a decent level with fairly intense combined-type untreated (at the time) ADHD. What you need is a compelling reason to learn (for me, it was the fear of letting down my wife by not being able to talk to her family).

Ignore them. There's a belief system that sees a lack of success in anything that one wants to do as illness or witchcraft. For them, a person doesn't lack motivation to practice something because that thing is difficult and exhausting and one can't always see a sufficient reward (or chance of gaining that reward in a reasonable amount of time) in the end. For them, it's always going to be an illness or a curse that…

Perhaps the solution is to not be on forums.

> Another came with sad eyes and said to him: "I don't know what my sickness is."

  "I know," Baudolino said. "You are slothful."

  "How can I be cured?"

  "Sloth appears the first time when you notice the slowness of the movement of the sun."

  "And then—?"

  "Never look at the sun."

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#143

Post by hbn »

haliskerbas wrote: post #112
swatcoder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think I can do SRS. My dopamine system... I'm willing to bet you've never had probes analyzing anything about your dopamine system and how it responds to any of the activities you go on to describe. More likely, you've started using trendy pseudo-scientific jargon to justify why you believe yourself to be physiologically limited. Do you struggle to see through or enjoy to some of those activities? So be it.…

I feel similar to how the parent commenter feels, but describe it using different words. Therapists and psychiatrists will use similar language, dopamine, motivation, and executive function. How do you recommend one does this? > I strongly recommend trying to break it I currently try to hack my main activities to prevent myself from being too lazy to do them. Would be happy to hear your suggestions!

Controversial take but I think the state of therapy/psychiatry has become a bit of a joke over the past handful of years where people have normalized the idea that everyone needs to be speaking to a therapist. With the fact you can shop around for a therapist, and the fact that most people like being told their problems are others' faults, you have an industry that from my view has mostly just taught everyone to externalize blame and pay someone to validate that for them.

Everyone wants to get a diagnosis of ADHD and/or autism so they can spend the rest of their life never growing or improving and living under the pretense that they don't have the ability to do certain things because a professional told them their brain is inherently limited. When in reality these diagnoses are just categorizations of behaviours, not some kind of scientific barrier baked into the coding of the universe.

I think people would be better off not dwelling so much on the "facts" they think they know about their own brains. It's inherently limiting to assume everything your capable of can only come as a result of the function you think your brain operates on.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#144

Post by [deleted] »

cyberpunk wrote: post #136
haliskerbas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similar to how the parent commenter feels, but describe it using different words. Therapists and psychiatrists will use similar language, dopamine, motivation, and executive function. How do you recommend one does this? > I strongly recommend trying to break it I currently try to hack my main activities to prevent myself from being too lazy to do them. Would be happy to hear your suggestions!

I spent many years as a basically spoiled over-paid developer, sitting around with effectively unlimited resources for distraction and definitely, it took some conditioning to recover from it. It's really not something I can easily recommend, but completing 75hard had quite a significant impact on my approach to a lot of things, and I'm extremely fortunately to have done it. I also practice zazen quite intensively bu…

[deleted]

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#145

Post by layman51 »

wantsanagent wrote: post #138

I don't care about learning Mandarin, I want to find out how this guy's motivation system works and then download it into my brain. Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project ?! Doing hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? There's just a crazy amount of drive (and what sounds like an epic memory) here. I don't think people consider base motivation enough when thi…

It’s interesting that you mention motivation/drive on a post like this. I have similar thoughts whenever there are posts about personalized learning technology or improving public education.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#146

Post by trhway »

wantsanagent wrote: post #138

I don't care about learning Mandarin, I want to find out how this guy's motivation system works and then download it into my brain. Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project ?! Doing hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? There's just a crazy amount of drive (and what sounds like an epic memory) here. I don't think people consider base motivation enough when thi…

>download it into my brain

"it" is the youth. The guy looks to be mid-20ies. Back then in those years i could go for 3 days without sleep while working, studying, drinking, etc. and many of my friends and classmates at the University were similar.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#147

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

hintymad wrote: post #80

A side topic, for those who have acquired Mandarin, do you think Chinese is a really easy-to-learn language in the long run? Yes, learning all the characters has a steep learning curve, but once one passes that stage, it's all about combination of the characters. That Chinese's grammar is heavily influenced by modern English also helped. I feel that the grammatical similarity between English and Chinese is closer tha…

It's the second time now I see someone saying Chinese grammar is heavily influenced by modern English. I've never heard of that, where comes that from?

I definitely wouldn't say Chinese is a really easy language to learn. The absence of word conjugation is a godsense after learning French, but the tones and characters stay hard for me.

I've always been pretty bad in French but I can open a book in French and read a sentence aloud without too much trouble. I frequently think and dream in Chinese but that task is still daunting to me.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#148

Post by almostgotcaught »

wantsanagent wrote: post #138

I don't care about learning Mandarin, I want to find out how this guy's motivation system works and then download it into my brain. Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project ?! Doing hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? There's just a crazy amount of drive (and what sounds like an epic memory) here. I don't think people consider base motivation enough when thi…

> Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project?!

his matriculation year is 2024 (and fall classes haven't even started) so he's doing a PhD like the pre-med kids were "doing" med school freshman year. people that brag like this don't finish - there were a few in my cohort too that washed out after quals.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#149

Post by modeless »

I started a spaced repetition program for Mandarin, and I can see that it works well. Even though it's the fastest way, it still takes a discouraging amount of time and it is no fun at all.

I don't know if the process can ever be made any faster, but I am hopeful that AI agents will soon be able to at least make it a lot more enjoyable.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#150

Post by seper8 »

trhway wrote: post #146
wantsanagent wrote: post #138

I don't care about learning Mandarin, I want to find out how this guy's motivation system works and then download it into my brain. Doing a PhD and learning Mandarin as a side project ?! Doing hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? There's just a crazy amount of drive (and what sounds like an epic memory) here. I don't think people consider base motivation enough when thi…

>download it into my brain "it" is the youth. The guy looks to be mid-20ies. Back then in those years i could go for 3 days without sleep while working, studying, drinking, etc. and many of my friends and classmates at the University were similar.

Noone goes without sleep for three days and doesnt pay a severe heavy price for it. Stop it with that dumb sleep machismo...
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