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12 Months of Mandarin

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Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#131

Post by braunshedd »

cmuguythrow wrote: post #74

I’ve been learning Mandarin via Comprehensible Input (CI) for about 9 months and really admire OP’s dedication and consistency. In the first 4-5 months of being truly consistent with ~1hr a day of Anki and Peppa pig I got to around 2,000 words and was able to have a great experience when I traveled to Taiwan, so I can vouch for the core methodology in this post. It’s not “easy”, but it’s definitely the most effective…

I also use Netflix to great effect for practicing Chinese, especially when paired with the Language Reactor[1] extension in Chrome.

* Note: Netflix has much more Taiwanese content than mainland China content, so do note the difference in the accent / dialect you'll be learning.

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/language-reactor/ho...

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#132

Post by ximeng »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #128

If you're doing all these things already, but want something for learning to write characters, Skritter is the best thing I know of. I used it many years ago (on a Windows PC using a Wacom tablet). Now my son is using the more modern iPad version. It uses spaced repetition, and you can ratchet up the difficulty as needed. In the default mode, for each stroke you make correctly, it will perfect its shape and position.…

I’d second this. I learned to read and write Chinese through (around 2000 hours) of Skritter. It’s a lot easier to get conversational with a solid vocabulary too. And being able to efficiently study in any free time really helps.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#133

Post by tayo42 »

lxe wrote: post #107
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.…

s/dopamine/motivation/g You're right but the core of my sentiment stays the same

I think my language learning problem is motivation.

Reading this post, that is alot of work, for something that doesn't have clear pay off.

I think it would be cool to be able to speak Spanish and Mandarin(and others) But there isn't that much practicalness for me it especially when everyone speaks English.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#134

Post by Baeocystin »

fragmede wrote: post #130
Baeocystin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (white, blonde and green-eyed at the time) spent a lot of my childhood in SE Asia and southern China in the late 70s/early 80s. Once we got to the smaller, interior towns, we had to be really careful with our movement, as we could attract dangerously large crowds just by going to the morning market or the like. The vast majority of people were just curious, and I have a lot of happy memories of smiles and connectio…

You were going to get killed for being white in the wrong place?

Probably less to do with being white specifically than simply being a convenient Other, but yes. Most people are great. Some are awful, a few evil. When you stand out, you'll attract the attention of everyone, including the latter, and you'd be wise not to forget that, in all its aspects. The whole reason we were able to survive is that locals looked after us, too, and that's worth emphasizing.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#135

Post by g9yuayon »

indigo945 wrote: post #94
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…

Yes, learning all the characters has a steep learning curve, but once one passes that stage, ... One never passes that stage, though? Even once you know the 6,000 characters that people often cite as being needed to read a novel, you'll still run into characters that you don't know (especially in proper names, but also in less common, especially literary or chengyu , vocabulary). I also disagree about the "grammatica…

An elementary student in China probably won't learn more than 3000 characters, yet they can read advanced novels. I suspect the difference is that a native speaker feels more comfortable skipping or guess unknown words. I certainly felt more discomfort when encountering new words when reading even a popular fiction in English, while having no problem guessing the meaning of a new word in my native language.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#136

Post by cyberpunk »

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!

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 but I'm not sure that's quite as directly useful as 75hard for most people.

Yes, the guy behind it is a lunatic, and the subreddit is a bit of a cult, but something happens to you around day 40 and it sort of 'snapped' me out of it.

You've got this!

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#138

Post by wantsanagent »

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 thinking about processes and this guy won some kind of biological and/or upbringing lottery.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#139

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#140

Post by attheicearcade »

15kingben wrote: post #93
cmuguythrow wrote: post #74

I’ve been learning Mandarin via Comprehensible Input (CI) for about 9 months and really admire OP’s dedication and consistency. In the first 4-5 months of being truly consistent with ~1hr a day of Anki and Peppa pig I got to around 2,000 words and was able to have a great experience when I traveled to Taiwan, so I can vouch for the core methodology in this post. It’s not “easy”, but it’s definitely the most effective…

DuChinese is a great app for reading stories at beginner levels of vocabulary. It also supports tap-to-lookup and saving words to flashcards, but unfortunately they don't integrate with Anki, only their own app's system.

DuChinese does have an integration with HackChinese, which is basically a Mandarin only paid version of Anki with a sleek interface. I use it for convenience because I find managing Anki decks too tedious.
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