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12 Months of Mandarin

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Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#151

Post by serf »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #148
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.

as someone with lots of impressively credentialed braggart friends.. that's not always the case.

although w.r.t. myself? absolutely agree with the sentiment. I would wash out in half a week with that kind of workload.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#152

Post by jcla1 »

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…

Do not underestimate the urge to procrastinate (by still doing productive things, like learning Mandarin) while pursuing a PhD.

I am not sure if this will be the author's experience too, but pursuing a PhD will often leave you exhausted without any hope of ever finding "the final missing ingredient" to solve the problem you are currently tackling. So turning to entirely unrelated problems, however productive they may seem to outsides, suddenly becomes an attractive alternative in order to procrastinate.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#153

Post by trhway »

seper8 wrote: post #150
trhway wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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...

Man, have you ever been 20smth years old? Do you really remember it as the time when you were thinking about "heavy price" beforehand and were suppressing your "machismo"?

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#154

Post by bluechair »

kentosi-dw wrote: post #12

The importance of an SRS system like Anki cannot be overstated. However I can see how this might be a burden to some when it comes to entering in your own sentences. For this, I highly recommend making use of your OS's dictation (speech to text) feature. You get to practice speaking _and_ enter sentences much quicker.

The importance of SRS is often overstated.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a single study showing SRS as effective for language learning where it was an experimental variable.

There’s anecdotal evidence thrown about, which gives us some indication that it’s helpful. But I have doubts that it’s a good return on investment.

To avoid diving deep into long arguments about this or that, I’ll keep my advice short: If you use an SRS, make sure that the item your test goes through the brain structures you want to get good at, eventually reading can help with listening, but because you’re not processing the language through the typical brain structures that handle it, you’re delaying getting good until you’ve exercised these “muscles”.

Also, don’t learn words in isolation. Better is to learn the words in context. Better yet is to vary the practice, maybe hookup an LLM to vary the cloze word, if that’s your cup of tea.

Use audio if possible. If you’re comfortable with the language, use a TTS.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#155

Post by joshdavham »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #141
pastage wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's unfortunate, but I think these "I learned x language in y weeks/months" memes are probably here to stay.

After spending the last year becoming technical (data science -> software eng) and seeing all those "I learned to program in 3 months and got a job at Google" videos, I'm convinced that this is just the dunning kruger effect of not knowing enough about the subject to understand how long it takes to become competent.

Furthermore the "I learned x in y time" meme is almost always perpetuated by false beginners. I remember seeing an "I learned Italian in one week" video where the guy actually knew some Italian beforehand. He also had previously learned fluent French and Spanish beforehand, so to say he learned Italian from scratch is a huge stretch.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#156

Post by bmurray7jhu »

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…

Reading and listening to Mandarin was much less difficult than I expected. Good pronunciation was more challenging, but after working with a speech-language pathologist, my speech production is good enough that I'm rarely asked to repeat myself.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#157

Post by hintymad »

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…

I'm guessing for someone learning a new language is relaxing and therefore helps recharging the person after hours of intense PhD work - things like enjoying daily progress, discovery of foreign culture, the euphoria of being able to read and watch new stuff...

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#158

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

modeless wrote: post #149

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.

I learned French from 2021-2023 by taking weekly lessons. Before then I'd dabbled in all kinds of methods like Anki and tapes. Nothing works like having private or small class lessons with a teacher who can immediately correct you. Nothing. I went from barely able to speak or conjugate, to having conversations with my french colleagues, telling jokes, and reading novels, in French.

If you have the means, taking lessons is, at least for me, wildly more entertaining, fulfilling, and better than trying to go alone. I'm not affiliated at all, but using iTalki can really be a game-changer if you're trying to get conversational.

A language is used and using the language over and over in conversations is the best method for learning and getting better at one.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#159

Post by joshdavham »

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/

Side note: I don't generally put much weight on the FSI numbers. Sure they provide a useful ranking of how long it takes to learn various languages (e.g., Spanish Most people don't learn languages at the FSI so to expect it will take you as long is not accurate. It may take you way longer, or maybe you'll be way faster depending on how good you are at learning languages and how much time you're putting in each day.

But yeah, to summarize, the FSI rankings are good, but I don't agree with the actual estimates.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#160

Post by helge9210 »

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…

I emigrated twice within ten years (move, learn the language, find a job, than find a job, move, learn the language). I sometimes wonder how does it feel not having to run and push all the time just not to fall behind.

The price for the motivation could be higher you're willing to pay.

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