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12 Months of Mandarin

isaak.net

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Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#201

Post by HKH2 »

msvan wrote: post #174

I kind of see myself from ten years ago in this blog post! I also obsessively studied Mandarin Chinese in my late teens for the sheer fun of it, before doing a math undergrad. I even wrote comments on Hacker News about it a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622940 . At the time I had seemingly limitless motivation for grinding away on flashcards and other learning materials. My progress was strong and…

> Knowing Chinese is about as useful as juggling and you might as well get really good at juggling if you're bored.

If your purpose is to show off, yes, juggling wins.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#202

Post by latentsea »

CollinEMac wrote: post #29

I'm always surprised when people mention watching shows in their target language as a study method. For me, I don't understand much and my mind starts to wander pretty quickly.

It has always been my go to, but my wife is more in your camp.

Personally I don't see the point in any of the study if you aren't going to actually use the language. I couldn't get motivated to do any of the study if I weren't primarily studying through native media. All I would have is an empty grind.

I feel quite lucky to be in the camp that vibes with this method. I find the joy comes from focusing on all the things I can understand no matter how little. You really tangibly feel the progress as you make it too. You have to pay attention to be scanning for things that seem learnable to you as well, so the attention is pretty locked on.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#203

Post by HKH2 »

chemmail wrote: post #200
msvan wrote: post #174

I kind of see myself from ten years ago in this blog post! I also obsessively studied Mandarin Chinese in my late teens for the sheer fun of it, before doing a math undergrad. I even wrote comments on Hacker News about it a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622940 . At the time I had seemingly limitless motivation for grinding away on flashcards and other learning materials. My progress was strong and…

This is nuts, if i learned Mandarin, i would probably move to Taiwan, where the CoL is almost 1/4th of where I am right now. I know some other languages, but loss the will to study anymore lol.

CoL?

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#204

Post by HKH2 »

crazygringo wrote: post #178
msvan wrote: post #174

I kind of see myself from ten years ago in this blog post! I also obsessively studied Mandarin Chinese in my late teens for the sheer fun of it, before doing a math undergrad. I even wrote comments on Hacker News about it a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622940 . At the time I had seemingly limitless motivation for grinding away on flashcards and other learning materials. My progress was strong and…

> Today my Chinese is absolutely unusable Something similar happened to me -- did intensive Mandarin study in college followed by a summer in Beijing being totally immersed. Was incredible. Then continued with a language course back home, and watched as my vocabulary shrank -- something like 4 hrs/wk. of class (with homework on top) couldn't even maintain my Mandarin, much less improve it. Today I can't understand a…

Learning reinforces itself once you get fluent enough.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#206

Post by kenrick95 »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #171
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 hours of Anki practice and new note taking, some of it while running on a treadmill? I studied with Anki on long 1hr walks and it worked incredibly well for me. I’d definitely recommend trying it! Some things I learned were DS/algos, Greek alphabet pronunciation (so that I could read math symbols), the periodic table/chemical properties, and misc LeetCode interviewing stuff.

> DS/algos

How do you study that on Anki?

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#208

Post by hunter-gatherer »

pessimizer wrote: post #81
hintymad wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think I can do SRS No need. :-) Comprehensible Input and immersive language usage can be your superpower.

With old-school graded readers. Turns out that the people in past centuries who we ridiculed for their antiquated approaches for learning languages all spoke multiple languages. They didn't have comic books, though, which are another good source of interesting reading material that also comes with elaborate visual hints to what is being said. If I were trying to learn Mandarin, I'd scour the internet for bootleg scan…

Comic books are especially helpful for conversation because they are often written in that sort of "what one would really say" style, which is extrememy helpful for speaking more native. When I was learning Finnish I found a set of translated Garfield books that were really helpful.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#209

Post by aguaviva »

msvan wrote: post #174

I kind of see myself from ten years ago in this blog post! I also obsessively studied Mandarin Chinese in my late teens for the sheer fun of it, before doing a math undergrad. I even wrote comments on Hacker News about it a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622940 . At the time I had seemingly limitless motivation for grinding away on flashcards and other learning materials. My progress was strong and…

My takeaway is that learning one of these languages, the CJK languages, Arabic, or similarly weird languages, is just too much effort and I don't think it's worth it.

An excellent observation, and one that also applies to pretty much any skill with a steep learning curve (but whose applicability in one's daily life is decidedly optional -- like learning to play an instrument reasonably well, for example). If you're only doing it "for the sheer fun of it", or as boredom reduction tool then it almost certainly isn't going to be worth it.

On a more encouraging note -- while your Mandarin has evidently atrophied, it probably isn't completely gone. It's just gone to sleep. Language skills have a way of doing that (even one's native language, if one spends a sufficient amount of time immersed in other environments).

But most likely it's still there, and if you ever took it up again, you'd be surprised at how quickly it comes roaring back.

Re: 12 Months of Mandarin

#210

Post by umbra07 »

gljiva wrote: post #183
msvan wrote: post #174

I kind of see myself from ten years ago in this blog post! I also obsessively studied Mandarin Chinese in my late teens for the sheer fun of it, before doing a math undergrad. I even wrote comments on Hacker News about it a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622940 . At the time I had seemingly limitless motivation for grinding away on flashcards and other learning materials. My progress was strong and…

Interesting. I had the impression that Chinese will likely become very useful during our lifetimes... With the momentum their economy has, I expect knowledge of both English and Chinese to become a very sought out skill

That was what was told to kids in elementary school 10-15 years ago, yes.

We seem to be moving away from that future (or perhaps it was never really true to begin with).

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