[HN Gopher] 12 Months of Mandarin
___________________________________________________________________
12 Months of Mandarin
Author : misiti3780
Score : 293 points
Date : 2024-10-04 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (isaak.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (isaak.net)
| acheong08 wrote:
| This is really impressive. Its not an easy language
|
| > 1 hour of Chinese content before sleep, e.g. anime dubs or
| books
|
| There are also anime (donghua) originating entirely in China. I
| think those might be more helpful than Anime dubs since the
| content fits better with the language. Swallowed Star, Dou Luo Da
| Lu , and Yi Ren Zhi Xia are pretty fun.
| kulahan wrote:
| I've come across so many donghua that seem really cool, but the
| English translations are just _so bad_. Could be a cool way to
| get a little further into their culture.
| vunderba wrote:
| I commend the author's discipline - this is a pretty standard
| approach.
|
| TLDR
|
| - Move as many things as possible in regular life to the target
| language (software, tv shows, reading, etc) to maintain the
| language
|
| - There is no substitute for full immersion if you have the
| opportunity. I learned traditional Chinese in Taiwan while I was
| an ESL teacher.
|
| - The power of SRS (spaced repetition system) cannot be
| _overstated_
|
| I will add my own bit to it. If you like mnemonic systems, Heisig
| wrote a very good book called "Remembering Traditional Hanzi"
| where the idea is to use the radicals in the character to
| construct a visual image to aid in recall. I highly recommend it.
|
| https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/remembering-traditional-han...
| wccrawford wrote:
| Do you mean "cannot be overstated"? "Cannot be understated"
| means you can't talk badly enough about it.
|
| "Cannot be overstated" would mean it's impossible to talk too
| highly of it.
| vunderba wrote:
| Updated! Guess I traded a bit of my fluency in English for
| Chinese. :p
| alexawarrior4 wrote:
| "The power of SRS (spaced repetition system) cannot be
| overstated"
|
| For an alternative take, there is at least some evidence that
| SRS is entirely unnecessary and can even hinder language
| learning. I know it at least is not required by first language
| speakers, and have also seen many examples of fluent second and
| third language speakers who never use SRS, or any other kind of
| "practiced" language acquisition such as learning vocabulary,
| grammar, etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis
|
| For instance here's a PhD thesis of someone who learned French
| to fluency with only watching TV and (later) reading books:
|
| https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9b49365
| vunderba wrote:
| One of the points in Input Hypothesis is something I'm sure
| everybody would agree with:
|
| _This states that learners progress in their knowledge of
| the language when they comprehend language input that is
| slightly more advanced than their current level. Krashen
| called this level of input "i+1", where "i" is the learner's
| interlanguage and "+1" is the next stage of language
| acquisition._
|
| Informally I've always called it "walking the knife's edge" -
| you have to be always on the slight edge of feeling
| uncomfortable to realize meaningful gains. I mean it makes
| logical sense. The brain is _ALWAYS_ trying to optimize away
| through chunking /patterns/etc. so you have to be constantly
| challenging it.
|
| It's the reason why there's a huge skill difference between a
| driver at one month vs 1 year, but a far less difference
| between a driver at one year vs ten years.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > For an alternative take, there is at least some evidence
| that SRS is entirely unnecessary and can even hinder language
| learning.
|
| I do not believe that the above is an alternative take. Most
| people who do SRS pair it with tons of comprehensible input.
| Also, a lot of takedowns on SRS tend to actually be takedowns
| on memorizing 1:1 translations of words _at all_ which is all
| they assume people do with SRS. I 've never done those,
| because I think _word lists_ are bad and 1:1 translations
| from L1- >L2 are bad because they are always wrong (languages
| are different, not substitution ciphers.) I almost only deal
| in complete sentences in SRS, and clozes.
|
| There's also a piece of advice given by David Parlett in an
| old book about learning languages straight from possibly
| incomplete printed grammars and native or anthropological
| recordings: "learn the hard stuff first." There are some
| things about languages that are central, complex, and should
| just be learned by rote. Romance conjugations are some of
| those things. Using SRS to learn how to conjugate reflexively
| and automatically in Spanish (after probably 50K card
| reviews) was the best thing I could have done to open up a
| world of comprehensible input.
| senkora wrote:
| I worked through "Remembering Simplified Hanzi" and my one
| complaint is that I wish that it were "grouped by frequency" a
| bit more.
|
| The way that these books work is that the first one is the most
| common ~1500 characters grouped by radical / component, and
| then the second one is the next most common ~1500 characters
| grouped the same way.
|
| The problem is that this means that you have to learn 1500
| characters before you know all of the most common 1500. I
| stopped after 1000 characters and was left not knowing many
| extremely common characters that hadn't been introduced yet.
|
| I think that a better organization would have been 500, 1000,
| 1500 instead of 1500, 1500.
|
| Other than that, great books that I also recommend.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Tuttle "Learning Chinese Characters" by Matthews and Matthews
| is organized in the way you mention. I find it highly
| recommendable, although I can't compare to Heisig's book
| because I don't have that one.
|
| It only has 800 characters, though. But they are the most
| common.
| joshdavham wrote:
| > The power of SRS (spaced repetition system) cannot be
| overstated
|
| Speaking as someone who has used Anki the last 5 years, has
| built and sold Anki decks and is working on implementing
| various spaced repetition schedulers as we speak...
| unfortunately its importance can absolutely be overstated.
|
| Definitely more language learners should be using an SRS, but
| there are lots of people who take it way too far (I have way
| too many stories).
|
| Where things go wrong for most people is their understanding of
| the role of the SRS. The SRS to language learning is what
| protein shakes are to bodybuilding. But while no serious body
| builder would try to get ripped by drinking protein shakes and
| neglecting working out, there are unfortunately tons of
| language learners doing basically just that with the SRS. To
| acquire a language you need input! The SRS is just (very)
| helpful supplement.
| vunderba wrote:
| Sure - I don't think the article (or myself) are making the
| case that SRS is all you need - after all - its just
| flashcards on steroids, and nobody would make the case that
| flashcards are enough to become fluent in a language.
|
| That's the same type of person who assumes you can become
| fluent purely through Duolingo.
| cblum wrote:
| > there are lots of people who take it way too far
|
| I wrote in another comment that that's exactly my issue. I
| can easily spend hours, days, weeks even just tweaking my
| card templates due to Anki's extreme customizability. That
| stems from a (false!) belief that I can somehow find just the
| right card format that will impress the language in my head
| in no time. Took me a long time to reign in the impulse to
| endlessly tweak templates. I remember having days when I felt
| extremely frustrated after realizing I had spent pretty much
| my entire study time working on Anki and not exposing myself
| to the language.
| vunderba wrote:
| yeah that's a trap I think a lot of people with an
| engineering mindset fall in to. Reminds me of the people
| who spend endless hours tweaking their note taking
| applications.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Believe it or not, after 5 years of Anki, I still have 0
| styling on my personal decks. Not even dark mode. Just
| black text on a white background haha
| bluechair wrote:
| It might be helpful to someone, so I'm suggesting something
| similar for Spanish: * https://www.dreamingspanish.com
| kklisura wrote:
| Anything similar for Japanese?
| kentosi-dw wrote:
| Yes if you type "japanese conversation" in youtube you'll get
| lots of people mirroring this format. (Sorry at work and
| youtube is locked for me).
| willmorrison wrote:
| Take a look at https://refold.link/Japanese_resources
| joshdavham wrote:
| I can vouch. I followed the Refold method to learn French
| and am also following it for Japanese.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Yes! You should checkout https://cijapanese.com/
|
| It's an awesome site with just under 1,000 videos. There are
| also transcripts and a time tracker to help track your
| progress.
|
| Note I'm not affiliated, but am just a happy user. (Also my
| friend is the site developer)
| edent wrote:
| While I haven't the same proficiency, I had the same "local
| celebrity" experience when visiting Beijing. While it is fun at
| first seeing people double take and then ask to take a photo with
| you - it gets old fast!
|
| Mind you, I'll never tire of (partially) understanding what
| people say about me when they think I don't understand.
|
| One thing not mentioned is that it is often a good idea to have
| some _formal_ testing. Friends and tutors may overlook your
| mistakes. A dispassionate exam board likely won 't.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Are you not white or otherwise have unusual features? I'm a
| random white dude and I've been to Beijing and Shanghai many
| times over the past 15 years, and while I was asked for a photo
| a few times at parks or touristy places, it was far from
| feeling like a celeb or anything. And it has gotten less and
| less over the past years, but maybe that's because I'm getting
| older and more boring. :)
| hangonhn wrote:
| You need to leave Beijing and especially Shanghai and head
| farther inland to regain your celebrity status!
|
| I (ethnic Chinese) went to China with two friends from Texas
| in the early 2010s. One of them has long blonde hair. She was
| never stopped in Shanghai, a couple of times in Beijing, but
| in Chengdu, they were just so amazed by her and her husband
| (but mostly her and her long blonde hair). People wanted to
| take pictures with my friends.
|
| Maybe things have changed a lot since then but worth a try!
| Chengdu is definitely worth visiting and I'm sure there are
| many very interesting more inland cities in China to visit
| (and maybe be a celebrity for a moment).
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Yes, going to smaller cities has always been on my list but
| never worked out. I did Tianjin and Qingdao last and this
| year, but they are still too big it seems. Stayed three
| days both times and there was nothing more than a few
| stares.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| 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
| connections, but a few of coming close to getting killed,
| too.
|
| Still, risk is everywhere, and the positives win out. I
| loved learning what I could, and I hope meeting us was a
| net joy for the folks we interacted with, too.
| fragmede wrote:
| You were going to get killed for being white in the wrong
| place?
| Baeocystin wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > You need to leave Beijing and especially Shanghai and
| head farther inland to regain your celebrity status!
|
| Just going to the suburbs of Shanghai will do it.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I am a polyglot but I have slight hearing impairment, which
| means that unless someone is directly talking to me, I won't
| understand anything. Sucks.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I had the same "local celebrity" experience when visiting
| Beijing.
|
| My own dimly-remembered anecdote involves passing through
| mainland China back in the 90s in tow of my parents, as an
| elementary-schooler with very blond hair. (Two qualities that
| are no longer true.)
|
| Even in the downtown areas of Beijing it drew attention, but if
| you went further out to more-rural zones... Well, imagine small
| crowds coming up to gawk and indicating they'd like to touch
| your hair to confirm it's real and/or for good luck.
|
| It wasn't just a lack of in-person visitors, but also that the
| standard of living there 30 years ago there was a _much_ lower,
| and even the locally-affluent were unlikely to get much media
| from outside the country.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So ~20 years ago I went to Kuala Lumpur. For those not knowing
| where or what that is, it's the capital city of Malaysia with a
| population of ~1.8 million people. It once held the title for
| the world's tallent building (ie the Petronas Towers). So this
| is a modern city not that far from Singapore.
|
| I happened to catch a train to one of the shopping centers
| while I was there so this was the mass transit system in a
| relatively modern city. This boy of 7 or so kept gawking at me.
| He was with his father. I looked up at him, curious, and his
| father said in passable English that his son has never seen a
| white person before.
|
| That was quite a surreal experience for me, particularly given
| the environment.
|
| I can't imagine what it must be like in rural China with few
| Western visitors.
| grecy wrote:
| > _his son has never seen a white person before_
|
| I drove a 4x4 right around Africa from mid 2016 to mid 2019.
|
| It was quite common in West Africa to drive into a village
| where the kids would run away terrified and the adults would
| explain the kids had never seen a white person before, and
| they thought I was a ghost.
|
| I drove across an international border where the border guard
| had been working for 3 years and had never seen a foreigner.
|
| It's fun getting off the map.
| stuxfian wrote:
| Nice
| kentosi-dw wrote:
| 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.
| Trufa wrote:
| I'm learning Indonesian the right way after having learned
| German in the wrongest possible way and ANKI is just amazing
| for language learning, 4 months in and I'm having basic
| conversations.
| alanwreath wrote:
| Sorry maybe this is the wrong question. But with regard to
| ANKI (all caps) are referring to some app?
| keiferski wrote:
| https://apps.ankiweb.net
| thatsnotmepls wrote:
| I have ChatGPT create 20 sentences for a new word I want to
| learn, works super well with Anki.
|
| Front -> Word. Click button, shows random sentence out of 20.
|
| Back -> Word and sentence translation.
| cblum wrote:
| The trouble with ChatGPT is that it can produce wonky
| sentences sometimes, and as a learner it can be hard to
| validate that. Most of the time it's great though, just need
| to be cautious and ideally find a way to validate the content
| it generates (in my case I can run it by my wife).
|
| I use ChatGPT to check my answers to the exercises in my
| textbooks :)
| udit99 wrote:
| Wait...how do you do this in Anki? The randomization part.
| qingdao99 wrote:
| Anki supports HTML and JavaScript so technically anything
| is possible.
| cblum wrote:
| I use Anki but oh did I have to learn to discipline myself.
| Anki's extreme flexibility coupled with an engineer's mind had
| me spending whole stretches of days or even weeks just tweaking
| my card templates, hoping to achieve some sort of optimal card
| format that will maximize my acquisition of the language
| (Mandarin like in the post). At some point I had enough scripts
| in there that I had turned it into my own Duolingo-like app.
|
| These days I reign that impulse in and force myself to stick to
| simple card formats. Creating cards should take as little time
| as possible. The Chinese Support add-on is super useful for
| that by the way.
|
| Another thing about Anki is that it can feel oppressive
| sometimes, because if you don't do your reps they just pile up
| and it becomes a drag to clear the "debt." Staying on top of my
| reps before I had a baby and life was chill was easy; now with
| the baby I sometimes feel like Anki takes away from the already
| limited time I have to expose myself to the language by reading
| books, watching videos, etc.
|
| I stick to it though, since for a language that distant from
| the two other languages I speak, memorization work is a must.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Another thing about Anki is that it can feel oppressive
| sometimes, because if you don't do your reps they just pile
| up and it becomes a drag to clear the "debt." Staying on top
| of my reps before I had a baby and life was chill was easy;
| now with the baby I sometimes feel like Anki takes away from
| the already limited time I have to expose myself to the
| language by reading books, watching videos, etc.
|
| For me the new habit has been to not guilt myself too badly
| for skipping my cards if I know I spent an hour or two on
| native materials. Key to this has been to make sure that
| while all of my subdecks under my combined deck offer me a
| set number of new cards every day, the combined deck is set
| to zero new cards per day. If I'm missing days, I need to
| stop adding cards for a while until my daily load is
| tolerable enough that I'm not tempted to skip out.
|
| Also, I like to get new cards of the same type at the same
| time. After I've cleared them once, let them be mixed in with
| the other cards, but when they're introduced, I should be
| focused.
|
| I hope that FSRS* eventually solves this: they've pretty much
| done away with manually-chosen "ease" as a concept (although
| not everyone has accepted that yet.) I hope they'll ditch the
| idea of people regulating the number of new cards they get
| per day and move to allowing users to select an amount of
| time they want to spend, or a date by which they want to have
| a particular proficiency (defined by card recall), and
| instead have the algo choose how many new cards you should
| have. e.g. _I 'm looking for 45 minutes a day of review,
| optimize for that_; or, _I want to be able on the 15th of
| October to be able to get 95% of this set of cards correct,
| drill me on them repetitiously for as long as it takes._
|
| There's been a lot of thoughtful discussion about pushing the
| app forward in ways like this.** Simpler is better, and the
| scheduler should be scheduling, not the user; the scheduler's
| job is to adapt to the user.
|
| The next frontier for SRS after polishing the schedulers is
| to gain an understanding of what makes a good card or a good
| deck, rather than leaving it as an exercise to the reader
| along with a bit of handwaving about how it's better to learn
| from one's own cards than ones that others have made. I'm
| about 3 years into daily SRS and this is not my experience.
| I'm eternally grateful to people who come up with innovative
| decks or just well written and focused cards.
|
| -----
|
| [*] https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/
|
| [**] https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/pass-fail-grading-as-
| default/ https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/how-to-prevent-users-
| from-misus...
|
| (sorata seems to be a contributor to AnkiDroid, and Expertium
| the lead of FSRS. It's really nice to watch this be worked
| out in public.)
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _SRS_
|
| Spaced repetition system (or maybe software?) for people like
| me who were not familiar with this acronym.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| > The importance of an SRS system like Anki cannot be
| overstated.
|
| I'm not sure if I agree with that, as no native speakers need
| to have an SRS to learn their native languages. No doubt that
| SRS will allow us to remember words, yet few can really acquire
| those words intuitively. When starting to learn English in
| school, we used some kind of SRS system to memorize words and
| phrases and sentences, and man, the result was abysmal. We
| spent 10 years learning English (3 years of middle school, 3
| years of high school, and 4 years of college), trying to
| memorize new words every day, passing TOEFL and later GRE
| through intense SRS, yet few students could understand TV
| shows, read fictions, or communicate with English speakers. And
| the learning was arduous, to say the least.
|
| In contrast, I was lucky enough that my mom gave me a set of
| graded readers compiled by National Geographic, and simply
| asked me to read them through. And then Sidney Sheldon's books,
| Friends, etc and etc. So basically I immersed myself into the
| language, never having to do SRS, and I could easily pass TOEFL
| and the GRE Verbal years before graduating college. As a bonus,
| I started to enjoy TV shows and movies early on, and was able
| to socialize with my classmates and professors without even
| trying. I also used the method to learn Spanish and Japanese,
| and the results are similar. No SRS needed but consistent
| exposure to the languages. In less than two years, I can read
| books like The Alchemist, If Tomorrow Comes, and Project Hail
| Mary. Another interesting contrast is that I couldn't
| understand much conversation in those languages, precisely
| because I spent most of my spare time in reading.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| > The importance of an SRS system like Anki cannot be
| overstated.
|
| This is definitely an overstatement. It is a useful tool for
| the specific purpose of blindly memorizing associations. This
| _is_ a hurdle people frequently run into when deciding to learn
| a language, but it 's a pretty tight problem to be having and
| SRS is not like, critical.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| > It is a useful tool for the specific purpose of blindly
| memorizing associations.
|
| Then you're not using Anki correctly.
| watwut wrote:
| Importance of SRS system definitely can be overstated. You can
| learn language without them and depending on your personality,
| they oftentimes turn into demotivating tiring drag that wastes
| your effort. If you like it, it is perfectly fine to use it,
| but if you don't, there is really no reason to force it.
| bluechair wrote:
| 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.
| cyberlimerence wrote:
| I don't know Mandarin, but I found this browser extension [1]
| very useful for quickly translating some words. It doesn't
| translate sentences unfortunately, but I guess you can use
| machine translation for that. I'm curious if/how anyone here has
| integrated LLMs for their language learning process.
|
| Also after you learn a certain amount of basic words in any
| language, I recommend trying to learn that language from inside
| out. Basically instead of translating new words to your primary
| language, look for a dictionary which will explain those words
| with basic ones you already know.
|
| [1] https://github.com/cschiller/zhongwen
| jimmywetnips wrote:
| GPT has been a godsend. For basically being a very competent
| super knowledgeable tutor of every single language.
|
| So if I have some weird question about some language mechanism
| I can ask it in the domain that I know which is English or a
| romance language and it will do some compare and contrast. I
| can ask it about the etymology of the word and the development
| of certain verbs which helps me to really remember things.
|
| The way that it knows what you mean because it has such a vast
| knowledge base but also the fact that it is an expert in both
| source and target languages, and how nowadays with voice chat
| it speaks it with a correct accent means there's really nothing
| else like it to be honest
|
| Like, is there potentially a human being who can surpass the
| abilities of GPT in this domain? Absolutely but that particular
| professor or tutor needs to not only be native proficient in
| both languages, speak both without accidents, but also be
| patient and understand what you're trying to ask without any
| judgment. And now try to do that for one to N language pairs
| and basically the talent pool shrinks to zero. Oh and you want
| it on demand to scratch a curious itch while driving down the
| road. No human can offer this service.
| mncharity wrote:
| > integrated LLMs for their language learning process
|
| Fwiw, TFA's methods page[1] has a GPT section.
|
| [1] https://isaak.net/mandarinmethods/#use-gpt
| mncharity wrote:
| > browser extension
|
| I've pondered doing a browser extension which invasively
| replaces bits of english web text with some other language(s).
| Mousing to get english (which also signals I haven't learned
| that bit yet), and spoken, and discussion. Bit selection
| probabilistic on commonness (in both the language and the web
| page), and on learning. Plus an "I want to learn this bit"
| list. A replacement aggressiveness slider for "not now please".
| Basically making all web pages into code-switching polyglots,
| and shifting general web surfing into an "always learning
| something" zone.
| alberth wrote:
| Different language, but I'd highly recommend Tokyo Vice as a tv
| show.
|
| The main actor, Ansel Elgort, learned Japanese in 1-month time.
|
| https://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/ansel-elgort-learned-japanes...
|
| Granted he probably was learning more pronunciation to say his
| lines. But Japanese actors on set have commented at how surprised
| they were in his mastery of the language off camera in such a
| short amount of time.
| joshdavham wrote:
| 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.
| pastage wrote:
| 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/
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| 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.
| joshdavham wrote:
| 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.
| joshdavham wrote:
| 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 < Polish <
| Arabic), but I'd recommend ignoring their actual time
| estimates.
|
| 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.
| wenc wrote:
| I agree with peer comment. The actor was not learning the
| language but the pronunciation.
|
| In opera, singers usually sing in different languages that they
| don't speak (Italian, German, French) so they learn how to
| pronounce.
|
| I grew up multilingual (3 languages at home, 3 at school) so I
| already have a repository of phonemes in several language
| families that I can draw from. I can learn to to say common
| phrases and sound near native in a number of languages in a
| month. I can also mimic accents. I noticed that someone like
| Trevor Noah has the same ability because they grew up
| multilingual.
|
| But sounding native doesn't mean learning the language.
|
| Japanese also has relatively simple phonology. Just have to pay
| attention to pitch accent. Try sounding native in a tonal
| language in a month.
| vunderba wrote:
| Reminds me of the film Incubus in which Shatner learned just
| enough esperanto to deliver his lines.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| 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.
| alexawarrior4 wrote:
| I had the same problem, the solution is to start with extremely
| easy content, either from a language learning site/channel or
| content targeted at toddlers. Even 2 year olds already have
| quite advanced language skills! Peppa Pig is a perennial
| favorite. You build up from there with childrens' shows,
| cartoons, and at some point later on introduce graded readers.
| Watching full-speed native TV shows is like the final exam
| after 1500+ hours of study, and even then may have a lot not
| understood if you aren't familiar with the slang/dialect. This
| is especially true for heavily dialectical languages such as
| Chinese where it's common to always watch with subtitles on.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Besides watching things aimed at young children, another
| tactic I have found effective is to watch something you
| already know very well in English (or whatever your native
| language). For me, this has been South Park. I'll watch
| episodes that I practically know by heart already, so that
| even if I don't understand all the Spanish words I can pick
| up things from knowing what is happening.
| joshdavham wrote:
| There are five tricks I'd recommend to stay focused.
|
| 1. Try watching something that is actually interesting. Often
| this could be something you'd like to rewatch that you've seen
| before, but now dubbed in your target language. 2. Try watching
| something that you understand. Search "[target language]
| comprehensible input". This content has been simplified for
| people like you. 3. Focus on what you DO understand, not what
| you don't understand. Not only does this not weigh you down, it
| also give you something to focus on. 4. Pop bubble wrap (or
| something). Watching a TV show is effectively "doing nothing"
| and this makes some people uncomfortable (sorta like struggling
| to meditate). If you can find something to do while you're
| "doing nothing", this can help a lot!
| thatsnotmepls wrote:
| Use subtitles and the extension Language Reactor. You can
| translate any sentence or word on the fly.
| cblum wrote:
| I too find it wild when people do it at a beginner stage.
|
| Back when I was learning English during my school years, I only
| started seriously watching native content after I already had
| either a B1 or B2 certificate. At that point I already knew
| most of what was being said, I just wasn't used to
| hearing/parsing it in real-time and without the "padding" that
| comes with learner-oriented content. So the gap I had to bridge
| there was small.
|
| The burden of learning basically everything at the same time -
| word meanings, grammar patterns, native-level speech patterns
| and speed - sounds daunting to me. But I think if you are at a
| life stage where you can put tons of time into it, it works.
| cmuguythrow wrote:
| Yeah this is a huge problem. AFAICT the "solution" currently is
| basically to just grind to the point you can understand Peppa
| Pig or the rough equivalent at ~40%-50% comprehension, and then
| sentence mine each episode painstakingly using something like
| Migaku + Anki flashcards until you can watch a brand new Peppa
| episode at ~80% comprehension. Its painful but after this you
| really "unlock" content and its a lot smoother and more
| interesting after that (the stone finally starts rolling
| _downhill")
|
| I'm making an app to try to help with low level comprehensible
| input, posted elsewhere in this thread
| wwarner wrote:
| Best anki testimonial that I've read.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| I hitchhiked China for 3 months in 2018 after studying Chinese
| for 2 semesters of college beforehand.
|
| Hitchhiking is by far one of the best ways to learn a new
| language. Long hours with a wide variety of individuals, mostly
| one-on-one. If you're young, and you're reading this, go
| hitchhike. It's not as safe as staying home with mom, but it's
| not as dangerous as people who have never done it say it is.
|
| I "achieved intermediate fluency" during that time. But it's gone
| now. If you don't use it, you lose it.
| diggan wrote:
| > Hitchhiking is by far one of the best ways to learn a new
| language.
|
| Another way is moving to another country. You'll learn quicker
| than you think, and no need to learn the language beforehand,
| it'll be great fun to try to understand something completely
| foreign, and gets a lot easier when you see people's faces and
| hands :)
|
| If you're young, you still have time to move to another
| country, and move back home if you get bored/scared. It's not
| as difficult or dangerous as most people think.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Yes agree. I lived in Colombia for 4 years. But hitchhiking
| is learning on overdrive. Not just language, but what they
| like to call "agency".
|
| I slightly disagree that you don't need to learn the language
| beforehand. You don't NEED to, but I would actually recommend
| getting a 4 week crash course beforehand.
|
| Because I've seen so many expats that don't even know where
| to start so they just hang out with other expats and that's
| how you end up living in a foreign country for 10 years and
| you can't speak the language.
|
| The most minimal thing is you need to learn how to point at a
| thing and say "How do you say?" and refuse to revert to your
| native language.
| realusername wrote:
| I've done it this way and didn't learn much, I learned more
| by self-studying after I left. Thinking that I would just
| learn my target language just by being there was my biggest
| mistake.
|
| Sure, if your target language isn't too far from your native
| one, learning it on the go probably works fine. But you
| aren't going to get from English to Chinese casually by
| picking up stuff though, you'll end up knowing a hundred
| words tops for your daily life and that's it.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Yeah that's why I think you need a small, but solid base to
| really take advantage of being there.
| realusername wrote:
| Indeed that's also my opinion, sure if you spend 6 months
| before going there and reach a lower B1, that's not the
| same story.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| You can read some stories about that trip here:
| https://medium.com/p/d4c0358c3097
|
| I wish I came up with a better title.
| vunderba wrote:
| Or go teach. Barrier to entry to becoming an ESL teacher
| particularly in southeast Asia is relatively low, and its the
| best way to integrate into the culture.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| I don't have first hand experience with that, but it seems
| that might actually be a poor way to learn, because everyone
| will want to speak English to you. I've had to selfishly
| refuse to speak English to people many times.
| vunderba wrote:
| Everyone in your class of course, but its not like you're
| wearing a tag that say "English Teacher" when you're just
| walking around.
|
| I also bypassed this pretty easily, my extended family /
| name is Italian, so I would always respond back in Italian,
| and then we'd revert to Chinese pretty quickly because
| _NOBODY_ speaks Italian over there.
|
| Further since you're there on a work visa, you can
| eventually transition into translation work / etc. to
| really refine your language mastery. 3 months isn't bad,
| but I'd recommend a solid year. Following my time in Asia,
| I lived in Russia where I basically didn't use my Chinese
| for a couple years, but on a quick business trip to Taipei
| my fluency was there when I needed it.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| lol nice trick with the Italian.
|
| I'd say to master any language there is no period of time
| that is sufficient. I've even gotten worse at speaking my
| native language since I speak Spanish all day.
|
| Like with exercise, or brushing your teeth, once you stop
| doing it, it will get worse and you will lose "it".
| refactor_master wrote:
| Plug for this tool I've been using for SRS:
|
| https://hanzihero.com/
|
| Yes, it costs a bit of money every month, but it's incredibly
| polished and fun (well, for the first couple of thousands of
| characters) to use. For a language with so many speakers it's
| quite evident that Mandarin lacks the cultural foothold that
| Japanese has gained in the West. Good resources and community
| aimed at non-natives trying to learn are really few and far in
| between.
| comboy wrote:
| Do they have anything in common with Mandarin Blueprint? It
| seems to use very similar mnemonics. How far did the tool get
| you?
| lxe wrote:
| I don't think I can do SRS. My dopamine system is at a point
| where I can't do anything for a long time that isn't interesting,
| has immediate or intermediate rewards, or can capture attention
| for a long time. And on top of that, repeating that habit
| requires all these criteria.
|
| Examples:
|
| Scrolling on the phone?: Basically direct dopamine injected into
| my brain. Can do indefinitely. Not good.
|
| Programming? Sure I can put a few hours in, or even days if
| building quick prototypes where the payoff is imminent.
|
| Reading? Can go on indefinitely, depending on the book: it's just
| continual stream of interesting immersive stuff
|
| Exercise? Well that depends on the activity. Running indoors
| without any stimulation: absolutely cannot do. Cycling or running
| or walking outside with an audiobook, or music? Absolutely:
| constant stimulation plus endorphins.
|
| Learning Piano? Only if I can bang out a few good tunes
| immediately in the session, then I can allow myself to struggle
| with the difficult stuff in between. Absolutely cannot and won't
| do rote deliberate practice. This hinders my progress
| significantly, but at least I have fun.
|
| Learning a language? Well, unless I can get imminent rewards, or
| be continually interested and engaged, there's just no way I'll
| be able to do this. And I feel like rote, deliberate practice is
| just impossible for me to build a habit out of.
|
| One way I know for a fact that I can learn another language is
| through necessity to communicate with it. Let's say I'm thrown
| into an environment where the ONLY way I can get anything done is
| through having to communicate directly, without the aid of
| translators or tools. I think this is how babies learn.
| hintymad wrote:
| > I don't think I can do SRS
|
| No need. :-) Comprehensible Input and immersive language usage
| can be your superpower.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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
| scans of Jademan comics from the 80s.
| hintymad wrote:
| Yes. That's how I learned my native language and that's how
| I learned other languages. Super effective, and super fun.
| No rote memory whatsoever. BTW, Chinese didn't have a
| tradition of producing comic books, but they were big on
| turning classics into so-called Xiao Ren Shu ,a perfect
| source for learning authentic, highly contextual, yet
| simple Chinese. Here is an example:
| http://www.laohuabao.com/xiaorenshu/gudian/9/113957717.html
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Slight aside, but I learned to read with Asterix & Obelix &
| Tintin. The Asterix series in particular was fantastic for
| reading the same story in difficulty languages, and
| savoring the wordplay in each, and how the translators
| played with things. Having visual context to go with the
| words themselves was such a boon, I really am surprised the
| approach isn't given more legitimate respect.
| jmyeet wrote:
| You're quite literally describing textbook ADHD symptoms. If
| you haven't already, you may want to get assessed.
| Apfel wrote:
| 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).
| sn9 wrote:
| The ability to focus on some things but not others is
| perfectly consistent with ADHD.
|
| Disordered attention is the whole deal.
|
| You might find it easy but that doesn't mean others will.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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 is stealing away your ability to
| achieve your true desires.
|
| They might be recommending pharma here, but it would be
| prayer on another forum, or more protein intake on a third.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| 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."
| watwut wrote:
| He is also describing perfectly normal average person.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > 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.
|
| But chalking that up to some scientific sounding stuff you
| pieced together over the years just hardens those limitations.
| It's a very bad habit that's become really common lately. I
| strongly recommend trying to break it. It'll open up some doors
| that you're currently keeping shut.
| lxe wrote:
| s/dopamine/motivation/g
|
| You're right but the core of my sentiment stays the same
| tayo42 wrote:
| 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.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Have you ever actually tried to learn a language? I'm
| learning Korean as a native English speaker. I thought it
| would be a grind, which it kind of is, but learning new
| words and grammar is actually really fun. I use anki cards
| and get a dopamine hit whenever I remember the word
| correctly.
| kanbankaren wrote:
| Yeah, I think OP drank the kool-aid on neurotransmitters.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| 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!
| swatcoder wrote:
| For the typical HN person who might valorize evidence-based
| living, the starting point is probably learning to:
|
| 1. Recognize where you've adopted a belief from little
| direct evidence,
|
| 2. Pay attention to what impact these (inevitably) _many_
| beliefs have on your life
|
| 3. Stop reinforcing and repeating those that are only there
| as invisible walls to justify negative or limiting self-
| image
|
| Even between "dopamine" and "motivation", one belief blames
| an imagined phyiology that might only be remedied through
| some therapeutic medicine/practice that may not even exist;
| the other blames a weak will that you might find some
| satisfaction (or pleasure) in challenging now and then.
|
| Are either strongly evidenced in one's individual case? No,
| but if you have to believe one of them, it may as well be
| the one that lets you wake up some morning and see if you
| might accomplish something surprising.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| 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!
| hbn wrote:
| 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.
| cmuguythrow wrote:
| 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 way to learn a foreign language
| that I know of.
|
| The CI community has come a long way in the last ~5 or so years -
| the general consensus looks a lot like OP's methods, which I
| would summarize as:
|
| 1. Brute force [premade Anki flashcard
| decks](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/810519009) for the first
| ~1k most common words
|
| 2. Start watching comprehensible input as soon as you can,
| ideally for an hour a day or more
|
| 3. [Sentence
| mine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBcQJESGQvc)the
| comprehensible input and add it to the daily SRS flashcard grind
|
| The best summary of these methods that I've found is
| https://refold.la/
|
| Self plug: I've been working on a way to generate Mandarin audio
| comprehensible input using LLMs/TTS models. The idea is that
| there aren't many great CI options between 500 words and ~3k-5k
| words - OP himself mentions that when he started watching Scissor
| Seven Ci Ke Wu Liu Qi he barely understood anything, which is
| pretty hard to "push through" without some hardcore willpower. My
| project https://plusonechinese.com makes Mandarin audio stories
| that are 85% comprehensible at any level from 400 words all the
| way to 8k or more words and then auto-imports the audio snippets
| into SRS flashcards, which makes a CI workflow like this a lot
| easier to engage with at a lower level and without advanced
| willpower. Still working on making the content _truly_
| interesting, but would love some feedback!
| shubb wrote:
| I was hoping to find something like your app. Haven't tried it
| yet but so excited!
| neves wrote:
| Peppa Pig is hard :-)
|
| What would a be a good child animation for learning a foreign
| language? I'm trying to learn a little of French for a coming
| trip.
| triyambakam wrote:
| 1. Check Wikipedia for the major TV networks in the country.
| E.g. Sweden is SVT
|
| 2. Check if the network has a mobile app
|
| 3. Use a VPN to connect to that country and open the app
|
| 4. Look for shows you want to try.
| cmuguythrow wrote:
| Totally depends on what you can get access to in the target
| language. For French - maybe Trotro?
| https://www.youtube.com/@TrotroOfficiel/videos
|
| If you need French Subs + dictionary (and maybe also English
| subs) you can try using the
| [languagereactor](https://www.languagereactor.com/) chrome
| plugin and find a source that has both subtitles (i.e.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIZ2gLCkv5Y)
| hintymad wrote:
| I also find it hard in Spanish, even though it's a kid show.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Thank you so much for sharing!
| 15kingben wrote:
| 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.
| cmuguythrow wrote:
| Yeah DuChinese is I think the premier Chinese graded reader
| app right now. We also have the tap-to-lookup and make-
| flashcard-from-content flows (unfortunately only in our
| system for now, haven't build flashcard import/export yet).
| The thing we have that they don't is the ability to generate
| content about whatever subject you want (which can help make
| it much more personally interesting)
|
| Also while naming quality resources I should also mention
| [Pleco](https://www.pleco.com/) - it's _definitely_ the best
| Chinese dictionary app - highly recommended.
| attheicearcade wrote:
| 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.
| rafeyahmad wrote:
| Your project is very interesting. Thanks a lot!
| braunshedd wrote:
| 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...
| hintymad wrote:
| How do you pass the initial language barriers? I'm trying to
| learn Spanish with Netflix shows and the Language Reactor,
| but I find it extremely hard to understand spoke Spanish. The
| characters speak so fast that I couldn't discern individual
| words or phrases. For a lot of times, they speak as if they
| are murmuring. When I was learning English, my ability to
| understand spoken English grows with my ability to read, but
| in the case of Spanish, I can read a lot more advanced text
| than being able to listen...
| 1stub wrote:
| Learning a language through input is incredibly effective and in
| my eyes much more enjoyable than the traditional classroom
| approach. For myself with Japanese it was after ~6 months of
| immersion and SRS that things really started to click and it
| became much more enjoyable.
| hintymad wrote:
| 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 than that
| between English and Spanish.
| subarctic wrote:
| Is it similar to English? The one thing I remember is there's
| no tenses or gender.
| hintymad wrote:
| That's the simplified part. Otherwise, the basic structure of
| the two languages is subject + verb + object. A lot of
| semantics are constructed with the help of adverbs and
| particles without verb conjugations. For example, in English
| we say I have done that, and in Chinese we say Wo Zuo Liao
| (Or in Taiwan style,Wo You Zuo Liao ,which is even closer to
| English, though I'm not sure if that's from Japanese's
| yatsutakotogaarimasen). In contrast, in Spanish we'd say Lo
| he hecho - different sentence order, and tons of verb
| conjugation.
| indigo945 wrote:
| 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 "grammatical similarity", but at the
| point of fluency we're talking about here (day-to-day fluency
| in _idiomatic_ Chinese), that doesn 't matter anyway, not even
| a bit.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| 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.
| rnoorda wrote:
| In my experience- yes. As you mentioned, there is a steep
| learning curve before you get to that point. Characters instead
| of letters, sounds you're unaccustomed to hearing and making,
| and multiple tones make learning basic phrases much more work
| than many languages. However, once you get some time with those
| difficult pieces, the grammar is actually much easier than one
| would expect. I would much rather learn another language like
| Chinese than a conjugation-heavy one such as Finnish.
| biesnecker wrote:
| Chinese grammar only really seems like English in the
| beginning. It diverges fairly aggressively from intermediate
| onwards.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| 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.
| bmurray7jhu wrote:
| 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.
| gwintrob wrote:
| Love this :) Does anyone have similar experience learning
| Cantonese? I've been using Anki for a couple months now and it's
| great. ChatGPT and Claude have been a big help but they do
| sometimes get confused with Mandarin or go to a more "formal"
| Cantonese that sounds very traditional.
| ilamont wrote:
| I really like the focus on watching or listening to source
| materials every day. This is where Duolingo fails, or at least
| how my SO uses it. It becomes a game for listening to snippets
| and remembering vocabulary, not actual comprehension of language
| spoken by native speakers.
|
| For anyone who is a student, I highly recommend the National
| Taiwan Normal University (Shi Da ) Mandarin Training Center
| summer sessions. The materials are developed and taught by well-
| trained teachers. It's completely immersive in the classroom, and
| it can be applied on the street every day you're there. They have
| programs for younger kids and middle school students (which my
| kids took some years back) as well as college and graduate
| students (http://www.mtc.ntnu.edu.tw/eng/course-seasonal.htm).
| comboy wrote:
| There are apps now that provide you with listening material
| improving your comprehension while also doing some SRS on it.
| Superchinese focuses on pronunciation a lot, Clozemaster on
| listening. HelloChinese and ChineseSkill are more duolingo-like
| but way better for Mandarin.
|
| And Untamed ("Leaving soon") is still on Netflix, it may seem
| cheesy but out of things I tried watching it has surprisingly
| clean, easy to understand language with lots of common phrases
| while also offering some interesting story.
| triyambakam wrote:
| In case anyone reads this, soon or in the far off future... I
| really don't like Anki from a design perspective, but the
| technique behind it is great. I've really been enjoying Mochi [1]
| as an alternative. I am not affiliated, just an unpaid shill for
| a good app.
|
| [1] https://mochi.cards/
| yorozu wrote:
| > I want to reach a level where the legendary Three-Body Problem
| will be comfortably readable.
|
| Good goal. I read the Three Body Problem in Chinese as a non-
| native speaker. It was challenging for me compared to other (non
| sci-fi) books due to the quantity and breadth of scientific
| jargon, but very enjoyable.
| Balgair wrote:
| For those of you like me that had never heard of Bloom's 2 Sigma
| effect :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem
|
| "Bloom's 2 sigma problem refers to the educational phenomenon
| that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery
| learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than
| students educated in a classroom environment."
|
| Um, what?! Why the hell am I not doing this for myself?
| segmondy wrote:
| Dude is not your average human tho. Read their about page.
|
| In the recent past: I skipped out of high
| school in rural Austria to graduate early In a gap
| year, I spun up a $1M non-profit and ran the most viral tech
| conference of the year, featuring Sam Altman, Daniela Amodei,
| 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium and more. Worked through
| 4000 papers and self-taught roughly an undergrad's worth of
| biology in a year, then cold-emailed myself into Oxford to do
| neuroimmunology Self-taught Mandarin in a year to
| fluency Got interested in math and did a math
| undergrad at Berkeley in two years
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| 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. This often
| results in an inadvertent hint. You can turn it off so it only
| ever shows the strokes exactly as you wrote them.
| ximeng wrote:
| 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.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Thanks this is awesome. My wife is chinese and I'm going to try
| and copy some of your methods.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| 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.
| layman51 wrote:
| 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.
| trhway wrote:
| >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.
| seper8 wrote:
| Noone goes without sleep for three days and doesnt pay a
| severe heavy price for it. Stop it with that dumb sleep
| machismo...
| trhway wrote:
| 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"?
| cupantae wrote:
| The point you're making is ridiculous though, because
| what Isaak has done is clearly an unusual accomplishment.
| You're actually just making excuses for yourself, being
| too old to have the motivation. It's a less helpful
| explanation than just plain curiosity - and that's
| available to all age groups.
| almostgotcaught wrote:
| > 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.
| serf wrote:
| 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.
| wenc wrote:
| Author also graduated high school from Austria early, and
| finished a Berkeley math degree in 2 years. I'd say author is
| gifted.
|
| That said, technical PhDs often require a combination of raw
| mental horsepower, persistence and luck. (Working for the
| right advisor in a promising area)
|
| I brought about the same smarts as my peers but they
| graduated in 5 years whereas I did 8 years because I didn't
| have the most promising area of research plus I got unlucky.
| jcla1 wrote:
| 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.
| niek_pas wrote:
| I am currently learning to color grade, am an active bedroom
| musician, enjoy cooking and learning about food science, and
| am training for my first half marathon alongside my PhD. The
| side project thing is definitely real.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Having something to procrastinate on is half the reason I'm
| going to grad school while working full time.
|
| It truly is an excellent hack.
| hintymad wrote:
| 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...
| helge9210 wrote:
| 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.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| He wasn't doing a PhD at the time he was learning Mandarin
| (he's just started his PhD).
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| 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 thing 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.
| modeless wrote:
| 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.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| 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.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| This is impressive and inspiring.
|
| Not to detract at all from his dedication, but it really helps
| that there are so many content/resources in the target language:
| news, kids shows, anime, tutors, emigrant diaspora.
|
| As a side quest, look at another reputedly-hard language like
| Vietnamese, where there is not nearly so much. As an example,
| Google and Microsoft Translator apps speak different variants of
| Vietnamese (Northern and Southern respectively), and (because
| they are trained statistically on whatever limited corpuses are
| available) they seem strangely limited in what they can do/how
| accurate they are.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Very fun blog to read, especially since I've been through a
| somewhat related though far less rigorous experience; a China
| major, spent 2 years in Taiwan while undergrad, then 2 years grad
| school, 7 years total studying modern Mandarin, classical
| Chinese, and some dialects (mostly Taiwanese i.e. Minnan dialect,
| and some Cantonese).
|
| The key, in my experience, is having a young brain. Chinese is
| _different_ from a Western phonetic language and I believe the
| characters are stored in a different part of the brain than are,
| for example, English words. Perhaps in an image processing
| center. Others smarter than I could probably correct & expand on
| this.
|
| When I was 20, I could learn dozens or hundreds of characters a
| week. Decades later, that ability has faded. I've never had a
| very good memory, though, so maybe others are still able to
| absorb and retain the characters (and character combinations) at
| an older age.
|
| Isaak seems exceptionally bright, to judge by his "About" page
| which is kind of amazing. But possibly his best tactic has been
| to immerse himself maximally, force himself to watch Chinese-
| dubbed anime, get his teacher to teach in Mandarin, and go to the
| country itself and spend all day speaking to people which in the
| long run is the way to really get the spoken language down,
| complementing all those characters you're stuffing into your
| head.
| Always42 wrote:
| Any equivalent resources for spanish?
| msvan wrote:
| 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 I passed the HSK6 after a year and a half or so of
| studying, which at the time was the highest level of
| certification offered. I think they changed the system since and
| added more levels beyond 6. You can do amazing things if you're
| dedicated!
|
| Today my Chinese is absolutely unusable, and my views on China
| have soured to the extent that I don't really want to revive my
| old skills. 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. I clearly had a
| lot of excess energy at the time that I could've directed towards
| something better. Knowing Chinese is about as useful as juggling
| and you might as well get really good at juggling if you're
| bored. It'll save you a few thousand hours.
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