When to Begin Learning Mandarin when Occupied with Another Language

[halfstepdown88]

For some reason, I have been very interested and drawn to learning Mandarin Chinese, both spoken and written. However, I know that learning Mandarin chinese is a massive time commitment, as with learning any language, but that Mandarin seems to demand a lot more time.

I have been teaching myself Spanish for about 5 months, and will spend about 7 weeks in Chile this summer to really immerse myself and try to learn as much as I can.

Learning Spanish in itself, is takes a lot of time commitment (I do enjoy it a lot though!).

I am wondering, when would you begin to learn Mandarin Chinese? I told myself that I would gain at least the proficiency to understand some shows in Spanish and being to have decent conversations with people before I started learning another language.

Another thing I am worried about. While learning Mandarin Chinese, will I still need to devote some time to studying Spanish as well? I do not want to forget all the stuff I have learned in Spanish while studying Mandarin.

So I guess what I am asking is this.

1. When would you begin to learn Mandarin Chinese, if you are already learning a language and

2. How much upkeep will I need to be able to keep my proficiency in both these languages?

Hopefully my question makes sense, at least what I am trying to ask (maybe I should study some more English as well )

[renzhe]

How many languages do you speak? People who speak several languages (even better: people who have successfully learned several languages) find it easier to acquire new ones.

Also ask yourself what your goal is. It is never too soon to start dabbling with a foreign language for fun, to see where it takes you, but if you are serious about learning Mandarin (or Spanish) to the level where you're fluent, it will take a significant time commitment. Chinese languages have their own set of quirks and take lots of effort, but they are not fundamentally different from learning other languages in that respect.

It is also a matter of preference. There are people who chain languages, getting good at one language before moving on to the next, and people who like to multitask, splitting their time between several languages. At the moment, I'm of the former variety (have been concentrating on Mandarin for the last three years, while keeping the other languages active through occasional use), and several other regular posters (wushijiao, atitarev and some others) are chugging along with a disparate set of challenging languages, and making good progress. But they are very experienced language learners. I did learn several languages at once as a kid, but I had more spare time back then.

I don't think that there is a "correct" answer for you, you'll have to figure it out, but in general, people with more language-learning experience can handle the load of parallel learning better. Otherwise, you might get interference, and you start mixing Spanish and Chinese, and get stuck.

Languages live from use. Regardless of how well you know a language, you will always need to continue using it, or it will degrade. This applies to your mother tongue too -- many people who emigrate and adopt the new language will see their native language skills deteriorate and become very poor, especially in terms of vocabulary. Generally, active use (speaking the language or writing it) goes first, while passive skills (listening and reading) stick around longer, and are more easy to keep fresh. Having said that, it is much easier to maintain a certain level once you have really become comfortable with a language (can read books and newspapers effortlessly and hold long conversations naturally without discomfort). You just need to read some, speak some and watch some movies, and you'll keep a basic level. It's much more difficult when you're in early stages of learning a language, where you will forget everything in a week if you don't keep reviewing it.

So personally, I'd recommend sticking with Spanish for the time being, and learning some basic Mandarin on the side to satisfy your curiosity, but not much else. If you're not an experienced language learner, then getting through the ordeal once (with Spanish) will be a priceless experience.

If you decide to learn both at once, you will need good planning and discipline to keep you going through the next couple of years. It's doable, but the people who succeed at it tend to have good planning skills and know how to separate their workloads.

I'm not a trained linguist. I'm just speaking from personal experience. There are several trained linguists on the forum who might offer more scholarly insight.

Edited April 20, 2010 at 10:05 AM by renzhe

[gato]

Spanish is much easier to learn than Chinese for an English speaker. Based on personal experience, if you study diligently, you can become proficient in Spanish in seven weeks in a Spanish-speaking country. Chinese will be much, much harder.

[Lu]

I'd stick with Spanish for now, because you haven't been studying it for very long. Once you're more secure in your Spanish, the question becomes more how much time you have. To keep up Spanish and learn Chinese, you need to spend time on both regularly, so you need to make sure you have sufficient time for that, and plan it well.

Like renzhe, I learned several languages at the same time in school, and got very good to pretty good at all of them, so it's certainly possible to learn several languages at the same time. But it helped that at the time I could just spend all my time learning, and didn't have to work or run a household.

[halfstepdown88]

Thanks for the responses.

I'm tempted to take Mandarin Chinese I in college next semester, but at the same time I do understand where you are coming from with getting a hold of Spanish first.

I don't know what it is about chinese but my curiosity will probably cave in eventually and I'll have to learn it

Also the fact that it is "the hardest language to learn" makes me want to learn it also, just because of how awesome it would feel to have a conversation with someone in a language that right now I COMPLETELY do not understand anything (expect ni hao)

Only thing is also I'd want to live there for a while and I'd have to figure out how I would do that as well.

Maybe my senior year of college (in a year and half) I will take mandarin or something.

Thanks for the responses!

[chrix]

Also the fact that it is "the hardest language to learn"

says who?

[halfstepdown88]

/

Haha exactly, I meant to put the quotes for sarcasm.

I'm not the best at expressing internet emotion

[wushijiao]

As a person who knows Mandarin and actually lived in Chile for a year, maybe I can offer some (hopefully) useful advice.

Basically, I'd agree with renzhe when he says, "So personally, I'd recommend sticking with Spanish for the time being, and learning some basic Mandarin on the side to satisfy your curiosity, but not much else. If you're not an experienced language learner, then getting through the ordeal once (with Spanish) will be a priceless experience."

From my point of view, I'd say that:

1) If you have the chance to study/live abroad, it's not a bad idea to strictly focus on the target language. Hang out with as many locals as possible, go to events, watch TV, read newspapers, books, listen to music...etc. The time on the ground and the cultural and language experiences that go along with it are very valuable. It'd be kind of a waste to study Chinese while in Chile, or vice versa.

2) With that said, when you are back in your home country, it's not a bad idea to dabble around in a few languages until you find one (or more) that really interests you. Personally, I'm fairly convinced that people can learn multiple languages if they have the motivation and the right techniques.

3) Don't underestimate the difficulty of Spanish. I actually feel that news Spanish and formal Spanish is pretty easy for English speakers, but the quickly spoken, slang ridden Spanish is actually pretty hard to understand, especially since teaching methodologies in the US tend to not address it whatsoever.

On a side note, the best Spanish I've ever heard a gringo/a speak was a girl who had only studied Spanish for about a semester before she went to Chile to do a year of high school (she was 18 at the time). Most of her classmates had a difficult time un-learning the sterile and lifeless Spanish taught in school in the US, and adapting to the crazy Chilean accent and vocabulary. However, she did it with no problems.

From talking to her, I realized that: 1) home stays in a country after learning the basics can be effective, 2) people need to be more mentally flexible in throwing off language learned in classrooms, and not to mentally see it as the "correct" form of Spanish, 3) it's absolutely vital to be psychologically flexible, and not feel bad if your speaking/listening level doesn't correspond to how many years you've studied in a classroom. (This kind of happened to be. I was upset with myself that my Spanish was piss poor after studying for almost a decade. In reality, I should have counted the day of being in the country as another sort of "Day 1".)

Anyway, good luck!

[halfstepdown88]

/

Thanks!

Yeah, I definitely don't plan on studying Chinese in Chile!

I'll only be in Chile for 5 weeks unfortunately, I'd love to stay longer.

When did you live there, and why?

I would love to live in another country for a much longer time.

And yes, I am now starting to understand the difficulty of Spanish, especially with the crazy verbs and prepositions, and when I talk to a girl from Panama it is different than when I talk to my mexican friend...

Thanks for everyone's advice. I will focus on Spanish until I can at least have a decent conversation with just about any spanish speaker I meet.

Oh yeah, and also, what level of Spanish did you reach, how long did you think it took you to get there, and what did you do to get there

[wushijiao]

Hi halfstepdown88. To answer your questions:

Basically, I was studying Spanish Lit at la Católica and la Universidad de Chile for one year in 1999-2000. At that point, it had always been a dream of mine to live in South America, and Chile seemed like a good country. I can't say that I really knew what to expect though.

To be honest, from a studying point of view, I did as many unproductive things in my "year abroad". A short list:

-hanging out to much with other gringos

-dating an American girl

- reading way too much

- studying way too much (at the expense of more social things)

- feeling bad about my spoken/listening Spanish level

- clinging on to a fixed notion of self, and not being more culturally fluid

To a large extent, the lessons that learned there paved the way for a lot of the progress I made in learning Chinese. Although, many of the mistakes that I made in language strategy had as much to do with my life at the time as it did with my language theories, so there's not too much to do about that!

Nonetheless, I did achieve a relatively high level, especially in terms of understanding literature, and I have a lot of good memories from the time anyway. But in hindsight, if you don't plan on living abroad for a long period of time, it's probably best to try to get the most out of a limited stay, by interacting as much as possible with the community, speaking as much as possible, while also studying really hard.

I have to go...but I'll write a little bit about how to learn Spanish (in my opinion) and get the most out of the time there tomorrow...

[halfstepdown88]

Thanks!

I am actually going to be studying at the Católica en Valparaíso!

Yeah 5 weeks doesn't seem like too much of a long time.

I'll take your advice though and make sure to throw myself into as many social situations as I can.

I'll also be living with a Host family, and I requested that they don't speak any english, so there will be forced Spanish there.

Thanks, I'll be looking forward to hearing more when you get time.

[wushijiao]

Valparaíso's a great city. I'm sure you like it! By the way, here's a cool song from a soap opera many years ago about Valparaíso-

. (Although, this version has better pictures of the city).

For learning Spanish, in the Chile (or other countries), here's just a few suggestions:

- Try to learn as much as possible before you go. Do a ton of listening practice.

- Try to complete a few good textbooks

- Buy some popular Spanish/Chilean pop songs. Memorize the lyrics, and the listen to them again and again. This is great for learning new vocab, authentic pronunciation, and getting good at connected speech (something rarely emphasized in the US).

- Watch soap operas.

- Try to strike up conversations with people whenever possible. As a beginer/itermediate, it's my experience that roughly only 10-20% of people (regardless of nationality) understand how to speak to a foreigner...by slowing down their speech somewhat and monitoring and simplifying their own vocab. It can be useful to strike up many conversations with people in the community to find these sorts of people.

- Get interested in the local sports team. You can go to games, and chat with locals about the team. Sports are great for serving as a common conversation topic among diverse people.

-Go to church, if you're at all religious (or, if you just want to see what church is like in another country from an anthropological point of view)..

-Go to cultural events.

- Go on road trips, especially ones where you will be forced to buy tickets, book hotels...etc.

-Ask your host family and their friends all sorts of questions.

-You can "invent" homework assignments that will facilitate speaking. Tell them that your sociology prof back in the US wants you to interview at least 10 people about a certain topic.

-Read the newspaper, and books, once you get to that level.

-When I was in Chile, they had a book called "How to Understand the $*$#%^ Chileans/ Cómo Entender los $*$#%^ Chilenos". That book of Chilean slang was very useful. If it's still around in the bookstores there, I'd get it.