study time

[jimba_the_hut]

I have just taken on the daunting task of commencing Mandarin studies and all my lecturers, Tuts etc have said, although learning is not difficult it is HARD WORK.

On this thought can you guys let me know how often you study and for how long, ie, everynight for two hours etc..?!? The reason being, I will be going to Beijing Uni next year and I want to be able to be able to have basic conversation at least.

Cheers.

[wushijiao]

I'm self-taught and my Mandarin is not perfect, so maybe someone else can give you a better answer. Nonetheless, I study about 1-3 hours a day on average. Sometimes I'll study even eight or more hours. But this is balanced off with long periods of laziness and sloth, zoning out and watching a whole season of some stupid American TV series.

Also, with general studying I was lead to belive in the law of diminishig returns. That is, after studying a certain amount you can no longer retain it and it becomes a waste of time. However, in my case with Chinese, it is the opposite. If you only study a bit and retain most of it (say 80%), that's not as good as studying for long periods of time and retaining lesser amounts (40%). Because Chinese, to some degree, is like a series of puzzles, the more info you know, the easier knowing everything else will become, you know?

Tuts etc have said, although learning is not difficult it is HARD WORK.

I agree. I don't find Chinese to be that hard, but it will require a huge amount of time for studying and memorization. So, my advice is to learn how to enjoy the studying itself. If you learn to enjoy the process itself of learning characters, listening to tapes, reading books...etc, and don't just see it as a means to an end, then I think you will be successful.

Anyway, good luck! The more you can learn before going to Beijing Uni the better, I think!

[jimba_the_hut]

thanks for the advice, yeah, you're absolutely right... I do need to find away of enjoying the learning process. Well, I will try to get of my lazy arse, drag myself away from annoying american sit-coms and sought this whole language hing out.

I was inspired the other day when my tut lecturer showed me a video of young western gentleman speaking like they were born speaking mandarin. I must say, for a guy who is not easliy impressed, it easily impressed me!

cheers

I suppose you will be able to monitor my progress as the questions I ask become more difficult to answer.

currently trying to get my head around the whole j q x, z c s, zh, ch r thingy... and oooh, the pain when they throw in a i infront of it......

[Chappie]

Its requires a lot of energy. Its not a 10 min study every day. Its very time consuming.

[gato]

I agree. I don't find Chinese to be that hard, but it will require a huge amount of time for studying and memorization.

Isn't that one definition of "hard"?

[wushijiao]

Isn't that one definition of "hard"?

True.

I don't think I'm the first person to say this though. I once found some random survey on the Internet that demonstrated that people commonly thought Chinese to be ten times more difficult than Spanish. I'm just saying that some people unfairly reject learning the language because they think it is harder than nuclear physics or something. Of course, all languages, in theory, whether French, Inuit, Vietnamese or whatever, are all equally intrinsically difficult, necessitating tons of hard work. The thing that matters is the degree of relation between one's native tongue and the second language, no?

English and Chinese are clealy unrelated, except for a few loan words. Thus, a native English speaker needs to memorize tons of Chinese vocab, with no help in cheating from common Latin, Greek, or Germanic roots. That's the hard thing.

So, in my opinion, Chinese is a moderately difficult spoken language, with a fairly simple grammar, though not that the grammar is nearly quite as simple as people sometimes claim (some people argue that Chinese would be easier if it had a more complex, European-style grammar). In any case, that leaves learning characters, which requires huge amounts of time and effort, but doesn't require magical cognitive skills. If it did, then that would lend a strong support for the pro-romanization people....but that's another debate, eh?