Success stories???

[werewitt]

You might have noticed that I've been struggling with motivation recently - after a year of trudging on Mandarin and getting to HSK4 (meh). I am starting to form an opinion now (don't you love my opinions) that there are few if any Western people who actually learn Chinese to any non-toy level, unless they live in China for at least a year. And even with those, it takes them ~10 years to get to a bearable stage. I've been trying to find evidence to the contrary but couldn't  https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/8401-timeline-or-success-stories/. I suppose this is the reality of learning languages that is exacerbated by Chinese being non-IE.

 

So, am looking for confirmations (sheesh, an earnest lie would do) from anyone who got to a reasonable level (as described in that post) in, say, within 5 years without living in China for, say, over half a year. ANYONE? Even fluent at reading newspapers is a reasonable level.

 

PS I hope that the local "pros" have blocked me by now and will not see this. I've looked some of them up and the best I saw was "Oh I've been studying for 6 years and have reached HSK5". That was from 2006. Adds up to 15+ years.

 

Perhaps I could learn some Japanese instead? I suspect it's a bit more rewarding, given I love anime - especially yaoi 

[艾墨本]

If you simultaneous ask for proof while also insulting people that have studied for a long time, why do you think you'll get helpful responses?

[Lu]

1 hour ago, werewitt said:

You might have noticed that I've been struggling with motivation recently

Well, that could explain some of your attitude.

Can't help you with the success story, I spent six years in China and Taiwan so I don't qualify. As to motivation: what's your goal, what are you learning Chinese for? Are you making progress towards that goal? Is that goal more motivating than watching yaoi in Japanese? If not, by all means go study Japanese instead.

[davoosh]

This isn't exactly a success story since I've been studying on and off for 10 years, but probably relevant.

 

I've mentioned this before, but for a language and culture as different as Chinese, I find that being in China is really necessary to achieve a level that's above 'toy level'. I say this because when I was in China, even though my level was decent, group conversations were still very difficult to participate in (and other posters have echoed this) due to cultural references, local pop culture, shared experiences, and so on which non-natives just don't have - unless you are extremely motivated, I think it would take a good few years at the minimum to reach a level where you are able to participate freely in group conversations with natives. I don't know if this is what you mean by 'non-toy level'.

[querido]

All of the below to werewitt:

In the early years of my studying I might have encouraged people to study and offered to help them get started. But now I would say that, for most people, unless you have some heavyweight reason for learning Chinese, like a native-speaking wife and/or inlaws, or an adoptee, or actual career-progression path (in reality), the price is too high - for most people. Some smart people take a defiant attitude and set out to prove they can do it, with no other major reason, and for some people that is sustainable. For me ("even me" I say, knowing my history), this stubborn, defiant attitude just gradually wore out. It was a little juvenile anyway, I guess.

If your native language really is Russian, and English really is a second language for you, then I was impressed with your English and had no doubt that you're smart and talented. But listen: I once thought I was smart and talented too. It isn't enough. Need an almost life-or-death reason (and there's science behind that). I get the impression from your original post that you don't have one. To most people I would say, yeah, just let it go.

Many people will say that you could find a way to enjoy your studies for their own sake and continue with a more relaxed attitude about it. If you do that you would likely become one of us (or maybe I should speak only for myself) who've been here ten years or more with no proof that it was "worth" it by the usual measures, other than that it has been an interesting journey. It has been. Now all of my friends are native Cantonese speakers. Yeah, it's been interesting. "Worth it?" Hmm, I don't know. Could have done many other things with this much time and effort and money, maybe succeeded at something at which I had actual talent. :-)

The total immersion guy at AJATT and the total-focus-and-attention-to-detail guy Argüelles come to mind, but I don't have the strength for it. Do you?

Lastly, it's our own common-sense guy imron (see e.g. https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/34107-what-level-of-chinese-can-you-achieve-outside-of-china/?page=4#comment-255527 ) who would be my own guru if I could "keep my act together". Can you? And can you make it as though life-or-death for yourself?

Ok, good luck. 

 

[dtcamero]

2 hours ago, werewitt said:

after a year of trudging on Mandarin and getting to HSK4 (meh). I am starting to form an opinion now (don't you love my opinions) that there are few if any Western people who actually learn Chinese to any non-toy level

 

i'm able to get around and do stuff in mandarin after three years study. a few points...

 

1.ya that attitude will be debilitating

 

2. during the first six months or so your progress is very obvious. after that for a year or more you may feel like you've plateau'd but in fact your learning is just relatively less. each new word is a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole. there is a learning desert during the intermediate phase where you're working a lot and it feels like you're getting nothing out of it... in any language. it's tough and we all have to work through this. 

 

3. being in the country for 6 months over the course of a 5-year language project isn't really such a big committment. 1 month a year or so can do it... and you get big returns if you make an effort to talk to people. china's very easy for students in that there are tons of people with no interest in speaking to you in english haha

 

4. i self-studied japanese to fluency, and i do think it's a little bit easier because it requires fewer characters. I wouldn't blame you for doing japanese first or instead.

 

I will say that becoming literate fast was the key for me in both languages... and doing so required getting over the wall of chinese characters.

I used Heisig's Remembering the Kanji book to memorise 2,000 characters before beginning any serious japanese study...3.5 years later I passed the jlpt1.

I used his Remembering the Hanzi books for chinese and it has served me equally well. 

 

I don't know what my HSK level would be know...TBH I haven't much interest in the HSK because I can't write longhand and IMHO learning to do so just to take a written exam is a waste of time.

But I can talk to my chinese girlfriend pretty easily. I can explain my location to the driver when I hail a car using Didi. I can buy things on taobao and check-in at the local police station when I'm in china.

for me that's the real test... getting stuff done in life, in chinese. and i'm western and i did it in three years. 

 

americans don't study languages, so they in particularly will look at me like i'm a magician but there's nothing special about it. we are all born with the machinery to get used to new languages. 

[Wurstmann]

I wouldn't look at years. Hours are a much better measurement. The first time I started to learn was in 2012 I think and for 5 years my level is pretty bad. But I know how many times I completely stopped learning and had to restart almost from scratch. If I compare my level to the actual time spent, it's quite alright. 

[Flickserve]

2 hours ago, werewitt said:

You might have noticed that I've been struggling with motivation recently - after a year of trudging on Mandarin and getting to HSK4 (meh). I am starting to form an opinion now (don't you love my opinions) 

 

 

Being that sort of person with opinions, you should not give up. Prove it to yourself you can acheive fluency.

 

Learning Japanese will not benefit you.

[Wurstmann]

6 minutes ago, dtcamero said:

I haven't much interest in the HSK because I can't write longhand and IMHO learning to do so just to take a written exam is a waste of time.

 

You can take the test on a computer.

[陳德聰]

I reached HSK5 after my second year of university right before going to China for a year. I am not sure what "toy" level means but I was certainly capable of communicating with people and consuming Chinese media at the time.

 

Half a year would really have been enough time in China though because I spent the second half of the year skipping class to lie in bed watching anime in Japanese with Chinese subtitles.

 

I still haven't taken the HSK6 but I now work as an interpreter and translator so I suspect (I mean, I'd rather hope) that I would pass it no problem.

 

Note: I studied Japanese to a similar level to my pre-China Chinese concurrently with Chinese. So maybe if you struggle with motivation what you really need is diversity. Also, from a polyglot perspective your attitude is actually a pretty big obstacle (obviously nobody wants to hear that but really, language learning takes dedication and openness).

 

Big Edit: I add, when I returned from China I began working full time in a retail setting with regular Chinese customers.

 

Part of my success involved being personable lol, in that I made and maintained friendships with Chinese-speaking people from start to finish of my degree (main specialization was not actually in Chinese) on QQ and then WeChat. I used to write daily "blog" posts in Chinese and post them to italki, and had regular language exchange dates via audio chat on QQ. All of this before going to China, but was only sustainable because I wasn't an ass. I actually got along with my chat partners and we met when I finally arrived in China.

 

I was listening to Chinese talk radio daily; my favorite banal station was 浦江之声 because I knew I'd be going to Shanghai, and it was easy listening that I could understand roughly 80% of pre-China.

 

I co-hosted a weekly language meetup in my city. Again, impossible to sustain if you are not socially inclined.

 

I borrowed my best friend's little sister's Chinese Saturday School textbooks and made my own word lists.

 

In essence, I was a ridiculous language nerd.

[trevorld]

I'm a 32-year-old economist who has been self-studying Mandarin in the US for the past four years.  I started studying after I became engaged (and then married) to a Chinese woman I met at an American university.   Unlike a paid tutor (which I really should get one of these days to drill my speaking skills with) my wife isn't terribly interested in teaching, practicing, drilling, or correcting my Chinese so I have mainly advanced my Chinese through self-study.  So far I've never taken a formal Chinese course, hired a tutor, or lived in China (other then a couple short trips with my wife).  However my wife once a month or so drags me to social gatherings with her Chinese friends where they mainly speak in Chinese and twice we've gone to China for a couple of weeks to visit her in-laws and college friends.  We usually watch American shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime with just English subtitles but sometimes we'll watch together Chinese shows and/or English shows with Chinese subtitles.  I'll sometimes speak a bit of Mandarin with the proprietor of a local Sichuanese restaurant (who knows that I want to order their vegetarian double-cooked pork dish without me saying it), my Chinese friends who practice the same (Japanese) martial art, my Chinese colleagues at my department/office (who loved to play 《拖拉机》扑克游戏), my in-laws when they Skype with my wife, and random Chinese parents at the local park where I take my baby son on walks.  I also have some Chinese friends on lang-8 (where we correct each others writings).   So although I'm not in China I do have plenty of natural opportunities to use my Chinese outside of China and some good social motivation to learn it (although as a 32-year-old economist with a statistical programming background I have absolutely zero financial incentive to learn it and professional considerations will likely prevent me from doing a really long extended trip to China).

 

Hypothetically if you learn at a manageable self-study rate of 10 new words a day (including 3 new characters a day) after five years you should know more than 15,000 words and 5,000 characters.  Even throwing in a 20% 'leech' rate on flashcards that still puts you at passive recognition of at least 12,000 words and 4,000 characters.  This is definitely way past the point where you should be able to find some modern vernacular Chinese media you can enjoyably consume including less-technical newspaper articles, TV shows (with subtitles), and video games.  I didn't study that rigorously (I try to keep my flashcards review across all subjects to under 15 minutes a day) but still after 4 years of self-study the "Hanzi Statistics" plugin in Anki says I can recognize 3434 unique Hanzi in context including 87% of the 3000 most frequent simplified Hanzi (disclaimer: I didn't write but now maintain a fork of that open-source plugin).  Although there are a bunch of leeches I still can't recognize (mainly from when I earlier foolishly tried to aggressively learn lower-frequency HSK words out of context) I've attempted to learn all but three hundred of all the New HSK words and can successfully recognize more than 70% of the New HSK words in context.   All in all, based on how I tagged my cards Anki says I can recognize seven thousand words (and I know from my Chinese reading that I can definitely understand several thousand additional words in context).  Because reading books is one of my main hobbies I've read among other things (like graded readers) a couple dozen volumes of Chinese manhua (mainly 《乱马1/2》 and 《金太郎：上班族》 but also some native Chinese stuff like 《绝对小孩》) and at times I've definitely put down my phone and enjoyed what I was reading getting the gist but not 100% comprehension.  It is always a great feeling when you get a Chinese pun without needing to look anything up.  I did recently read on the Chinese section of the New York Times an article on whether getting married really makes people happier which I could definitely understand the gist of without needing to resort to a dictionary.  《家有儿女》 and 《爸爸去哪儿？》 are examples of Chinese TV shows (with subtitles) I was able to enjoyable watch a few episodes of and get the gist of without needing to resort to a dictionary.  Someone self-studying for five years should definitely be able to find some native Chinese media they can enjoyably consume and get the gist of without need to constantly reference a dictionary or encyclopedia.

 

I think a perfectionist goal of "100% comprehension" of a text without need to look at a dictionary or encyclopedia might be a little harsh for all but the simplest of media.  As a 32-year-old native English speaker who has read thousands of (English) books and got a perfect verbal score on the SAT college entrance exam I still don't know every word in most English books I read (and I usually don't bother to look the ones I don't know up) nor do I remember the exact word of every English word I hear or want to speak.   For example what is the exact name of the special thingamajigger that lets you remove the rear cassettes of a rear bicycle wheel so you can access the inner ball bearings?   It doesn't really matter that I don't know it, if I use a couple sentences to describe such a tool at a bike shop they'll understand which one I'm talking about and will happily sell one to me.  If I watch an episode of Family Guy or The Simpsons and enjoyably laugh at 30 jokes it doesn't matter that 20 other cultural joke references fly over my head.   Although I can definitely enjoy and get the gist of most of what I do read but if I really wanted a 'complete' understanding of any rich English text then even as a well-educated native speaker I would need to constantly look things up in a dictionary and/or encylopedia and possibly even cross-reference with other materials and even then likely only the creator will understand every single one of the references in the text.

[imron]

1 hour ago, werewitt said:

You might have noticed that I've been struggling with motivation recently - after a year of trudging on Mandarin and getting to HSK4 (meh)

Learning Chinese is a grind.  Don't expect to be anywhere near reading native content without aid after a year.

 

You need maybe ~10,000 words for general newspaper articles to be accessible, and that assumes you've also been practising reading and not just flashcarding vocab, because flashcarding vocab doesn't train the skills required for reading.

 

To reach 10,000 words in a year you would need to learn 30 words a day, every day for the entire year.  Which is basically impossible because you need to learn those words properly and not just 'got it right on my flashcard review', and that takes regular exposure of the words in context over time.  At 30 words a day it's unlikely you'll learn those words to the required depth, not to mention going at that pace is not long-term sustainable and will quickly cause burnout.

 

At a more realistic and sustainable pace of say 10 words a day (plus additional reading and other study) it would take you 3 years to get 10,000 (10 * 365 * 3 = 10,950).

 

And that's just for text to become reasonably accessible without much external aid.  You then need much more (plus plenty of reading practice) for it to become comfortable.

 

There's no way to avoid this.  You just have to set your expectations appropriately (3-5 years of daily learning) and then grind through it.

 

This is why learning Chinese is hard.  Not because the language is particularly difficult, but because of the continuous grind without reward over a period of years that is required just to reach basic literacy.

 

Many people give up once they realise just how much of a grind it is, and you are now at the point when this realisation is sinking in.

 

You won't find any success stories from people who haven't done that grind.  The success stories you are looking for are all from people who have grinded through it. 
 

1 hour ago, werewitt said:

So, am looking for confirmations (sheesh, an earnest lie would do) from anyone who got to a reasonable level (as described in that post) in, say, within 5 years without living in China for, say, over half a year. ANYONE? Even fluent at reading newspapers is a reasonable level.

 

Remember that guy whose Chinese you were criticizing in that other thread?  He only spent 3 months in China, and has been grinding away for 3 years since then and apparently now reads novels, albeit with some dictionary aid.  If he keeps it up for another two years I imagine he will be able to read novels and newspapers without much aid.

 

Do you have the same determination?

[werewitt]

Well I didn't want to make this another motivation thread, I was asking for facts. I was looking for information, which only @trevorld's post provides. I might start another thread about motivation sometime - but essentially main reasons are I've got nothing to do and I love puzzles (ex math nerd, many years ago). Perhaps I need to resume travelling, although, again, meh. Been many places over the past 15 years, plus Australia is far from everything other than a few South Pacific islands.

 

1 hour ago, imron said:

Remember that guy whose Chinese you were criticizing in that other thread?  He only spent 3 months in China, and has been grinding away for 3 years since then and apparently now reads novels, albeit with some dictionary aid

@imron, please. I'll assume you are simply an extremely  positive person who refuses to recognise an only slightly veiled bullshit even when it's smeared all over him. "That guy" says: 

Quote

I read this in my Pleco reader, so I could easily look up words I didn’t know. 

Anyone with 3 months worth of Chinese grammar and able to use their finger to click on the screen without spasms after half an hour can do that. Not to speak of being able to refer to the English translation of this rather Asimov-esque book when the original gets too thick.

 

9 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

I reached HSK5 after my second year of university right before going to China for a year.

That would sound good if you added something like "and I never spoke a word in Chinese before starting that study". You might be one of those ABCs who grow up speaking Cantonese at home. https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/37913-mandarin-or-chinese/?do=findComment&comment=284429

[陳德聰]

37 minutes ago, werewitt said:

That would sound good if you added something like "and I never spoke a word in Chinese before starting that study". You might be one of those ABCs who grow up speaking Cantonese at home.

 

You really crack me up. Firstly, I'm not ABC, and secondly, neither of my parents speak Chinese. My dad sometimes says "knee how" as a joke.

 

There was a young woman in my senior classes who had not been to China, and she followed along just fine, got her degree just the same. No idea if she still speaks or not but she was better than another woman who'd spent a year in Taiwan. There were also Cantonese speakers who spoke Cantonese at home but never attended Chinese school as children who were appallingly bad at Mandarin so I think your premise is a bit flawed but meh.

 

If you don't want to believe it's possible, then don't believe it's possible. You ask for info and someone gives it but I guess it doesn't confirm your beliefs so oh well.

 

P.S. Your forum searching skills are superbly impressive.

[imron]

27 minutes ago, werewitt said:

Anyone with 3 months worth of Chinese grammar and able to use their finger to click on the screen without spasms after half an hour can do that

That was talking about his first novel.

 

If you kept reading he then says:

 

"I’m currently about 2/3rds the way through Moyan’s Frog (蛙) which will soon be my first novel read on paper with minimal dictionary assistance"

 

I've read that book, and I think reading it after three years continuous study is an obtainable goal. 

[Flickserve]

45 minutes ago, werewitt said:

I was looking for information, which only @trevorld's post provides.

 

Did you thank him for his contribution?

 

Learning some manners with Chinese goes a long way.

[imron]

1 hour ago, werewitt said:

I was asking for facts

Ok here's a fact.

 

It will take a minimum of 3-5 years of regular, continuous study before newspapers and/or novels become accessible without an external aid.

 

At that point you will still encounter many unknown words and characters but you'll be able to continue without looking them up and without it negatively impacting understanding too much. 

 

From there you'll need to read maybe 10 or so novels before reading becomes comfortable. 

[werewitt]

On 2017-6-3 at 1:14 PM, imron said:

It will take a minimum of 3-5 years of regular, continuous study before newspapers and/or novels become accessible without an external aid.

Yeah that's much better than sugary pep talk which this forum is full of. Now I need to think if I have better use for these 5 ( ...-10) years given learning Chinese has recently become a thankless drudge for me 

 

I don't want to turn into one of those people who socialise here for 10+ years without making any progress (perhaps not even making any efforts either).

 

Some random comments:

On 2017-6-3 at 0:34 AM, querido said:

If your native language really is Russian, and English really is a second language for you, then I was impressed with your English

Thanks, but proving to random people on the Internet knowledge of languages is kinda tricky. Even here barely anyone posts more than a couple of sentences in Chinese, I wonder why. И серьезно, занятие это дурацкое и неблагодарное, так что не будем. Я искренне надеюсь что Google Translate подавится этими русскими фразами и сблюет Ж) .

 

On 2017-6-3 at 0:26 PM, 陳德聰 said:

P.S. Your forum searching skills are superbly impressive.

过奖，过奖。It took all of 5 minutes - I had to finish by 12pm sharp (iTalki) or I would have found something more suitable.

[stapler]

Success as defined in that post, within 5 years, is truly exceptional. To achieve that kind of outcome you would need to live and breathe Chinese all day every day for many years. The amount of people who can maintain that kind of discipline are incredibly rare.

 

I consider myself the most common type of Chinese learner: someone who does it in their spare time. What I mean by this is that I've been studying it for around 4 years. I spend maybe 15-30 minutes practising Chinese 4-5 days a week (just a rough estimate. My practice is not at all consistent). I have never lived in a Chinese speaking country. I can read Chinese novels without a dictionary. I can also read newspapers, albeit much more slowly, without a dictionary. I can communicate most things in written Chinese, albeit with large amounts of grammar mistakes and with a non-idiomatic expression. My listening and speaking abilities are poor. I can carry on basic conversations with a sympathetic and patient speaker (most of my longest conversations have been with Chinese people on trains while holidaying in China). But often while speaking I am at a loss for words or cannot formulate what I want to say quick enough to have a free flowing conversation. I can understand a lot of Chinese here on the streets (in Australia) when say waiting at the traffic lights or in the supermarket. I can watch TV dramas or movies with subtitles (in Chinese). Without subtitles I get lost very quickly. I can't follow Chinese people having group conversations. I still have lots of trouble with non-educated/non-standard Chinese people's accents when they talk about even the most basic topics. Chinese TV news is largely incomprehensible to me.

 

To get to this level I have probably spent around 500-1000 hours over 4 years. Accordingly to the foreign service institute thing, you need spend 2200 hours, with time in country, to get a fluent level of Chinese. That's around 1-2 hours every single day without exception for 5 years. As above, most people cannot do that.

 

edit: Japanese apparently takes even longer than Chinese. So if you cannot handle Chinese stay away from it (and Korean and Arabic)

[werewitt]

  On 6/2/2017 at 10:16 PM, stapler said:

edit: Japanese apparently takes even longer than Chinese. So if you cannot handle Chinese stay away from it (and Korean and Arabic)

That DLI table is for native English speakers. Hilariously, it puts Russian next to Chinese in difficulty for them, what's your take on that? Do those difficulties add or subtract or are they essentially rubbish for everyone else but "native English speakers"? Plus it measures not abstract hours but time that needs to be spent in their drilling-heavy course (see FSI courses), but that's a minor detail.