Success stories???

[stapler]

The table I looked at had Russian at 1100 hours. If there is a table that ranks Russian at the same level of Chinese I would be very suspicious. I personally find Russian much, much, much easier than Chinese. Though my Russian is only very elementary and it may just be that I'm at the beginner stage and still haven't encountered the "difficult" parts yet. Grammatically Russian feels both difficult but forgiving. Difficult in that learning all the inflection takes some time for an English speaker, but forgiving where unlike Chinese, making one small word order mistake doesn't quickly render your entire sentence incomprehensible to natives speakers who aren't familiar communicating with foreigners. Starting Russian after Chinese made lots of things easier for me. For example Russian palatalisation was not difficult for me to grasp, nor was verb aspect because I had learnt that in Chinese already. The Russian writing system is amazing and made me realise that English and Chinese orthography torture our children for no good reason. More than anything though, there's some deep familiarity with the whole language in general. All the phonemes don't sound foreign in the way Chinese does and there are large amounts of shared preferences when it comes to phrasing. To take just one basic example, in English and Russian you can say "I have an exam" and it works. Where as in Chinese it would be better to say "I will test exam". This sounds trivial, but its this kind of difference in the ways you can express things that make Chinese so difficult at times - because you can't just assume you can phrase something the same way but just swap the vocabulary around. The whole 'conceptual' scheme of the language is different. Oh and hearing word boundaries in Russian is easy, but difficult in Chinese.

 

Both languages have aspects to them that make learning one part of Chinese easier for one speaker over the other. English's emphasis on word order is quite similar to Chinese, and English speakers are comfortable not being able to write their own language without computer assistance, again quite like Chinese. And as above, Russian has palatalisation and aspect, etc. But my feeling is that Chinese is just as hard for native Russian speakers as it is English speakers. I don't really have any strong intuitions about this though.

 

Until someone comes up with a better quantification of time required for (native English) speakers to learn a foreign language the foreign service thing is the best we've got. It might be tied to their particular method, but I think it gives at least a rough guideline for how much time it takes to master languages. I think 2000 hours to reach Chinese fluency sounds about right for the average learner.

[Jabri]

Love this thread, I gained so much just by reading other people's post. Thank you. Writing this message here so I could read it later. 

[imron]

2 hours ago, werewitt said:

Yeah that's much better

It's also the same sort of timeframe I gave in the post you linked to in your first post (2-3 years for general conversation 3-4 years for reading).

 

2 hours ago, werewitt said:

learning Chinese has recently become a thankless drudge for me 

Well, you still have 2-4 more years before it stops becoming a thankless drudge.  At that point it might still be a drudge but at least it won't be quite as thankless.

 

1 hour ago, werewitt said:

Hilariously, it puts Russian next to Chinese in difficulty for them, what's your take on that?

Hilariously it seems you failed to actually read the table.  It lists Mandarin as taking twice as many hours of study as Russian to reach the same level.

[Lumbering Ox]

3 hours ago, stapler said:

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)

That is 2200 hours plus study time. IIRC it woulds out to another 70% for about 1000 for the easy stuff, 1870 for the middle group and a bit over 3700 for Chinese et al. Japanese has an * indicating that it is harder than the others in it's group. I suppose all the hellishness of Korean grammar with all the BDSM of almost 2200 characters and 2 sets of Kana.

 

From what I understand that gets you to a level of about a C1. These are supposed to be skilled language people, OTOH a bit older and I'd guess even small group classes isn't quite as efficient as solo plus 1 on 1, so I'd hazard a guess it roughly washes out. The 3700 hours jives in with JLPT N1 which is considered C1 and estimates I've seen for HSK6 which depending on who you ask is B2/C1.

 

If you want a challenge based on complexity instead of pure difficulty, I don't know why buddy bothered with Chinese. With Chinese the big issues are Characters which require a grind [even with RTH], and pronunciation which again grind. Everywhere else I've read it is considered to have easy grammar or based on recent threads a grammar that is both easy and with impossible to explain exceptions.

 

If you were looking for a complex language, Arabic would seem to be your go to language. As I understand it, it is even worse than Korean and Japanese for complexity. Japanese has 3 huge volumes of grammar about 2200 pages total. There is Finnish, Hungarian, I hear Latin and Greek are also worthy challenges if that is your bag.

A bit of poking around would allow one to find a language that presents the exact sort of challenge that buddy would be keen on. 

 

[werewitt]

 

Hilariously it seems you failed to actually read the table.  It lists Mandarin as taking twice as many hours of study as Russian to reach the same level.

Yet it classifies Russian as level 4 and Chinese as level 5 (whatever that means). In my mind 4 is next to 5 while, say, 1 or 2 aren't.

 

 

is a table that ranks Russian at the same level of Chinese I would be very suspicious.

NEXT, not the same. Вот зануды, поймали на семантической тонкости  

[imron]

1 hour ago, werewitt said:

whatever that means

The definitions are clearly given in the table and say exactly what it means.

[goldy]

I think studying Chinese only gets easier as you get to the advanced level. You have to make a breakthrough beyond HSK 4 and around a solid 5 to feel that way though. Once you start to have a sense for what all the most common characters mean it becomes very easy to understand new words that you have never seen before, especially in context. I studied for 2 years on my own and then spent 10 months in China. By the seventh month of my stay I took HSK 6 and passed it with ease. Then I took an OPI, the ACTFL and scored a 10/10 for oral proficiency. So yea, I think its definitely possible. I just depends how much you put into it. 

[Jabri]

@goldy How many hours do you study per day when you self studied and when you arrived in China?

[Lumbering Ox]

18 hours ago, werewitt said:

 

 

 

 

 

[goldy]

My self study time varied a lot the entire time. Anywhere from nothing to 10 hours per day. Probably an average of 5 hours studying Chinese each day. 

[艾墨本]

11 hours ago, goldy said:

average of 5 hours

That's an incredible feat. Good job!

 

Would you care to share more about how you spent your time studying and how you motivated yourself to study for such long durations every day?

[iekkim]

Very interesting to know how much time each one has placed into studying Mandarin. I hope to one day be able to reach the level of conducting business, purely in Mandarin. I have only started learning and am taking a 3 hours per week class, I've so far taken only 48 hours in total, while simultaneously watching a Chinese TV show (Fighter of the Destiny) on weekdays. I can't seem to practice speaking with anyone at home as we all speak the southern Chinese dialect. 

 

I am waiting to have a Tuttle book delivered, teaching Chinese characters but at present, I use the New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook 1 as my reference and learning in class. So far, I am able to formulate simple sentences but speaking slowly as my accent is still quite poor. I can't wait to be able to fluently speak and read with ease!

[艾墨本]

On 6/2/2017 at 7:57 PM, werewitt said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

OP has edited his lead post and some of his other posts to this face.

[abcdefg]

 

2 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

OP has edited his lead post and some of his other posts to this face.

 

Maybe that means OP is gone. If so, good riddance. He seemed to go out of his way to offend everyone who tried to help.

[Flickserve]

3 hours ago, abcdefg said:

Maybe that means OP is gone. If so, good riddance. He seemed to go out of his way to offend everyone who tried to help.

 

Maybe had an enforced timeout like a naughty child.

 

His method of amusement was to take potshots at forum members. Why did people keep replying to him?

[goldy]

I think my study methods are pretty similar to others on this forum who have reached a high proficiency in Chinese. There is a lot of good info already available and I think I would be mostly repeated what has already been well covered. I think the most important points are:

 

1. I picked a textbook and stuck with it until I knew everything in it and didn't move on to the next section or chapter until I had mastered close to 100% of it (there were often miscellaneous details that I was unable to grasp at the time or figure out on my own so I just let those be and they took care of themselves over time). Doing that consistently long term really adds up.

2. Outside of textbooks, I picked resources that were fun and interesting for me. Those were mostly translated versions of books that I love, or dubbed versions of TV shows and anime that I watched when I was younger (that helps things sink in better because of familiarity, especially with visualization when reading). Once I reached a more advanced level I started watching Chinese shows like 爱情公寓, but even then continued reading and watching translated and Chinese dubbed material.

3. Spoke Chinese every day in China with people who are also interested in speaking Chinese with me (mostly foreigners with advanced level spoken language skills.)

 

Doing things this way, I felt like I was always making progress. It was hard to stop and pace myself some days because I just wanted to keep moving forward knowing that everything I did brought me one step closer to proficiency in Chinese.