Language Learning Thread: Tips & Advice Plz

[Skykid]

Not a thread about any one language in particular, just looking for tips and advice from language learners (I know plenty of you have taken on Japanese to please the JRPG/Anime gods).

I've finally knuckled down to mandarin (puts gun in mouth). I figure I should at learn it so I can tell my GF's parents how much of a bitch their daughter is.

At the moment I'm grasping elements of the language that make no sense when applied to English and teaching my tongue more acrobatics than a high-class male escort. Using Rosetta Stone, which would actually be pretty good if the microphone response worked properly and I didn't have to shout at my laptop over and over.

Anyway, I decided to get a little notebook and take it around everywhere. Whenever I learn a new phrase or how to say something, I write it down as reference. I just figure building your own phrasebook is a good way of learning the basics.

If anyone has any good language learning tips, or successful methods from starting out through to comprehensive ability, I'd certainly appreciate any ideas and advice. Thanks much!

[Eno]

Anki comes really handy for that. There's user-made decks that you can use or just create your own, even if you chose to go with the former it's still nice to have your own deck to organize your list of words/expressions.
This is another good resource, especially for the forums.

[Bananamatic]

Do your daily reps and don't be a busta.

[rancor]

Shame you've already got a GF because the chance of new, foreign poon really puts a flame under your ass to buckle down and study.

That's all that motivated me my first few years here.

[Skykid]

Anki comes really handy for that. There's user-made decks that you can use or just create your own, even if you chose to go with the former it's still nice to have your own deck to organize your list of words/expressions.
This is another good resource, especially for the forums.

Awesome links, thanks so much. DL'd the Anki and started messing with setting up cards already, adding a few phrases in there. I'll use it as an accompaniment to the notebook - something a little more mobile - but I like the fact you can test yourself. Just trying to figure out how to lift the daily limitation so I can view cards more than once!

Shame you've already got a GF because the chance of new, foreign poon really puts a flame under your ass to buckle down and study.

That's all that motivated me my first few years here.

Honestly, as great a language barrier as possible when looking to nail foreign chicks is completely preferable: no small talk, no arguing, no time wasting discussion. Actions do the talking.

Now my GF speaks decent English I'm in a world of pain in the ass.

[Rob]

(I know plenty of you have taken on Japanese to please the JRPG/Anime gods).

(shitty) Literature.

Listening is hard. You might be unpleasantly surprised by how long it takes to get even half terrible at listening. Start clocking the hours as soon as you can catch any amount of words. Wake up in the morning and reach for the headphones/let the brainwashing begin. I get podcasts from itunes.

If you're interested in reading more than signs, the quantity of vocab is the killer. Learn new words every day, read every day (as soon as it's possible). Anki will definitely keep you chained down. I'm guessing you desire the chains if "comprehensive ability" is the goal.

[Skykid]

(I know plenty of you have taken on Japanese to please the JRPG/Anime gods).

(shitty) Literature.

Listening is hard. You might be unpleasantly surprised by how long it takes to get even half terrible at listening. Start clocking the hours as soon as you can catch any amount of words. Wake up in the morning and reach for the headphones/let the brainwashing begin. I get podcasts from itunes.

If you're interested in reading more than signs, the quantity of vocab is the killer. Learn new words every day, read every day (as soon as it's possible). Anki will definitely keep you chained down. I'm guessing you desire the chains if "comprehensive ability" is the goal.

I'm doing my best to sponge-soak all the words around me, listening out for things I recognise and things I don't. I often get the gist of certain conversations, although that's usually by having a gist of what the conversation is probably about as opposed to actually understanding it - but occasionally I grab a few key phrases that point me in the right direction.

Thanks for the advice. I've loaded language lessons onto the MP3 player so any time I feel like listening to music I end up being force fed a load of random chatter I don't understand.

[Xyga]

Putonghua's grammar is not very complicated, the only really annoying thing IIRC is the incredibly high number of particles you'll need to learn and identify in the sentences.

Really start by putting all your effort into grammar, if you're serious about it you'll need only about 6 months to 1 year to master the essentials .
This is nothing compared to many other languages.

Then never stop learning new characters and words, just a few every day - but I mean every friggin day, because you need to know several hundreds and later thousands to be at ease.
Write them down, in lines, like crazy it helps a lot.
Check the HSK (hanyu shuiping kaoshi) levels and you'll see what I mean.
Full form characters (old forms still used in Taiwan and Guangdong/HK) can be useful, try to learn some from time to time.


Also get the tones right if you want people to understand you and avoid embarrassing moments.

To summarize:
- Grammar, grammar, grammar.
- Learn, exercize every day even if just a little (1 or 2 hours) but don't take breaks or you'll start forgetting stuff.
Chinese language is all about repetition.

[Skykid]

^ Sweet, you're a previous learner then?

I feel optimistic about the timeframe you gave - and that's a nice thing, usually I feel completely the opposite and like I'm about to drown in the deep end. I think I'm going to hold off on reading characters and just try to focus on speaking initially - is that a problematic method?

This is nothing compared to many other languages.

Really? I thought Mandarin was considered the world's second most difficult language after Arabic? I'm totally happy for you to smash that as false though.

[Xyga]

Yes I've learned chinese for about 3 years between 2000 and 2005 with pauses (bad) but I never got serious enough about it so I never came even close to become fluent.
Stopped learning completely in 2006 because of life shit (heavy eye surgery) and never went back to it, too busy with work now.

In these three years I have taken only one semester of actual language course in China, at beijing language and culture university.
This semester was 1000x more worthwile compared to what I did before (classes in France U and self-learning).
But it was kind of intense.

What I've retained is that the grammar - and only the grammar I don't mean the language itself - is not as vast and complicated as it can be in other languages I've learned or just been introduced to before.
From what other students and friends explained to me I could see that japanese grammar/system is twisted and tricky in comparison.

What's hard in chinese is the amount of stuff to learn, there are so many characters, and just one character can have tens of different meanings depending on the tone and grammatical context, it can drive you crazy.
If you aim for fluency you'll feel there is no end to it and it is true, Chinese is a language you learn every day of your entire life, you cannot just chat around and hope to reach a decent level.

However I don't think it is one of the hardest languages because a serious learner can get to a level good enough to have basic conversations and be somewhat autonomous in about a year or two.
Keep in mind that even if you can't understand each other, you can always write the characters because everybody uses the same.
Don't waste your time learning only how to type characters on a keyboard, you must know how to write them properly, this will save you.

[ZacharyB]

If I remember correctly, typing the chinese characters on a keyboard requires knowing the character elements. I forget the correct word for them. The little character pieces of a character. It isn't like typing Japanese.

[Xyga]

If I remember correctly, typing the chinese characters on a keyboard requires knowing the character elements. I forget the correct word for them. The little character pieces of a character. It isn't like typing Japanese.

There's a phonetic method as well (using pinyin) wich isn't really convenient but better for beginners.
Anyway typing is the enemy of any person who wants to learn chinese, never start with this, it is not even good for the chinese themselves.
Chinese teachers are desperate to see how fast the quality of their students's writing has decreased since computers became widely available in China.

[Randorama]

Really? I thought Mandarin was considered the world's second most difficult language after Arabic? I'm totally happy for you to smash that as false though.

Well, this is false, and my comment is that of a linguist who does, among other things, research on first and second language acquisition (and publishes it, even!).

Nobody has ever offered an actual measure on "learning difficulty", because it is a subjective and compound variable. Several factors (in the tens) play a role, and each individual can or cannot exploit one or more of these factors to his/her own advantage.

What you really need is:

1. An extremely positive attitude;
2. An extremely positive attitude;
3. An extremely positive attitude;
...
N. A linguist's attiitude.

All the other suggestions are entirely correct, but spend time, every day, to explicitly compare the languages you speak with Mandarin. Place all the good motivation and focus you have, much like you would approach a daily workout approach to win a gold medal at the olympics. We know, by now, that unmotivated individuals invariably fail miserably, and motivated ones can overcome any obstacle.

Then, have a very precise, scientific approach to your studies. Do not just learn phrases, learn rules of grammar in an explicit form, like an declarative programming language. Mandarin has variable word order depending on which particles are part of a sentence. English also has variable word order, but it works in a slightly different way (compare: Mario eats up the soup vs. Mario eats the soup up). Don't just learn word order, learn the rules behind it, write the rules down, and practice them, compare them to English or whatever other languages you speak, and so on.

The same holds for morphology (word-formation), semantics and vocabulary, and phonology. In particular, for tones, look up for guides on how to pronounce each tone (there's only four of them). You can't just pretend to repeat them: you can actively focus on how you move your mouth on vocal apparatus, to produce the tone you need to produce. You only need to study the correct method. Then, practice characters every day. Write a lot, because written memory is roughly ten times more powerful than other types of memory.

Aside this, practice with someone who has patience and a good explicit understanding of grammar. Avoid people who can't answer your questions on grammar, and answer something like "I just do it in this way". You need explicit feedback all the time, to progress steadily. This really means: avoid family, ask experts.

Also, comics are very helpful, much more so than tv. With comics, you can re-read when you do not understand everything, and receive help from the pretty pictures.

[Skykid]

Guys, thanks so much for the advice. I think positivity is the hardest thing to muster in the beginning, because there's such a massive climb ahead. I spent this morning trying to nail the four tones, and did a little practice rearranging some of the sentences I actually know.

I'll chip away at it and not try to run before I can walk. I won't know what I'm aiming for in terms of fluency until I have some basic ability to improve upon. Hopefully I'll know when I get there, but I'd just be happy to be able to hold simple conversation for now.

Great help, all of your suggestions are on board. And I'm glad both Rando and Xyga are agreed that it's not the hardest language on planet earth. That's given me a confidence boost.

[Eno]

Awesome links, thanks so much. DL'd the Anki and started messing with setting up cards already, adding a few phrases in there. I'll use it as an accompaniment to the notebook - something a little more mobile - but I like the fact you can test yourself. Just trying to figure out how to lift the daily limitation so I can view cards more than once!

The thing with Anki is that you're not supposed to worry about when or how often to review cards. You just go through your daily repetitions and Anki schedules an optimal interval for the cards based on how easy you rated them this and in previous times.
Back in Anki 1 there was a cram mode that allowed you to review cards multiple times out of schedule in order to study for tests and stuff, but in Anki 2 it has been substituted for something else, I think it's now done via the filtered deck system.

Write a lot, because written memory is roughly ten times more powerful than other types of memory.

Do you have any references for that? I've been interested in kanji/hanzi amnesia but nothing of what I read(not academic sources, I confess) seems to nail down that writing does yield better retention.

[GaijinPunch]

Shame you've already got a GF because the chance of new, foreign poon really puts a flame under your ass to buckle down and study.

That's all that motivated me my first few years here.

Yeah, then fucked it up and got married!

[xavierjesus]

Fuck you all and your foreign poon...

I aint seen NO fuckin poon in ages goddamm!

#donthavekids

[HenAi]

I only have experience with Japanese, but I'll repeat that in the beginning it's all about grammar, grammar and more grammar. This is the foundation all your ability in the language is built on.
There is a lot less grammar to learn than there are words and most importantly, words are much much easier to look up or ask about. If you talk with someone and he uses a word you don't know, he'll normally be able to easily pick a different word you do know or explain the word in terms you know. Explaining grammar on the other hand can be pretty hard, especially if you're not used to explaining it.
Similarly, if you want to read a text and lack a lot of the words in it but do know all the grammar, it's usually quite possible to understand it by looking up all the words*, if a bit time consuming. If on the other hand you know a decent amount of the words but lack a lot of the grammar, then you're pretty much fucked.
Hence focusing on grammar first will get you to a level where you've only got to fill the remaining gaps rather quickly - which is also the point from which learning the language becomes much easier.
*At least if the text doesn't have words that require you to use a monolingual dictionary. Which by the way you should, once you become able to. Though that'll take a while, so don't worry about it for now.

Also, reading and listening will not make you able to actually write and speak. And by that I don't mean being able to write the characters or get the pronunciation right - though that too, of course -, but rather that it won't train you to form sentences of your own. You can get quite good at reading and listening and still utterly suck at saying anything yourself.
So actively use the language as much as possible and not just when talking to other people. Motherfucker almost ran you over with his car? Curse in Mandarin. Figuring out what you need to buy? Do the thinking in Mandarin. Pondering which of your GF's holes you want to fill tonight? Do that in Mandarin.
Of course the amount of words you know will limit you a lot with that at first, but it's all about taking one step after the other.

As for writing, getting yourself a graphics tablet is going to make your life a whole lot easier. And it's not like you'd need a wacom with an XXX price tag for this.

From what other students and friends explained to me I could see that japanese grammar/system is twisted and tricky in comparison.

On a basic level it's pretty easy, really. There's no declension and not much conjugation to learn - and the latter with comparatively little exceptions, even.
I guess getting used to the way the few basic particles are used can take a bit when you're used to the way English grammar works.

[Xyga]

No declension nor conjugation in mandarin !

I remember having trouble with adverbs, coverbs, particles of course, and the many classifiers.
The sentence structure by itself is simple, but when there's a lot of those, inside a cleft sentence for instance, it can make your brain overheat.
It's a good idea indeed to stick to easy stuff like kids litterature and comics where the sentences aren't too stuffy.

Regarding difficult languages I haven't experienced those myself but people say Russian, Romanian, scandinavian languages and suomi are quite difficult to learn.
Hard to pronounce and /or crazy grammar.

[Skykid]

It's been six months. Admittedly I've been busy spending far more time with the English language than anything else, which definitely hinders foreign language learning.

That said, I've made some progress. No way near as much as I'd like, but then Mandarin isn't the easiest thing to crack.

I'm still unable to hold a conversation, but I can ask a reasonable amount of questions and offer statements for a variety of situations, and answer some questions if I catch certain key words (such as 'where are you from, 'can you speak Chinese' etc). I tend to do a lot of practicing with Taxi drivers, since they never seem to care when I say I can only speak a little Chinese and proceed to ask all the same questions (Do you like it here? Do you like Chinese food? Do you like Chinese women? Where are you from? Do you know David Beckham? Your Chinese is really good! Let's drink beer!)

I used Ankidroid for mobile revision and catch-ups and to add new phrases and words, and Rosetta Stone for in-depth lessons - but I find I learn most just by asking 'how do I say' and 'what does this mean' to various people. It's nice to return R.Stone after a hiatus and realise you can ace most of its (admittedly) early lessons.

Chinese is weird. In many ways it's really versatile and surprisingly simple. It seems to have a lot fewer particles than in English and everything is in infinitives, so there's no 'ing' augmentations to worry about, only classifiers (unsure if this is the term?) like 'Zai' for actions.

For example, in English you say to someone

"I'm going to the toilet" , "I want to take a shower"

In Mandarin it's just: "I go toilet" (Wo chu cesuo) or "I want shower" (Wo yao xizao)

Also Mandarin has no tenses to care for, no past present or future, and no masculine or feminine.

Once you start to grip some of the words and form sentences that work, it gets clearer, but there are also really confusing grammar rules that drive me crazy.

If you want to talk about a person, you can say 'Yi ge' for "A".

As in 'yi ge nu ren' = A woman. But it changes depending on what you're referring to. For instance a dog or cat is 'Yi zhi mao/guo', and it's the same for a pen: Yi zhi bi. But a horse is 'Yi pi ma'. Fucking why?! Why are cats and dogs 'zhi' - animals - but an inanimate object like a pen is also 'zhi'. But another animal - a horse - is 'pi'.

Sometimes it makes sense. For example, Bei zi means glass or cup, so you can say 'Wo yao (I want) yi bei kele (a glass of cola.)' And when ordering something noodle related, you say 'Yi fun', the 'fun' being from 'Mei fun' (noodles). But some of the others don't seem to have much relevance - or at least I don't understand the meanings yet.

But god damn, my pronunciation is utterly useless! It's one thing being able to speak pinyin as you see it, but another entirely to sing it, which is essentially what it feels like when trying to adapt to a tonal language. To be honest I find it quite embarassing. When someone says I have to say a word in an ascending manner it's hard to say it naturally or comfortably. Unfortunately messing up tones can be disastrous, for instance saying 'I am a teacher' and 'I am taking a shit' (or thereabouts) is troublingly similar.

Anyway, that's my 6 month check in. I know how to tell a girl she's cute and I want her, hopefully in six more months I'll be able to ask for a phone number.

[Xyga]

Classifiers... so how do you say 'a pair of chopsticks' and 'a pair of shoes' ?
Never made sense to me as well.

[Skykid]

Δ Ah I see.

Yi shuang kuaizi?

[Xyga]

Actually it is;

Yi fu kuaizi
Yi shuang xie

There must be something determining the use of 'shuang' or 'fu', but I don't know what it is.
Also there's 只 (zhǐ) for a pair glasses (also used to designate a unit of a pair), 把 (bǎ) for a pair of scissors... the hell.

As often with Chinese, I guess you just have to... know.
There are classifiers for just anything, plants, food, home appliances, events, art, weapons, tools..
I used 个 when I didn't know the right one, most of the times it worked okay as the Chinese understand what we mean anyway.
For people though, I sometimes used 位 (wèi) as it is more polite. 个 can be a bit rude depending on the context.

I forgot tons of this stuff.
Have fun.

[Skykid]

Jesus Christ.

At least I know 90% of the business language. Gan bei!

[Edmond Dantes]

The best I can say is never fucking give up.

The biggest obstacle IMO is always feeling like you're not making progress. When you've been studying for three months and still can't play Fire Emblem: Monsho no Nazo, it starts to feel impossible. But my IRL best friend has some import games and when he sees me able to get the gist of what's going on by what little I can read, that makes me realize I was further ahead than I thought.

So no matter how poorly you think you're doing, just keep at it. Might help to set lower goals (IE read a children's book, THEN learn to read RPGs and manga...)

[GaijinPunch]

There's only one way: Brute Force.