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owlectomyI don't really agree with this whole article about the difficulties of learning Chinese (most of them are purely about the writing system, which I do think could use some reforming, but is much less of a problem once you cheerfully resign yourself to not ever handwriting anything), but this, I agree with.
I have now been seriously studying Chinese for one year. I've learned about 2000 words and 1400 characters. And I'm still terribly pleased with myself when I can read a story in Preschool Pictorial (never mind Disney Comics -- those are still pretty tough.)
The hard part is that it takes so long before you can get anything out of reading things. There's a big difference between reading something in Spanish, where at least you can get the correct-ish pronunciation in your head even if you can't understand half the words in a passage, and Chinese, where a word you don't know how to read is just a blank spot -- it does help that a lot of characters have a phonetic component, but it takes a while before you can even make use of those.
I've long been a fan of Stephen Krashen's ideas about comprehensible input -- that you learn languages when you understand messages, preferably messages that are relevant to you and preferably in a low-pressure, low-stress environment. And yet, it was years and years before I could make that work with Chinese. Why? Well, because things never worked out for me to take classes, and because it's really hard to find beginner-level comprehensible input; you can't just shove your way through children's books like you can in Spanish or French or even Japanese. The best thing, I think, is slow, clear audio with pinyin+character transcripts -- I finally started to make headway once I had a beginner's textbook with audio (Integrated Chinese, which I recommend) and kept going with Chinesepod, which I also recommend.
I'm really surprised how much I've learned in a year and how little I can still make it work at a practical level. But that Fluent In 3 Months guy is very much Not A Typical Example, and doesn't have a day job plus novel writing, and -- well, I feel like I'm moving in the right direction. Or at least, far more so than the past few years when I've been halfheartedly floundering in the general direction of the language.
Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.
I have now been seriously studying Chinese for one year. I've learned about 2000 words and 1400 characters. And I'm still terribly pleased with myself when I can read a story in Preschool Pictorial (never mind Disney Comics -- those are still pretty tough.)
The hard part is that it takes so long before you can get anything out of reading things. There's a big difference between reading something in Spanish, where at least you can get the correct-ish pronunciation in your head even if you can't understand half the words in a passage, and Chinese, where a word you don't know how to read is just a blank spot -- it does help that a lot of characters have a phonetic component, but it takes a while before you can even make use of those.
I've long been a fan of Stephen Krashen's ideas about comprehensible input -- that you learn languages when you understand messages, preferably messages that are relevant to you and preferably in a low-pressure, low-stress environment. And yet, it was years and years before I could make that work with Chinese. Why? Well, because things never worked out for me to take classes, and because it's really hard to find beginner-level comprehensible input; you can't just shove your way through children's books like you can in Spanish or French or even Japanese. The best thing, I think, is slow, clear audio with pinyin+character transcripts -- I finally started to make headway once I had a beginner's textbook with audio (Integrated Chinese, which I recommend) and kept going with Chinesepod, which I also recommend.
I'm really surprised how much I've learned in a year and how little I can still make it work at a practical level. But that Fluent In 3 Months guy is very much Not A Typical Example, and doesn't have a day job plus novel writing, and -- well, I feel like I'm moving in the right direction. Or at least, far more so than the past few years when I've been halfheartedly floundering in the general direction of the language.
(no subject)
20/6/13 22:45 (UTC)(no subject)
20/6/13 23:05 (UTC)