This is cool, thanks. I'm always trying to find new tools to study, even though my main problem is probably that I don't study with any kind of plan or discipline. I definitely don't expect to ever master writing by hand in Chinese, but I don't like writing by hand in *any* language, so I don't think I'll miss it.
I know how you feel. I am pretty scattered myself and due to my too-many interests, have only a sliver of time for Mandarin learning. But the key is your motivation - is your motivation strong enough to push you forward one tiny step at a time? No matter how long you may take, at least it'll push you forward
See it's funny because when I studied abroad in China, a friend of mine tutored me in mandarin and she specifically told me not to bother learning any of the characters yet and had me focus on pinyin and tone/pronunciation. That's probably because I'm a native English speaker. Sadly that was 4 years ago and trying to learn a new language and get a PhD in neuroscience is... well, maybe I'm not as good at multi tasking as I thought 😅 one of these days I'll try and start learning again though! Hopefully your learning journey can help me as well.
She probably thought you wanted to get speaking quickly, especially since you are going to live in China. So that approach works well. There's this theory that second language learners should focus on one thing at a time first, rather than learn speaking, listening, writing and reading all at the same time, which can be overwhelming. In a way I learned this way. I built on my listening and speaking skills first, and now that I know some vocab, just have to match the words with the characters which is much easier.
I’ve been looking forward to an update on your studies as I’ve been playing around with some of the endless study tools that are around these days.
I swore by Anki for many years while learning another language. It really worked for me but I can’t deny that it was a huge amount of work making my own flash card decks. For now I’ve settled on the flash card function in Pleco which couldn’t be easier to use.
The only thing it doesn’t seem to do is sentence flash cards - it was a special thing to encounter a phrase “in the wild” and then run off to save it in Anki.
I learned through writing…writing writing writing. Rows and rows. Just vocabulary words but you remember the characters when they make the words. ITA that it helps to understand radicals and stroke order so you can identify parts of characters that repeat. Good luck with your study! I kind of miss those years of producing sheets of characters and wish I could study again!
I tried that and it didn't quite work for me, mostly because it slowed things down too much for me and I wanted to start read as fast as I can. 😆 I decided to ditch the writing and went for typing instead which speeded up things a lot for me. So happy to be able to read and recognise words now, and I hope to master enough to read 🥲 webnovels next year.
Oh, you have advantage! I was learning before touch screens, which changed everything. It was too troublesome to type; I just didn’t have patience for it.
But I’m happy I learned to write…I think it’s worth it even if it is SOOOOooooooOO much work (I understand why so many people just learn to speak and maybe read a bit!).
I bet if you can read web novels, you’ll be pretty good. I can only slowly make my way through a Tintin comic in Chinese, lol
Originally I did use Tofu Learn to write the characters but I was sooo slow learning characters that way lol. I am glad I am relearning Mandarin during the touch screen age. My first round learning was in 2010 and we used paper dictionaries. I read painful lol
Yes, I studied from 2009-2012. Just on paper, writing transcripts for a podcast that had vocab plus short dialogues — first in pinyin, then slowly in characters. It got me good at hearing tones. Memorizing the vocab was just a matter of writing it out enough times. Paper dictionaries were awful and useless unless you already knew a bit about the language, like number of strokes. It’s SO much easier now! Plus if you cut out writing and just focus on reading, that saves a lot of time. 加油
I love how you capture the angst of learning Chinese characters with an illustration of a Cyberpunk heroine backlit by neon signs in Mandarin. 😂
I use this app called “ Chineasy “
This is cool, thanks. I'm always trying to find new tools to study, even though my main problem is probably that I don't study with any kind of plan or discipline. I definitely don't expect to ever master writing by hand in Chinese, but I don't like writing by hand in *any* language, so I don't think I'll miss it.
I know how you feel. I am pretty scattered myself and due to my too-many interests, have only a sliver of time for Mandarin learning. But the key is your motivation - is your motivation strong enough to push you forward one tiny step at a time? No matter how long you may take, at least it'll push you forward
See it's funny because when I studied abroad in China, a friend of mine tutored me in mandarin and she specifically told me not to bother learning any of the characters yet and had me focus on pinyin and tone/pronunciation. That's probably because I'm a native English speaker. Sadly that was 4 years ago and trying to learn a new language and get a PhD in neuroscience is... well, maybe I'm not as good at multi tasking as I thought 😅 one of these days I'll try and start learning again though! Hopefully your learning journey can help me as well.
She probably thought you wanted to get speaking quickly, especially since you are going to live in China. So that approach works well. There's this theory that second language learners should focus on one thing at a time first, rather than learn speaking, listening, writing and reading all at the same time, which can be overwhelming. In a way I learned this way. I built on my listening and speaking skills first, and now that I know some vocab, just have to match the words with the characters which is much easier.
Brilliant.
I’ve been looking forward to an update on your studies as I’ve been playing around with some of the endless study tools that are around these days.
I swore by Anki for many years while learning another language. It really worked for me but I can’t deny that it was a huge amount of work making my own flash card decks. For now I’ve settled on the flash card function in Pleco which couldn’t be easier to use.
The only thing it doesn’t seem to do is sentence flash cards - it was a special thing to encounter a phrase “in the wild” and then run off to save it in Anki.
Yea I maaay have to resort to Anki for those, but I do save sentence flashcards in Pleco too, but I select from their examples.
I’m learning Japanese. I would like to watch a film, anime, in Japanese with Japanese subtitles to accidentally pick up a couple characters per film.
I haven’t come across any here (Europe), but people say they’re available on streaming subscriptions.
Have you tried Youtube? Lots of Japanese vloggers there.
I learned through writing…writing writing writing. Rows and rows. Just vocabulary words but you remember the characters when they make the words. ITA that it helps to understand radicals and stroke order so you can identify parts of characters that repeat. Good luck with your study! I kind of miss those years of producing sheets of characters and wish I could study again!
I tried that and it didn't quite work for me, mostly because it slowed things down too much for me and I wanted to start read as fast as I can. 😆 I decided to ditch the writing and went for typing instead which speeded up things a lot for me. So happy to be able to read and recognise words now, and I hope to master enough to read 🥲 webnovels next year.
Oh, you have advantage! I was learning before touch screens, which changed everything. It was too troublesome to type; I just didn’t have patience for it.
But I’m happy I learned to write…I think it’s worth it even if it is SOOOOooooooOO much work (I understand why so many people just learn to speak and maybe read a bit!).
I bet if you can read web novels, you’ll be pretty good. I can only slowly make my way through a Tintin comic in Chinese, lol
I think it will be a while before I can read a webnovel. 🥲 Slowly does it, I guess!
Originally I did use Tofu Learn to write the characters but I was sooo slow learning characters that way lol. I am glad I am relearning Mandarin during the touch screen age. My first round learning was in 2010 and we used paper dictionaries. I read painful lol
Yes, I studied from 2009-2012. Just on paper, writing transcripts for a podcast that had vocab plus short dialogues — first in pinyin, then slowly in characters. It got me good at hearing tones. Memorizing the vocab was just a matter of writing it out enough times. Paper dictionaries were awful and useless unless you already knew a bit about the language, like number of strokes. It’s SO much easier now! Plus if you cut out writing and just focus on reading, that saves a lot of time. 加油