Here’s something we haven’t talked about for a while: Why we’re all learning Chinese.
There are lots of new people entering the community since V3. I’m seeing some new ideas and attitudes - particularly in the ‘Connect’ section. Some people arrive here on a mission: they were already determined to learn Mandarin before we ever met them; others are just visiting when they try it out and get hooked on the language. Either way, it’s not always clear what motivates our community to want to take up the study of Chinese, to proceed with it and eventually succeed with it.
Are your motivations mainly practical? Mainly for reasons of personal development? A strategic move for the future? Something your boss told you to do?
(I’ve mentioned the newcomers to ChinesePod above, but of course I definitely want to hear fom the stalwarts, too!)
Ken Carroll
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For me, my reasons for learning Mandarin comes from the point of view of someone who speaks cantonese, who lives in the UK but has someone special in China. Hopefully, I will suprise her later this year with my mandarin as until now we’ve just talked in English.
Until now, many of the learning materials available here have been very formal and dare I say it boring. Your broadcast is a breath of fresh air, although one of the things I seem to be doing currently is substituting the cantonese pronounciation for the Mandarin one, when im stuck! Baaaad I know!
I just read a post with a similar theme on ChaShanBao:
Which type of Chinese learner are you?
http://chashaobao.wordpress.co.....e-chinese/
(may need a proxy from within China)
Here’s a sample:
type 1, “the academic learner.”
Type 2: “I’m learning Chinese to make money.”
Type 3: “I look Chinese. China is hot right now, so I might as well take Chinese.”
Type 4: “I’m genuinely interested in contemporary China”
Type 5: “I’m Korean and need to learn every other major Asian language.”
etc…
I started learning Chinese in my third year at University.
In order to graduate, my computer science program required I have 10 out-of-faculty courses. Students hated this, and I naturally protested. However, I never would have become interested in language if not for my University’s stubborn requirements.
At the time, I chose Chinese over other languages because of China’s economic development. Furthermore, enrolling into Japanese classes was virtually impossible due to limited seating.
Now, I live in China, working and studying Chinese. I will do so for couple more years. I have several different career paths in mind.
What’s important is there by a balance between my career achievement and interests. More precisely, enjoy what I study, and be able to apply it later for profit. Learning Chinese satisfies that criteria.
Good topic Ken, as always:
Well, even though I am now more of a regular around here than a newcomer or shadow-lerker, I hope my answers can help:
Learning Chinese was all within my own mental and spiritual realm…no outside forces (boss, parents, impress a girl…haha). It was a passion I never thought I’d have since I, like maybe a typical American, never even cared to try a new language (failed at Spanish and German) nor live in another country. I was a computer web site programmer in California and there was no need to even leave my comfort abode…or so I thought.
So I was introduce to Chinese by a Taiwanese MBA student in my home town, and the passion for Chinese sparked just from my initial question “How does one type these strange characters ona computer?” The passion grew while living in America among people who probably couldn’t tell a single Asian language from another. I love puzzles, and so I guess I first just saw Chinese as a wonderful, beautiful puzzle that was total opposite of my language and culture. (and I’m finding that a lot of programmers have a niche for Chinese)
Yet that puzzle solving beauty, while still there as you can see from my Character Breakdown posts, quickly became reality living when I had to use Chinese to fend for myself after moving to China in 2003. Now, I know tons of westerners who’ve come here and could get by pratically without knowing “ni hao”, yet that wasn’t my case… for through my spiritual knowledge of what I was made for, I knew there would be no end to my learning, and my purpose was to be fluent and knowledgable to be able to speak to any Mandarin speaker, whether they know any English or not.
How ChinesePod has helped me? I really was all book learning and not so much into listening (and maybe still am). I wanted to see every character that was said (subtitles are my friend!), but that isn’t pratical in the outside oral world of Chinese. Hearing you, Jenny and John made me focus on that realm of Chinese… the oral and more social part. So my motivation for learning that aspect has grown and come a long way.
You guys rock!
孟
I got sucked in, now I have got this far it would be kind of stupid not to finish.
Originally at the beginning of last year I decided I should learn a second language before my 40th birthday. After a bit of research and finding Cpod I chose Chinese (an easy one ;)).
Last week I spoke for almost thirty minutes, entirely in Chinese with the visiting boss of my companies Beijing office. A technical pass for my 40th (which is tommorow) and also served to completly spike the guns of my work collegues (who constantly made fun of me for learning Chinese). They knew the guy was looking for me and expected to watch me squirm (it is an open plan office), since then they have be strangely quiet about the subject :). Yes I am still pretty rubbish but can see things getting better (I do need to aquire a lot more vocabulary, and particulary work on a few sounds).
It is a great hobby, better than doing crossword puzzles or sudoko and I have met a few wonderful people. Now I am firmly established as the only guy in our office who can kind of speak Chinese. Career progression was not the original plan but may feature in a year or two…..
Cpod is only a part of my study but I do owe you guys some thanks :):)
I speak five languages and have always loved languages. However, they are all european languages, and I wanted to try something different and more challenging. Along the way, i have grown ever more convinced for the need to speak mandarin to understand the world of tomorrow. Even if only for demographic reasons, the chinese are going to be major players in a lot of fields, and a lot of research and thinking will be done in chinese. I think this dimension of the language is often overlooked by people who focus too much on the importance of trade.
Another important factor, is the need to be able to “read” China, to be conversant in its internal debates and conversations in order to understand what will increasingly become a major world player. Living in Chile, I was always shocked by how little people understood the US, its society and its political life, in spite of the fact that the US was then their major trade partner. The main reason for this is that even among educated elites in Chile true english speakers are a rarity.
As globalization matures everyone or nearly will speak decent, functional english (what some call “airport english”), but other languages will be the decisive competitive advantages. Russian, arabic, and spanish are good choices. Maybe I’ll tackle one of them after mandarin
This is interesting as always.
But wouldn’t it be even more interesting to take a deeper look at the following:
“Why are you *still* learning Chinese?”
Why haven’t you given up?
How did you stay motivated when you reached that endless plateau?
How did you climb back after the descent into that black abyss? When you realized it is *not worth all the effort”?
How did you restart after you had already given up?
For how many years…?
Those are the tough ones. I could imagine that we really can learn a lot from each other regarding those motivational issues.
1. I wanted to feel comfortable ordering food in Chinese
2. I wanted to watch movies in Chinese
3. I wanted a ‘kernel’ of fluency in Chinese
4. Today, I’m not sure, but I’m so immersed it seems hard to imagine it not being part of my life. (#1-3 I consider done now.)
为什么你要学中文？
第一： 我要会用中文点菜。
第二： 我想看中文电影。
第三： 我要有一块小小流利中文的系统。
第四： 最近，我不知道我还要什么，不过我的生活里没有的话想不出来。 （我觉得第一到第三我已经做完了）
Chris,
Happy birthday to you, sir, and congratulations on your remarkable achievment. Despite getting very, very old (years younger than me!)you’ve managed to keep the old brain ticking over. Hat tip.
Christian,
You amaze me.
Ken Carroll
Henning’s comment is a good one. It takes a fair amount of pig-headed stubbornness to keep going with Chinese sometimes, and a lot of people discover that they’ve got better things to do instead.
For my part, I got into Chinese because I was bored in high school Spanish, and I had always been interested - since the age of 5, when my parents got me a picture book on the theme of “You can read Chinese!” from the library - and so I started taking night classes at the local community college. And after that I was hooked.
Between this and John’s latest post on his blog, I may have to rip off your topics for a longer post on my own generally neglected blog. I’ll be interested to see what people have to say here!
‘Cos I need a regular kick in the arse, to save me from my natural laziness.
I’m with Christian on this. I speak a few European languages, and once you have at least one Germanic and at least one Romance, then it all starts to seem like a variation on a theme (OK, other than Finnish, Hungarian and Basque, none of which I’m gonna learn!) So it seemed to make sense to get out of my comfort zone and look for a new challenge.
Travel too. At the back of my mind, when I started learning Chinese, were the embryonic plans for taking some time off with my family on a big trip. Those plans are coming to fruition now, so I have a concrete need to get to a certain level by the end of this year. Which really helps with the laziness problem I’ve already mentioned.
I have an antique shop in Washington DC area, I have been dealing Chinese antiques for about 6 years. I have traveled to China more than 20 times, love the culture, food, people and Chinese antiques. First 10 times I traveled to China I did not speak a word of Chinese, I came to realize that the only way to learn about chinese antiques is to learn the culture and to learn the culture one must learn their language. Thanks to CPod I have learned a lot and now I understand about 75% of conversations and speak a great deal and improving everyday, this is all thanks to CPod, the best way to learn Chinese, thanks guys.
Brent
Im learning the language, or at least upgrading my chinese to include Mandarin to my native cantonese, due to a girl in China. We get by fine in English, but later this summer, I plan to suprise her! At the moment I seem to have the problem of substituting Mandarin words I cant quite remember with the cantonese ones that I do, resulting in a hybrid - baaaad I know! It makes it easier to know that my mahoosive collection of VCDs can be re-watched by selecting the mandarin sound track on! woohoo!
Here in the UK, they’re starting to introduce Mandarin to the secondary schools as a selectable choice in Language studies. Thats how big the government think the ties with china are going to be in the future. Anyway, back to the original topic - my reason is purely driven by the desire to speak to a girl in her native Mandarin.
I learn Chinese for the pure pleasure of it. I’m 65 years old and have been studying for 3 years. I live in part-time in China, so language skills are very practical for me. Many Chinese are astounded that someone of my “advanced” age is studying Chinese, and more than one person has told me that it’s useless for me to do so. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that not everything we do must be “useful”?
My motivations for learning Chinese have changed since I started in 2005. My brother married a Chinese woman and so I thought it would be polite to learn the language and make her feel more comfortable in her newly-adopted country (Canada).
But to my surprise, she was not impressed with my desire to learn Chinese. She would constantly criticize my pronunciation and just about every other aspect of my learning. It was obvious that she did not want me to succeed and wasn’t interested in helping me. I don’t understand her attitude. (For myself, I have bent over backwards to help newly arrived Chinese friends here improve their English).
Anyway, after I got “hooked” on the language, I forgot about my sister-in-law and became motivated to improve through interacting with Chinese co-workers who were really happy to help (finally I was getting some constructive feedback). Then I started studying with CPOD…and the result was a huge leap forward in my learning. I’m now at the Intermediate Level, but refuse to speak Chinese with my sister-in-law (negative feedback is bad for learning).
Thanks Ken, Jenny and John. Looking forward to more of your wonderful podcasts.
Paul,
I find that Chinese people are overwhelmingly supportive of foreigners attempts to learn Mandarin. But there are exceptions and these often stem from the methods we use. For some people, if those methods aren’t the same as the ancient Chinese method, then we’re doing it wrong. I guess some people just don’t deal with innovation very well!
Ken Carroll
yet Ken, there are reasons why the Chinese study their own language like they do and have for hundreds and hundreds of years. Your methods are the tip of the sword, but let us not throw away the handle shall we?
A reason that I have stubbornly continued to learn Mandarin may tie in a bit with the benefits Laverne Adams gains from learning Mandarin. Just think, by 70 Laverne could be reading books in Chinese. What a great hobby that enriches the quality of life. By 90, wow! That for myself is a great deterrent to quiting. For I am rather younger than 65 but yet not a spring chicken either.
As Christian brought up above, it may not be too long that a lot of the world’s major research may come out of China. A personal experience that I have that might help illustrate this. I lived in Ann Arbor Michigan, The University of Michigan, from 1997-2003. At the time, my wife was getting her PHD in Biostatistics. One year, the incoming class of new biostatistic grad students numbered 25. 3 of them were Americans,the other 22 where Asian, out of which 21 spoke Mandarin.(these numbers are approx.but close. I’m not the statistician in the family:)Out of the seven classes that I saw, an alarming amount of the students came from China, Taiwan, and Singapore. America’s immigration issues aside,(let us not even mention the education system:) a good number of these students do tend to remain in the US to work, but it seems that those percentages are dropping.
What happened to that pie chart in v2 that illustrated the world’s frequency of language use?
Another reason I continue to learn is a hope that I can do a small part in helping the western world and eastern world get along better. Frankly,I am of the opinion that it is very important that the two get along in the 21st century.
I getting out there, so, I pass the baton.
Peace,
Wow, Brendan(Peeling Mandarin) what a great trip you are going to have. I sure hope you,your wife and kids have a life-long memorable trip to China. What a gift you are giving your family!
My 2cents about the sleeper train. When I was single, a couple friends and I took a sleeper train from GuangZhou廣州 to 北京. The experience in itself is a wonder. Chances are you’ll have the opportunity really to meet people on a sleeper train. As for being a family on a sleeper, the above mentioned trip was in 1996, so hopefully improvements have continued, but if I took my family, one or two legs would be enough to harness all there is to experience.
Something to think about, have something to share with people on the train. A small something from where you live. This might create a warm social environment for you and your Chinese counterparts, not to mention the possibility of getting neat little Chinese treasures in return.
Americans are notoriously ignorant of other cultures, but the cultures of East Asia, with the differences in philosophy, history, facial appearance, etc., make it the most foreign for us. The writing systems of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are completely unreadable to the untrained eye–and invisible to search engine queries done in English. These cultures are essentially an enigma for us. However, there is a huge amount of writing on the internet being carried out in these languages. In fact, according to a recent Technorati survey, more blogs are in Japanese (37%) than any other language, including English (2nd place, 36%) or Chinese (3rd place, 8%). That is a lot of conversation which is essentially invisible to non-speakers, as if it were taking place in a parallel world. To learn at least a little of these cultures and languages opens up these other worlds. In other words, learning a language increases the degree one is connected with the people of this world. And, when that language is Mandarin, you’ve made a kind of connection with another 20% of it.
Also, as I get older, it’s important to keep exercising my brain. Research has shown that keeping the mind active may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, and I would imagine it wards off other ills of getting older. Studying a difficult language provides limitless fodder for exercise.
As for the question of why Chinese, in addition to the population size, I honestly love listening to it. I must admit that before learning it, it was strange to listen to, with its tonal basis and unfamiliar pronunciation. But the more familiar I become, the more I can appreciate its nuances. It is also fascinating to be a witness to the rapid changes that are taking place in China, and which will undoubtedly continue to be exciting.
There are common reasons other people have that I don’t share. There are Chinese people that I know through work or from town, but other than a conversation starter, I’m not doing it to communicate with them in Chinese. I’m still at an elementary level, and at this point it would feel like mooching a free lesson. Also, I am not expecting that a Chinese economic juggernaut will make Mandarin a lingua franca, at least within my lifetime. On the other hand, I do think there could be a cultural “Chinese Wave” coming to this country, in the way that Japanese culture has been enthusiastically embraced in the US. Movies have already been a hit here, but I’m sure there is a lot of art and literature we have yet to be introduced to. It will all be translated or subtitled for us, but I will have a greater appreciation of it because of my knowledge of the culture and language.
I started learning Chinese after coming to China on a lark and discovering that I liked it here. At first it was a survival thing, then a curiosity thing, and now it’s sort of inertia – like Chris said above, I’ve gotten so far in it would be stupid not to keep going.
The language is such a part of my life now – I use it to communicate with people I care about, and I earn a living thanks to my knowledge of it – that it would be hard to imagine not speaking it. And if I’m going to speak it, I’ll always want to get better.
Why haven’t I given up?
I guess the question I get even asked more is “Why are you still living in China? When will you be done?”
My answer is usually in the whereabouts of “And you? How much longer will you be on Earth? When will you be done?” heh.
I didn’t do this as a one year “thing I’m going through” even though it did happen in kind of a quarter-life crisis. Chinese language and opportunities to study it and support from my family and friends kind of fell in my lap, due the result of prayer in that crisis. So part of my dedication to not give up is due to a blessing, the other part due to my commitment to not give up, which has it’s challenges.
In actuality, I’m more determined to learn Chinese now than I feel like when I first came to China, and ChinesPod can take a lot of credit for that, especially hearing Chinese at the more personal level that Jenny and the rest make it. Studying dry textbooks make me can’t wait to hop on my bike and turn my MP3 player on to see what you’ll next be putting your heart into sharing with us.
Believe it or not though, two months ago I had my FIRST day where I was soooo sick of seeing Chinese characters I thought I’d barf if I saw another sign above a store that I went into my home and watched American movies to death. The reason? At that time my studies had gotten so hard that EVERY sentence I had to read in my textbook, at least one character I had never ever seen before… and they kept coming like baby rabbits!
Yet I have a love for Chinese I can’t explain. Leaving it would be like breaking a commitment to one’s wife (if such a blessing of having a companion should also happen to me…) it is something I can never see myself doing…. strange, but true.
I guessing I’m not a typical case-senario, so maybe I should get off the soap-box. Next!
孟
My explanation will sound dodgy, but here goes:
The first time I knowingly heard someone speaking Mandarin I thought “What is that magnificent sound?”, and I am learning so that I can try and produce this magnificent sound out of my very own mouth.
I take it the captcha code isn’t “[captcha-img]”. Is there any hope of getting my post out of moderation?
A new language for me is like a new world. Like Christian, I speak five languages. “My world” ended at the German-Polish border until I started to learn Russian. Within quite a short time my eastern “border” moved to Vladivostok. This was so stunning and mind-blowing, that I want to go on.
It’s not only about new worlds… mainly I learn a lot about home, my own, “given” world (Europe and Germany). Things I took for granted, that used to “go without saying” suddenly change into regional quirks…
Learning Chinese you learn much more than only Chinese!
But it also has very practical values:
1. Reading newspapers. I get soooo much more and quicker information from foreign newspapers.
2. Downloading music. And fonts and whatever
3. Searching the web for a special topic, especially IT-related stuff. Very often I found a key hint not in English or German, but in Russian, French or (sometimes) Italian. In particular for encoding related stuff Russian has been extremely helpful.
4. Showing off. I consider Russian much more difficult than Chinese. But when I write down some Chinese, everyone wants to have a look and is very impressed. I’m not used to this, since nobody ever cared about my Russian writings. But I should think about that
I don’t mention travelling here, it’s obvious.
By the way, I bought my first Chinese newspaper on Sunday. It’s very cheap, too: I understood only 3 articles (but hey, after 6 months). I can read it for weeks now…
(I posted this before and it got stuck in the moderation queue–I think because of the captcha code. Sorry if it’s a duplicate)
Americans are notoriously ignorant of other cultures, but the cultures of East Asia, with the differences in philosophy, history, facial appearance, etc., make it the most foreign for us. The writing systems of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are completely unreadable to the untrained eye–and invisible to search engine queries done in English. These cultures are essentially an enigma for us. However, there is a huge amount of writing on the internet being carried out in these languages. In fact, according to a recent Technorati survey, more blogs are in Japanese (37%) than any other language, including English (2nd place, 36%) or Chinese (3rd place, 8%). That is a lot of conversation which is essentially invisible to non-speakers, as if it were taking place in a parallel world. To learn at least a little of these cultures and languages opens up these other worlds. In other words, learning a language increases the degree one is connected with the people of this world. And, when that language is Mandarin, you’ve made a kind of connection with another 20% of it.
Also, as I get older, it’s important to keep exercising my brain. Research has shown that keeping the mind active may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s, and I would imagine it wards off other ills of getting older. Studying a difficult language provides limitless fodder for exercise.
As for the question of why Chinese, in addition to the population size, I honestly love listening to it. I must admit that before learning it, it was strange to listen to, with its tonal basis and unfamiliar pronunciation. But the more familiar I become, the more I can appreciate its nuances. It is also fascinating to be a witness to the rapid changes that are taking place in China, and which will undoubtedly continue to be exciting.
There are common reasons other people have that I don’t share. There are Chinese people that I know through work or from town, but other than a conversation starter, I’m not doing it to communicate with them in Chinese. I’m still at an elementary level, and at this point it would feel like mooching a free lesson. Also, I am not expecting that a Chinese economic juggernaut will make Mandarin a lingua franca, at least within my lifetime. On the other hand, I do think there could be a cultural “Chinese Wave” coming to this country, in the way that Japanese culture has been enthusiastically embraced in the US. Movies have already been a hit here, but I’m sure there is a lot of art and literature we have yet to be introduced to. It will all be translated or subtitled for us, but I will have a greater appreciation of it because of my knowledge of the culture and language.
After graduating from high-school I didn’t know what to do. I was leafing through the booklet that had all the different majors that one can study at the university of Helsinki. First I tried all kinds of things, just poking the ice to see if I could get in. I started with comparative religion, linguistics, archeology and South-Asian studies but I didn’t get in. I wanted to learn Hindi, Pali and Sanskrit, but soon realized that I wanted something more relevant and useful. So I decided to focus on East-Asian studies. I got in after the third try (there were over 400 applicants, 200 of which were at the entrance exams and only 37 were chosen to the department) After that Chinese came naturally. I like languages, I have studied 8 languages besides my native Finnish.
I got my present job because I study Chinese language and the culture. I work at an antique store that sells Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian antiques.
This fall I’m going to Beijing to study as an exchange student for one year. It will be my first trip to China
One more thing I forgot to mention… I love studying Chinese because here in Finland it is so special and rare. I have always wanted to be different from other people, so it really fits perfectly
Well done Kaixin.
開心? Would these characters be your name?
I recently addressed this topic to Jenny Zhu as well. My motivations for learning Mandarin are basic. I, the last born of the family, was conceived in Shanghai and then born in NYC. Hence my enitre immediate family are all ‘zhong guo ren’. Growing up as ‘meiji hua ren’ was very embarrassing because I really couldn’t speak either Mandarin or Shanghainese. I was always the odd duckling. My mom spoke dialect to me and I answered back in English. Since I has a nanny who only spoke English and Yiddish!, my Chinese identity was overriden my American Jewish culture. It was a dual existence. At home, all I heard was Chinese. My father sang Chinese opera on the weekends. His friends were academicians and artists from China. My mom sang Chinese lullabyes to me when I couldn’t fall asleep. Many Chinese Americans have faced similar dilemmas while growing up in the U.S. Also, there was an acute sense of shame if you couldn’t speak Chinese within the immigrant population. In the eyes of Chinese, you are not Chinese if you can’t commuinicate in the native tongue. This was damaging to me when I was growing up even though I repressed any feelings of that shame.
Fast forward to the present. I am self-employed with ample free time. After finding Chinese Pod, I dove into the lessons quickly right before my trip to China last year. My progress is slow but steady. Many of my Chinese friends here in the Bay Area can now speak to me in their native tongue instead of visa versa. It’s been a great experience - hard to really describe. Speaking in Chinese has given me back a sense of completing my identity. My sister who had never heard me speak in Chinese was happily surprised when I greeted her in Mandarin over the phone. In addition, I have found a neighbor who is Shanghainese, teaches Mandarin at a local college and now we are great friends. She has been very encouraging. How is that for luck? With her, my textbooks and Chinese Pod, I have no more excuses. My daily rituals always include studying my dialogue, vocabulary and soon the characters, which seem the most difficult challenge.
So Ken , if you are reading this, I wish you the best for the future of this Shanghai adventure in internet learning. I do believe you are visionary in scope. Great job. The possibilites seem limitless. You may not have realized how you and staff have affected the people as myself looking for that elusive element that was missing in their lives, for one reason or another.
BYW, how was Jenny Zhu chosen for her position?
Si Yao
i don’t think anyone’s said the reason that i’m learning chinese. i feel a bit stupid… but it’s because i’m just so interested in china, and chinese people and culture. and of course, language is a big part of culture. also, i think it’s a very beautiful lang in and of itself. but the main thing is that i dream one day of going to live in china, and how could i do that if i didn’t speak chinese?
I was a religion major in college focusing on the 3 main Chinese religious traditions (daoism was my favorite subject). In between my junior & senior year I took some time off to study abroad in Fuzhou to study Chinese language for the first time. Going to China to learn Chinese without any previous experience was not the wisest decision I could have made. My year there was crazy and when I first returned I thought I’d never study anything Chinese related again. After a break from Chinese studies, I find myself wanting desperately wanting to return to China (though to live in Shanghai this time, the city that stole my heart!). Despite the difficulties I experienced when I first started studying I never lost my fascination with characters.
So to make a long story short I study Chinese for two reasons.
1) so that I can live in Shanghai and eventually find a career (in the states) involving Chinese language
2) to appease this budding linguistic nerd in love with characters.
About reading Chinese newspapers - it’s hard. The style is dense. With all the culture specific stuff, the context can be really elusive. Anne M can read some articles after only 6 months. I’m really impressed, but I would suggest that learners don’t set their sites on being able to read a newspaper unless you’ve got a couple of years to invest.
Ken Carroll
I have a slightly different (but not contradictory) perspective from Ken here on having a go at reading newspapers only six months into a new language.
World news coverage tends to be fairly homogenous across different languages, in terms of topics and names. So if one is not too ambitious — and Anne M did mention enjoying her paper for “a few weeks” –, the odds of being rewarded with the sheer joy and pleasure of finding meaning, as well as familiar names, in texts that would have been completely opaque six months ago are actually quite high. Especially for an experienced language-learner who has no “baggage” about foreign things, only curiosity. It can be a wonderful affirmation, as well as an incentive to stick with it and take things further.
For me personally, the six-month mark is about when I usually start to dip into newspapers. In the case of Arabic, which I only began learning three weeks ago, I actually enjoying visiting the Al-Jazeera website for a few minutes each day to see if I can spot a few famous names which are familiar to me, though not in Arabic. Eg. Saddam Hussein! Angelina Jolie! Arabic script is not difficult per se, but the way in which letters are joined can be complex even though it is intuitive (hallelujah!) and very logical. So this kind of practice is very useful.
Also, vowels are rarely indicated in real life, Arabic speakers fill them in instinctively according to syntax, and I find it is a huge help to practice recognising words by their shape as well, instead of breaking down every element painstakingly.
Just some food for thought… and encouragement and support for everybody out there who is at about the six-month mark…
As to my reasons for learning Mandarin: When I was in school, my reason used to be that it was compulsory in the educational system that I grew up in (Singaporean). After eleven years of spending a disproportionate amount of time on Chinese homework (because the only “Chinese” in my home/social environment was a bit of spoken Cantonese, strictly only at “heritage speaker” level), I had no confidence whatsoever nor did I have the ability to even speak a whole sentence correctly in Mandarin, let alone read or write it. Some of my Chinese teachers were very sympathetic about the lack of language support at home, but most of them singled me out for being “stubborn” or “acting white”. I can tell you that if I didn’t understand a single word that my Chinese teacher was saying to the class during my first months in primary school, “stubbornness” probably wasn’t the real reason why my Chinese never seemed to improve despite paying close attention in class. I copied down each week’s list of words for the following week’s ting1xie3 as best I could, but the weird pictures I brought home in my notebook were mostly wrong, so my ting1xie3 scores used to be 1 or 2 out of 10.
When I was in my twenties, I studied Mandarin on my own initiative because I felt embarrassed to be so poor at Chinese when I was ethnic Chinese. I don’t know if you can call it a “mistake”, but I think that was a mistake because I was driven by guilt/shame. Hence it never felt natural, and I even found myself resenting Mandarin. So I have 100% sympathy and respect for Si Yao. At that stage I had enough confidence to tackle Mandarin again because my progress in French had opened my eyes to the possibility that I wasn’t retarded in language-learning.
Why I am studying Mandarin NOW is that I have finally found a method — in CPod — which allows me to study Chinese as what it truly is for me, a foreign language. No baggage. No shame or judgement. The beauty of the language is enough of a reason. When I started in Dec (2006), I could understand the podcasts up to Intermediate level, but could barely read the pdfs even at Beginner’s level. Now, a few months later, I am comfortable reading the Upper-Intermediate level lesson pdfs, and am starting on “Advanced”. The Beginner-level lessons helped to correct my bad habits and build both my confidence as well as a decent foundation in Chinese syntax and vocabulary. Thank you CPod for making it possible for me to fall in love with Chinese and lose a lifetime of baggage!
And one important reason why I am STILL learning Mandarin a few months on, and it is probably part of my daily life forever, is the other learners (viz, YOU) who inspire me every day with your determination, your fluency (which I hope to reach one day).
Sincerely,
Sharon
(Singapore)
Auntie,
I think one of the great pleasures for the language lover is in figuring out stuff. I had never learned a word of German but when I went there I’d spend hours reading copies of Stern magazine (not Spiegel, which was much more difficult). If there were world issues you actually knew what the articles were about, so you could then guess the meanings of the words. All this was aided by the cognates, the pictures, and a helpful German.
However, I don’t find it the same with Chinese - no alphabet, no cognates, etc. It can be done but it’s tougher, so it requires different strategies.
Ken
I don’t have any reason to study Chinese. I do it for my own entertainment, and that is legitimate reason too. Many aspects already mentioned: amazing experience of reading/writing characters, tonal language.
It’s a real challenge to learn Chinese.
And many games/riddles: guess the tones of the words spoken in dialogues,
Try to make your own transcription in PINYIN.
I like the memory game, the vocab-section pronunciation game.
Funny dialogues, and funny talking Jenny and Ken.
So with CPOD: entertainment at a low price, Fun4less.
敦禮,
yes, you are right
But I use simplified characters (开心)
I kind of feel like a loser commenting a year after everyone else but I’d like to add my two cents all the same. Like many hear, I’m learning Chinese for a variety of reasons. I, like many hear, speak a couple of related European languages and am looking for an even bigger challenge. I’m also sick of people, almost always monolingual themselves, talking about how easy it must have been for me to gain fluency in Spanish and Portuguese. I figure a solid knowledge of Mandarin Chinese will keep just about anyone from saying things like that anymore.
Like Chad, I recognize that most Americans are pretty ignorant of foreign languages and cultures. I have found the experience of being very familiar with Latin American culture and languages to be extremely enriching and rewarding. I really hoping that my experience with Mandarin Chinese will be similar.
I would be untruthful if I didn’t mention the motivation to make myself more marketable. I love the idea of working in an organization that deals with Anglo-America, Latin America and the Far East.
My reasons are many.. but the most recent motivation to start learning properly is that my new girlfriend was born and raised in China, and has only been living in Australia for 2 to 3 years now. Her English is quite good but there are times when it is hard to understand the full meaning of what she is trying to express to me. As I say, I also have other reasons such as the fun of learning new things.
Learning Mandarin is a very natural progression of learning for me. I also live in Sydney, which has probably about a 40 to 50 percent Asian population, at least in the CBD areas. So learning an Asian language is very important. Mandarin appears to be the most commonly used language here in Sydney amongst the Chinese population so that is why I chose Mandarin instead of Cantonese.
However, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that having a girlfriend who speaks Mandarin as a first language isn’t the foremost, current, reason for me learning Mandarin.