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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3190 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 8, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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How would you start learning Chinese? Has anyone here done it? I'll probably take a class, but I'd also like some digital tools for self-guided learning.

I downloaded Duolingo and, hoo-boy, has that app gone downhill. It's essentially impossible to use without paying for premium version now. Even when they're not shoving ads down your throat, the animations and interstitials are over-the-top annoying.

I learned for 5 years in a formal setting and was once fluent enough that I spoke it all day long. I wouldn't learn it, it's been an almost completely useless skill. If you really must:

  1. Anki decks for memorization. Way back when, I hand-made decks of flashcards. I made several thousands.
  2. Handheld whiteboard for character writing practice. I spent probably 30-60 minutes a day just repetitively writing and erasing.
  3. Textbooks. The most popular ones out there will probably work fine for beginners.
  4. Chinesepod101(?) used to be good for listening. You could also look up HSK study materials for the lower levels.
  5. Find a speaking buddy, preferably from somewhere with a neutral accent (northern or eastern China). Pronunciation is initially very difficult and the grammar is also not always intuitive once you get out of the beginner phase. Also, textbook language and spoken language are quite different.

Again, I recommend against this unless you're just trying to learn a bit to speak at parties for fun or something. The amount of effort required massively outweighs the value you'd get, and I say this as a former sinophile who won awards in Chinese speech contests and wrote a thesis on the original text of a well-known ancient Chinese philosophical text.

Handheld whiteboard for character writing practice. I spent probably 30-60 minutes a day just repetitively writing and erasing.

I'd advise against this part, it's a whole lot of effort for very little gain. You'll hardly ever need to write characters by hand. 99%+ of the time you'll be typing instead which is based on pinyin - you just enter Latin letters and choose the right characters from a list based on the sound.

Much easier to just learn the basics of how stroke order works and then focus on reading and typing. Copy the characters from your phone on the rare occasions that you have to write anything on paper.

"Former sinophile" sounds like there's a story behind it, and not just "well I thought their third album was a derivative rehash and the scene was getting filled with hipsters." Do you mind talking about it?

Sure, happy to share anything without doxxing myself. The long and short of it is that I fell in love with Chinese history and language, studied it in college, spent some time living over there, ended up repulsed by the deracinated "New China" that has almost no culture continuity with pre-Communist China, as well as the amorality of the average middle class Chinese person. It's a really bleak society with a really bleak culture amongst really bleak surroundings. It has very little to recommend it IMO, whatever you hope to get out of China, you can get out of other places with substantially less risk to your sanity/safety/physical health.

ETA: "Ways That Are Dark," for all its many faults, gives an accurate account of the core flaws of China. It's not all literally true, but it's truthy, stuff like that has happened and still does happen in some form. So I suppose some of these issues had existed prior to the revolution.

Duolingo sucks, I've been told by a relative who went from zero to reading difficult Italian literature in two years of self-study. (I'm not sure what's better, he says it lacks context and that there are better apps)

How would you start learning Chinese? Has anyone here done it?

I wouldn't. It's their planet, if they want to run it, the least they can do is learn some native languages.

Obligatory admonition from 4chan on why you shouldn't learn Mandarin for professional reasons.

While I generally frown on 4chan texts other than art, this one is too full of little details and too well-written to be just a psyop. Someone's sincere regrets and desperation. Entire thread.

I don't think Duolingo sucks. It's fine for what it is. It keeps you on track to get through the first few months of learning a language which are the hardest and most boring part and the period where you're most likely to quit. You're never going to learn to speak a language fluently with Duolingo but it will take you from zero to reading children's books in a couple of months and from there you can bootstrap up to harder stuff. I finished the German tree and didn't really pursue it beyond that but it was enough to order food or ask directions in Germany, which was fine for the low amount of effort it took. Then I did the Spanish tree and continued studying on my own after I finished to the point where I can listen to audio books or watch the news without much trouble.

So if you go into it with the expectation that it's going to make you fluent with no other resources then you'll be disappointed but if you use it as a starting point you'll probably be reasonably happy with it.

I did some work with a textbook ~20 years ago, but never got very good and basically forgot everything.

What really helped me was working through the Spoonfed Chinese Anki deck. It's a deck of several thousand sentences, with cards having Chinese on one side and English on the other side. I did both Chinese to English, as well as Chinese to English to help with production.

It also has audio recordings of the sentences. What I did was listen and repeat as many times as it took me to pronounce a sentence correctly from memory at natural speed before moving on to the next card. This is key, IMO. Early on I would often have to repeat longer sentences 10-20 times to get it right.

I used the Chinese Grammar Wiki to figure out grammatical patterns I didn't understand.

This made me really good at pronunciation and speaking at a natural speed. Unfortunately, it didn't help much with listening. I'm working on that now with podcasts while walking to/from work. I'm going with 大鵬說中文, but it's not suitable for total beginners. I've heard good things about ChinesePod, which covers a broader range of ability levels.

Also, make sure you understand, in terms of where you need to be placing your tongue, how to pronounce the phonemes not used in English. X, j, and q are kind of like English sh, j, and ch, but they're pronounced with the tip of your tongue down below your lower incisors. Zh, ch, and sh are like English j, ch, and sh, but with the tip of the tongue curled slightly upwards. R has extensive regional variation, so just try to imitate it and it will probably be close enough.

Oh, also it helps if you spend a decade learning Japanese first, but not as much as you might think.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/
Probably start there. I don't know Chinese and have never made an earnest attempt at learning it. Depending on how distracted you are on your computer (or mobile) over several hours, get an intro to Chinese physical book from your local library and start using that. If there are several, look online and see if one has free premade flashcards for mobile use. Perhaps also make physical flashcards, because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system is a good way to get results via spaced repetition. Since it will be a slow buildup to learning all the characters, https://www.fluentu.com/blog/chinese/pinyin-subtitles/ may be a good idea for watching Chinese language entertainment.

YMMV, but from the maybe two people I know who have researched it and tried both, hellochinese is probably slightly better than duolingo for Chinese.

I came here to add the same, although you will also need to pay for hellochinese

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't mind paying, but Duolingo seems to have a lot of dark patterns which makes me reluctant to give them my money.

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