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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.

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