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Mandarin: Number of hours | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 25 of 34 10 November 2014 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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The # hours it takes to become fluent is not an exact science.
I know a man who speaks Cantonese as a native tongue. He took Mandarin classes for 6 months and quit. His wife from China speaks both Cantonese & Mandarin. They used to go to dinner parties where Mandarin was spoken. The man had all the ingredients and yet the cake didn't turn out. What went wrong? First, the man knows enough Chinese characters to read a restaurant menu so learning to read isn't a big issue. The main issue is pronunciation. Since his wife knows Mandarin, she probably coached him along the way. They attended parties where Mandarin was spoken so this was an added bonus. However, besides going to class, the man had little interest watching TV or listening to radio programs in Mandarin. In this part of the world we recognize English as an official language and not Mandarin. Most people who speak Mandarin also speak English so there is a tendency to switch to English when someone knows your Chinese isn't fluent to avoid confusion. The most he would be saying in a conversation is: nihao 你好, zaijian 再见 & xiexie 谢谢 (How are you? Good Bye & Thank you) which are the most basic phrases in any language. The other issue is going to class and passing a language course. For someone who is new to Mandarin, learning the characters alone is time consuming. For a Cantonese-speaker to be able to pass a Mandarin course isn't uncommon because he/she can write the characters so doing dictation or writing 1 paragraph on what you did yesterday isn't an issue. The issue is getting the right pronunciation on different words. If you mispronounce a word or 2, the person you talk to will correct you. But if you really start to stutter, the other person would switch to talking in English to avoid confusion. The other problem that is very common in the Chinese community is that people tend to learn from others who they considered to be "experts". The culture is based on the Confucius teaching of respecting your elders including your teachers. Most Chinese people tend not to see themselves as being able to learn on their own unless they are in front of a teacher. In his case I think a private tutor that focuses on his conversation skills (something he was lacking) would be a bigger asset than attending class where he can pass by writing grammatically correct sentences. Personally I went on a summer exchange in Taiwan but my listening and conversation skills isn't where I wanted to be. I spent 8 months watching TV programs, videos, listening to the radio. Now I tend to spend more time reading the newspaper. There are local Chinese newspapers like Singtao 星島 & Mingpao 明報. The ones available are Canada East editions 加東版. I also read the Hong Kong editions online. Edited by shk00design on 10 November 2014 at 9:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5192 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 26 of 34 11 November 2014 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some of the people who started this thread have now potentially been learning Mandarin for almost 10 years! Congratulations!
It makes you realise: if we just stopped worrying about how many thousand characters there are to learn, or how many thousand hours it will take, and started... we could say the same about ourselves in 10 years' time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3895 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 27 of 34 11 November 2014 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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chokofingrz, I actually HAVE been learning Chinese for that amount of years. I still don't consider myself fluent :) How many characters and hours have I spent, no idea.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 28 of 34 12 November 2014 at 9:22am | IP Logged | ||
Even for me as an English speaker, I don't think I'd ever learn all the words & phrases in a dictionary. If you attend a Spelling Bee contest or watch it on TV, you'd find many words & phrases that are unfamiliar. A month ago I was on vacation in China and watched a show similar to a Spelling Bee on TV. I don't even know any of the words or phrases. The way the Chinese does it is to use a laser pen and scribble characters on an electronic screen with 4 squares. The early part of the competition the contestants had to write phrases with 2 characters with their laser pen over the first 2 squares on the screen. They could ask the 3 judges to repeat a phrase or to use it in a sentence as in an English Spelling Bee. Many of the phrases are rarely used in the modern context but were used in Chinese literature & poetry from ages ago. As the contest got progressively difficult, the students had to write 4-character phrases or proverbs 成语. A while ago I was in Taiwan on summer exchange. Back in those days I went shopping and ate at local diners on my own. At that time I was considered 1 of the few who had enough language fluency to get around without having other people nearby to translate. For many years I exchanged letters and later E-mails with a friend living in the US in Chinese who also went on the exchange program. I sometimes feel uncomfortable telling people I speak Chinese if I know they also speak English because I don't know enough words & phrases. Last year, I made an effort to watch more Chinese movies & TV shows to get my fluency up. Every other new word / phrase I'd take a minute to record it on a computer document. The extra effort eventually paid off. When reading a newspaper in English or Chinese I still come across new words & phrases routinely and I would copy characters into an online dictionary and lookup the meaning. Learning is an ongoing (lifelong) process. You get to a point where you would consider yourself at or near the level of a native-speaker but you continue to pick up unfamiliar words & phrases. For those who have been learning Mandarin for 10 years, do you feel comfortable getting into a conversation? If you know somebody is a Mandarin-speaker who also speaks English, would you speak to that person in Mandarin? A few months ago I watched a singing contest from Beijing TV. The singer Haodi 好弟 from Nigeria was on stage. The male host asked: "老外 (foreigner), do you speak Chinese"? He answered: "我說中文的“... When you get into a similar situation, would you tell the person you speak Chinese as well or with a bit of hesitation? The last time I travelled to Houston, Texas I met a Taiwanese couple at the airport. They asked me about taking an airport shuttle into the city. I told them in Mandarin that it would cost around $25 to get to their hotel. As someone from Canada, I was as much a foreigner in Houston as they were. The only thing I was able to do was to ask the agent at the service desk for the shuttle bus in English a few minutes earlier. Edited by shk00design on 12 November 2014 at 9:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3895 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 29 of 34 12 November 2014 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I used to feel comfortable some years back, now, because of lack of use - not anymore. But then again, strangely enough, it depends on with whom I speak. It's not even friends or strangers distinction, it's just that with some people, I understand what they are saying, and with some I struggle. It's not even an accent thing. Can't explain it. But I definitely feel it. People who speak both Mandarin and English, it also depends. Mainly, in what context I know those people and which way we're used to communicating. So with some it would be English, with some Chinese. I even had a European friend once, with whom I spoke Chinese, and he was also a student like me. The only difference was that somehow from day 1 we had gotten into such habit. Once you form a habit of speaking English, it's difficult to break it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 30 of 34 12 November 2014 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here are several interesting YouTube videos from Steve Kaufmann on learning Mandarin:
Fluent Mandarin in 6 months? Tips on learning Mandarin Steve Kaufmann's comments on Mark Zuckerberg speaks Chinese Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Chinese Watching the video of Mark Zuckerberg (the Facebook founder) in Beijing was like watching the Irish polyglot Benny Lewis who claimed to be able to master a language in 3 months. Most people would agree Benny is able to get to a B1 level in 3 months which would allow him to carry on basic conversations. Mark's pronunciation (intonation) isn't perfect but if you pay close attention his dialog are understandable. His wife & in-laws are Chinese but it is obvious he hasn't spend a lot of time in China. A word like "high-speed train" he said: 快的火车 (a train that runs fast) instead of the proper term 高铁 for high-speed rail isn't an uncommon mistake. I think people should set some kind of limit on how long they intend to spend with a specific language. If you let your language learning drag on for too long, it can become boring or it becomes a routine that won't get you anywhere. It's like learning to play music on a piano. The more technical proficiency you acquire, the faster you will start to learn more difficult songs. People who are fluent in multiple languages tend to be always finding new materials and keeping their exposure to a language up. Edited by shk00design on 12 November 2014 at 9:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5250 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 31 of 34 26 January 2015 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the last 6 months I've logged my Mandarin study time into Toggl. I've spent 335
hours in that time, averaging 1.8 hours a day. My first year I spent closer to 3-5 hours a day. I also spent 6 months in Beijing (I loved the accent there) where I spent several of those months studying 8 hours a day and speaking regularly. Just assuming 1.8 hours a day for the full 3 years of my study so far, even though at times it was many more hours per day, it comes to over 2000 hours total. I'm still far from fluent. At my current rate, I'd guess that I could be fluent, to a high standard, in another four or five years. That'd be around 5000 hours. I think this is pretty accurate for me. PS. I didn't find that actually living in China made much of a difference in my ability. It was very motivating, though. PPS. Beijing is a fine place to learn, although no better than anywhere else in China. Choosing a place that interests you and has weather you enjoy is much more important than the minuscule regional differences. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4952 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 32 of 34 28 January 2015 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
I am a bit perplexed by this statement. Assuming you did not radically changed your learning methods, if you spent 8 hours a day studying simply that in itself should have propelled your learning. Of course I know that quantity is not better than quality, and that over-study or long hours may not be better and actually be detrimental (the concentration curve, etc.) But being also surrounded by the language should have improved your listening and response times (as well as reading) significantly. But you say you noticed no real significant boost. Do you have a theory as to why? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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