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Mandarin? Japanese? Characters or Speech? | ||
Tags: Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tomohiro Octoglot Newbie Japan Joined 4137 days ago 20 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Japanese*, Korean, Galician, GermanC2, SpanishC2, Portuguese, Mandarin, English Studies: Russian, Old English, Armenian | Message 17 of 19 27 May 2014 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Generally speaking, no matter what are the levels of linguistics similarity, learning
one language will give you benefits to learn another one, either direct or indirectly. It will broaden your mind in terms of different linguistics possibilities. For instance, different features such as in phonology, morphology, syntactic or lexicon etc will appear in your target language. This process will be a plus for you to learn another one because in such situation, you will need to confirm whether your usual method will work well for the new language or not. If not, you will need to think about another way to keep your studying method efficient. Because your target language is from a different language family group, it doesn’t mean that it will take more time for you to master it. It is not necessarily a rule. Concerning your questions, all depends on your short-term and long-term goals. 10 years on Mandarin or Japanese is what other people have estimated. Who are they to estimate the amount of years one will spend in other to achieve a high level in any language? Don’t limit yourself by what others say, even though by statistics most people have spent 10 years! The amount of years depends on you, in your goals, determination, discipline, learning methodology, schedule etc. People have different backgrounds, goals etc. Anyway, you can read about other people's achievements and big hurdles so far. Take notes about what you think that can help you to make your method more efficient. Regarding the other four questions, it depends on the language you choose. Second, I think you should have an idea about what you want to read, listen to, with whom to speak etc before you choose. Just as a matter of curiosity, the website below says that according to a research, “if you are familiar with the 500 most common characters in Chinese then you can read 75% of modern Chinese. If you know 1000 characters, you can read 89%. 2000 characters gives you 97% coverage. When you are reading Chinese you will find that the same characters appear again and again and gradually become more familiar”. I read the original article written in 2008 by a Chinese linguist, but I could not find it. http://fluentinmandarin.com/content/how-many-chinese-charact ers-do-you-need-to-know/ I have never counted the number of characters I have learned in Chinese, but it is more likely that the research is close to the reality for foreigners who I have talked to. Once you set your goals and chose a language, you can always start a log on this HTLAL, so that some people who are native speakers and other students of your target language can give you more precise advice. You can always improve your time management by reading other people’s log as well. For instance, Expugnator is one guy who is a master of time management and juggling. Serpent, is also quite adept at studying several languages simultaneously. Reading about their logs may help you improve your time optimization in both French and Italian while you start learning Chinese or Japanese. Expugnator’s log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=37591&PN=1 My ideas are not well organized, I know. Just another comment before I post my reply. The general rule for me is always to have many possible things to do, including some that can be done even in noisy, tiring ((the queue at the bank kills me...) or crowded places, and then I choose in the same way as I would choose from a well stocked buffet table in a restaurant or a very cozy cafe. I can't see the point in keeping track of the minutes you will spend. How do you compare half an hour spend on a hard and intensive activity in a new target language to relaxed reading in a well known language with the TV blaring in the background? What I mean is that we are not robots; therefore, I cannot tell you to split your time equally in both. It depends on many other factors. Edited by Tomohiro on 27 May 2014 at 10:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 18 of 19 27 May 2014 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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10 years is way too long to make any meaningful goals.
Make a goal for a timespan you can actually appreciate, like 2 months, 6 weeks, even half a year... but 10 years... I can't even decide what I want for dinner each night. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6344 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 19 of 19 28 May 2014 at 4:13am | IP Logged | ||
In the long run, you'd be better off waiting. But ignoring that advice 4) learn pronunciation and kana (japanese) or pronunciation and pinyin (Mandarin), then use Pimsleur with a transcript per this old post rule of thumb - always start with pronunciation/script 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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