作者名称 国旗国籍

Thomas vip

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JP

2020.11.17 04:23

It’s been about 2 years since I started learning Mandarin as

a hobby. I think I’m going to write a series of short posts about it.

These are the first thoughts that come to mind:

- “You don’t need to learn characters in the beginning” is a lie teachers tell to students so they don’t quit.

- All Mandarin learning resources on the internet are bad at teaching pronunciation and tones. This includes everything on Y*uTube and all the popular and expensive video courses that most people use.

- Posting voice moments on HT has been extremely helpful for pronunciation. Many Chinese people helped me a lot. There are many of them I didn’t thank enough.

- Chinese people really want to know why you want to learn Chinese. If it’s not for business or family reasons, they seem to get confused and mistrust you. (Sorry but this is just my personal experience with many random people on this app. I’m not talking about you, of course.)

- Most Chinese people under 40 have been learning English their whole life, but most of us are starting Mandarin from absolute zero. *For me*, this makes it almost impossible for language exchanges to work the way they’re supposed to. So I mostly stick to posting moments. I have private chats with friends, but I don’t pressure myself to use Mandarin when I just don’t know how to say something.

- You need to spend a lot of time practicing counting and reading numbers. It doesn’t matter how many fancy vocabulary words you’ve already learned.

More to come, when I feel like it...
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Comments

  • Nomi 2020.11.17 04:28

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    Great experience, cant even understand the letters 😂😂
  • CHSX 2020.11.17 04:32

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    I don't think it's wrong not to learn characters in the beginning. As native speakers we were able to communicate fluently in Chinese before we officially started learning characters. Some people are illiterate for their entire life. After all, characters are signs
  • Ivan 2020.11.17 04:48

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    Wonderful! I can identify with your opinion. It's actually very simple, I just like it. 理由真的很简单,仅仅就是喜欢!
  • Randomized Vergil 2020.11.17 04:50

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    Tbh, Chinese is useless as a second language. It is nothing but a hobby. You don't read in Chinese, you don't chat in Chinese. If you and your Chinese friends talk together, you probably use English instead. Only occasionally you utter some Chinese words and get some compliments like 你中文不错。Without any doubt, the Chinese is a beautiful language. But the beauty you can sense is tangible only when you are fluent enough. Before that, Chinese is not good enough to convey your thoughts and ideas to others. And unfortunately, most Chinese learners cannot reach that goal.
  • Fina 2020.11.17 04:56

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    怎么会呢?HSK1入门课程里除了学拼音,汉字的笔画也开始学习的呀!因为汉字是方块字,最先肯定一笔一画学好笔画的。汉字的认识从图片开始,中国的小孩在识字启蒙阶段都这么来的。
  • Ester HIdayu 2020.11.17 05:22

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    你可以的,加油!
  • Sona 2020.11.17 06:34

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    @Fina 他遇到的肯定是不负责任的假老师。
  • Guier 2020.11.17 12:34

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    I kind of agree with Stephen Krashen's theory about language learning, that you learn a language by massive input. One bad habit I have with my English is that I was asked to output English (writing/speaking) at school and in real life before I have actually managed the contents I needed to express. What I did was making it up in my way and of course I made a lot of mistakes, and later they became false memory. I think it's smart to not pressure yourself to use Mandarin.
  • Thomas 2020.11.17 16:42

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    @CHSX I thought the same thing in the beginning. But it’s not fun not being able to read anything. A new learner shouldn’t try to learn 1000 characters in 1 month, but they should definitely learn a few characters every day. I don’t think people need to write characters on paper over and over again like Chinese kids have to. But I think there would be some benefit to learning if they did.
  • Thomas 2020.11.17 16:54

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    @Randomized Vergil Yeah, but for native English speakers all other languages are equally useless as Mandarjn, unless we have a special need for work or moving abroad. If we all stopped learning our hobby languages, this app would have to shut down.
  • Thomas 2020.11.17 17:02

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    @Guier Yeah, I had the same problem when I learned Spanish in school. I definitely agree the input hypothesis makes a lot of sense.
  • CHSX 2020.11.18 00:33

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    @Thomas Hmm, you are right it's not fun to be able to read. When we started learning English, we did learn spelling of words at the same time. I believe reading is vital, but I cannot help wondering, how would my English learning go had I started learning spelling and reading after I can communicate flunenctly? When it comes to language learning, input via ears should be more effective than via eyes.
  • Renee 2020.11.19 06:36

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    Is there sometime when you feel that you want to give up?
  • Fire Ferret 2020.11.28 15:25

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    Wow, this captures it perfectly. I can ditto everything on the list.
  • Zoe 2021.01.01 00:25

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    Very true!

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