Map from the Foreign Service Institute: estimated time to learn a foreign language for an English speaker

submitted by Chipit from i.redd.it

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

For fun, I started studying it after I lived there for a while. I'm also learning traditional and simplified simultaneously, which doesn't make things any easier.

But the dirty little secret is that most Chinese people aren't that good at Chinese. A lot of them suck at it, frankly.

Heh that's funny, I could believe it. And I agree I can get to a passable level, but sounding educated and articulate in Chinese is another decade of work. I have trouble remembering the tones too. I can pronounce them fine, but I have trouble retaining them despite my best efforts, unlike the written characters which I can remember fairly easily. So I can actually read Chinese a lot easier than listen to it, which I guess is opposite from normal for most Chinese learners.

[–]Chipit[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It helps a lot if you don't think of them as separate "tones" but rather completely different phonemes. That's how Chinese think of it, they would never confuse a second tone word with a fourth tone one.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I know, I try to think of it like putting emphasis on the right syllable in English. If you emphasize the wrong syllable it sounds so very wrong. But this hasn't really "clicked" yet for me in a deep way. I think I just need more practice.