Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Chinese Galaxy

[Snow]

Good to hear that you're doing well. Although I miss reading your posts with detailed daily study plans, it's totally fine to just enjoy the journey of language learning.

I look forward to reading about your future language plans.

[outcast]

I am fine, thank you! And right now I haven't had detailed study plans, in this phase I just go with the flow... talk to people, read, review whatever I want, and just let my teachers dictate what I am learning from class material.

Summer is approaching though, so I may have some plan of attack along the lines of my winter break, though it will probably not be so textbook focused and slightly different in approach. I am not sure, but I do want to have another major boost in July and August. I want to really finally claim I can speak Chinese (more on this in a bit), and also really get my reading finally to a level of comfort. Honestly, I also am starting to get some slow wanderlust to move on to Hindi and Korean. I want to start a new language in the next 6 months even if it is crazy.

[outcast]

So let me expound on my current Chinese level.

So I think it is something like this: my listening has improved a lot, my speaking has improved a bit (complex stuff little progress, daily Chinese big strides), my basic spoken grammar has definitely improved, my vocabulary has only gotten a little better. My reading got rusty but I've been reading a lot more recently and it has come roaring back, and even maybe easier now than before. My writing has stalled (have not written a lot of material like in March and April).

So, in a nutshell, I have made uneven buy overall statistically important progress. I really have almost no problems out in the street anymore provided the language I am hearing is somewhat standard, and the topics are any everyday topic. I have no problems replying. A lot of basic grammar mistakes have virtually disappeared, and my sentence structure is more Chinese-like. I can honestly say I don't fear speaking this language in the real world, and I can use it to get what I need, want, or wish. Natives can approach me and ask me things, no problem. I can talk in this language for hours...

I don't know what to do about my current status with Chinese in my profile, so I keep taking the conservative, status-quo approach. No change. All Chinese speakers now say I "speak" Chinese. I still would like some sort of more objective validation. I have been ruminating having some Chinese native here test my skills, and from a heartless, dispassionate angle tell me what they think, based on their personal criteria of what it means to have "basic fluency". I really don't know now, which means I am probably close since I have noticed all along my language learning career I underrate my abilities.

My short term goals are clear: add a lot more variety to my vocabulary, improve my usage of sayings and proverbs, and make my sentences slightly more complex. Also this: I want to go back to the most basic of vocabulary and learn new ways to use it. I was doing that yesterday with basic words like 闹， 难过， 又， 成功， 叫, etc. It's not about just adding words like 攀谈，倘若， 闯荡， 召集， or 鼎盛, it's about being versatile with the most basic words and utilize them in a variety of situations. It's hard because I love words, and thus want to learn new ones and run the risk of trying to sound overly-literate (in both learned and native languages!).

So basically, polish my basic speech, improve significantly my "academic topic" language, broaden vocab, make basic vocab more versatile. I am also keeping an eye on my pronunciation. Maybe it's because my ear now is more acute to Chinese, and also because my speech is more fluent, I sometimes feel my Chinese 'x' sounds totally wrong. So I am trying to work on that. Also my cadence at times I find it sounds bad, so I am trying to mimic Chinese males' speech pattern.

That's it, making progress, but the road is long and full of sludge. It takes time...

[Snow]

I'm curious about your approach to learning Korean in the distant future. Are you going to apply the same approach that you have used in learning Mandarin?

[outcast]

I certainly will not apply the same approach as Mandarin. With Mandarin, because it was such a different language from any I had learned prior, I just decided that I had to pull all the stops: work hard AND work smart (not one or the other), do fun stuff and also very boring rote drills, do long marathon sessions of study but also give myself a relatively loose and long timescale to learn the language (3 years in general). So it has been sort of just "whatever it takes". With German, French, and Portuguese, I had different strategies. German I focused on grammar drills and tons of reading, with listening. With French, I focused much more on listening and pronunciation and less on grammar and vocabulary (given my Spanish language background). With Portuguese I focused on false-cognates, on grammar differences with Spanish (instead of studying the entire grammar, I just quickly looked at books to find the differences and just study that), and just directly speaking the language.

With Korean, two things will immediately be different from learning Mandarin: literacy acquisition and vocabulary acquisition.

First, I have spent HUNDREDS of hours on Chinese vocabulary, as there is no other way, there are basically no cognates, so one has to start from absolute scratch. Second, I have spent HUNDREDS of other hours learning the thousands of Chinese characters required to be literate to a relatively high level, there is no short cut. You can't read otherwise, and not being able to read in a language is not an acceptable state for me. So here I am still, with thousands of words to yet learn, and probably right now knowing some 3,000 characters to some degree from very familiar to recognizing I have seen it but can't remember how to read it (I feel I am on the border of literacy but still need a bit more), but I will feel much better when I am well north of 4,000 or close to 5,000.

In Korean, I can learn the script in 72 hours (writing it is a little trickier though, but I hear nowhere the task of learning Hanzi). So that is that.

Vocabulary wise, if I really reach a relatively high level in Mandarin, then I get a massive discount on Korean vocabulary. Not only that, modern Korean is imbued with hundreds of English words, and not just tech words: I am talking about words like "mattress", "pencil", "table" (I find this stunning, my Korean friends tell me there are native words for these objects but that today many use the English), so I get an additional discount there. In other words, vocabulary acquisition on the surface seems as it should be a far smoother and lighter load.

With those two considered, it should free up hundreds and hundreds of hours for me to focus on grammar like Speech Level, verbs, etc; and the tricky pronunciation, to me it seems Korean is harder than Chinese to pronounce leaving tones aside. From what I can tell, Korean has a phenomenon like French Liaison, but also with the fusing of sounds at word boundaries. It also has this rhythm to it that may pose some problems. So at first thought, I think I would focus a lot of time on listening and perhaps shadowing will play a much greater role. I will also have to quickly internalize the Speech levels, I think in theory it seems easy (kind of like Romance conjugation), but in practice I have noticed in the past learning French and German I used to mix up my "vous" and "tu"/"Sie" and "du" a lot, I never really practiced it so much but still it bothered me. I can't afford those kind of slips in Korean where there are many more speech levels and being such a big part of their culture. I know many Koreans say I'm a foreigner so it won't matter they will forgive my errors, but my goal is of course to have a good grip on this aspect. I may just "perform" situational usage with people of different ages and status to get the hang of it quicker.

Just some initial thoughts.

[outcast]

My overall plans have changed somewhat since last I was here. I was planning to leave China by the end of the summer, now it is 95% likely I will study one more semester, which means an extra five months in China. I feel I have worked hard overall, and that my solid B2 Chinese level is reachable, but I need a bit more time. So I will give myself that time. Of course it does come at a cost since my scholarship is only one year, but I am OK with putting up the bill. I want to give myself the best shot at achieving my goals. So that is one of the major pieces of news with me. I will talk about my plans for the next 8 months in China in another separate post.

I have been on a full paid scholarship in China for the last 10 months, this scholarship expires in August. So if I wanted to study an extra semester, I had to pony up the funds myself. Which I have done, last Friday. So now it is official I am on the ground in China till at least the dawn of 2017. I now have to do some part-time work to cover my expenses, so I work 2-3 times a week a couple of hours each day.

I have around 7 months ahead of me, 9 1/2 months behind me. The progress in those 9 1/2 months has been great, I have to match and exceed that progress in this "2nd half", or what remains of it. To me it is clear that my main goals are be comfortable reading Chinese, I still feel that when I see Chinese text I sometimes get that flood of characters that become a big blur and just really make me lazy and not wanting to read it. I have to sort of muster some breath and start... I want this to go away. I want to pick up Chinese text and just read it, no 2nd thoughts, no feelings of challenge. I will have to really step up my reading habits, not necessarily my volume of reading. I just need to read some everyday, 5-10 pages. I need to make a goal of it.

Speaking is the other main area, specifically becoming more colloquial, and improving my skills in detailed descriptive narratives, in other words, telling stories. I want to be able to include fine detail to describe scenes, objects, and people. I want to be precise about their emotions. I want to make the time-line of events clear to the listener, etc. This is a big task, but I need to get better in this area. Secondarily, just keep expanding my topic range.

I want to get at least 240 on the HSK 6 in December. I want to finish all new material for HSK 6 level by August or September, and then the rest of the way just review. Concurrently, work on my own on "HSK 7" (does not currently exist), material: what used to be the old HSK advanced level 9, 10, and 11, which is an additional 3000 words. My aim with this material is not to master it, but just to be exposed to it, and slowly gain familiarity and that's all.

In terms of next semester, it is most likely I will attend classes with native Chinese and no longer with foreign students. There is no level 7 class, so therefore this is the most likely course. There is an outside chance I could attend classes with Chinese and a couple of classes especially designed for post Level 6 foreign students. Most likely I will just "repeat" a couple of level 6 classes. I am more interested in retaking HSK 6 class, and Writing level 6. I am not sure what will precisely happen and that is still at least 2 1/2 months away.

Summer break I want to do another intense burst of study, as I mentioned earlier, focused on reading and acquiring vocab.

In terms of textbooks I am finishing all the intermediate levels, and reviewing some others. For summer break I will start Boya Chinese 7 advanced I, Spoken Chinese Advanced book 1, and really work on mastering the Kubler series Basic and Intermediate Spoken Chinese. If I can I will resume NPCR: finally finish book 4, and do book 5. I think I could incorporate them as part of my reading push.

[outcast]

So I am rifting right around the middle when it comes to my post-Mandarin language selection. There are two major factors that heavily influence the road ahead: goals and legacy.

1. Goals

Ever since embarking on this life-changing mission in 2010, I have focused on four key core languages for me, based on my geographic area of the world where I mainly dwell and its spoken languages, actual hard-numbered global population using these languages, and the influence of my native languages (which languages would be "easiest" while still being immediately useful). As such, the four obvious target languages, I decided, that meet these three criteria most immediately were French, German, Portuguese, and Mandarin. My goal in these four core languages is solid C1. What has actually happened is I studied the first three languages to a good B2, but not C1, before moving on. So once I reach this level in Chinese, I still have to take the four languages to C1. This is a tall order but given the level reached before not as difficult as it may seem. It will just take a true concerted effort to get there. With these four languages, time is an issue: I always wanted to be done with this in 6-8 years time.

Beyond these four languages, the field of languages I am interested is actually narrow, but my goals in them nowhere near as lofty. B1 would generally suffice, and then depending on what the situation is down the road decide or not to bring them higher. Time here is not such a huge issue, I give myself a lifetime. Whereas the four core languages to C1 was really a mission, any new languages after FR, DE, PT, ZH are really more of a true hobby and passion. Which languages I want to tackle first has shifted over time, something like this:

2 years ago: Russian, Italian, Dutch, Cantonese, Swedish
1 year ago: Russian, Wu Chinese, Hindi, Swedish, Italian,
6 mo ago: Hindi, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Swedish
Today: Korean, Hindi, Italian, Russian, Dutch

So it is really all a flux. But the key languages don't change that much. At this time Korean and Hindi are my top pet-projects. I have been torn since I do really want to learn Hindi for reasons including being the one other major center of civilization I would like to have contact with on a deeper level, population numbers, and some interesting grammatical features of the language. From a usefulness point of view (again taking my criteria of geography, population, and ease of learning), I would think Italian, Russian, and Hindi would the top three. But given what I know about learning Korean when you study Mandarin, it is a language I want to tackle. So between those four, it narrows down to Korean and Hindi after Mandarin.

Again, I have been struggling to decide which one to do first, and I am now almost in the camp that I will bite the bullet and try to learn BOTH from scratch, at the same time! This is something I have never done before, I always study one language to a decent level, then another, and them maybe for a time two at the same time but never if both are from A0. But I feel that studying both will give my synergy: that the progress in one will feed enthusiasm into the other, and so on. Especially at the beginning when progress for an experienced learner can be quick in terms of the basics, I feel I can progress even faster with more motivation if I just do both at the same time. A good day in one language will make me want to duplicate that success on the other, while a bad day may not necessarily transfer (I hope), I just use learning language B as a stress release from the bad day in language A. So this is my current general plan. The details are a mess though.

For example going to India. The money situation is looking grim at the moment, unless I get some really nice gig in the next six months I am not sure how I will be able to go in January. Since my stay in China is now half a year longer than before, that obviously affects things. It could also be that I go back home in January, and for a 3-4 months work my butt off to prepare for a C1 exam in one core language. Then I really study Hindi and Korean intensively, 3-4 months, then 3-4 months studying for C1 in a 2nd core language. In 2018 then go to India, but that then all depends on personal matters. The best time to go would still be 2017. If I can find some gig for the money. But then I would need to study some Hindi before going there, which means while I am still in China. To compound my indecision, I have plenty of Korean friends here, while I have no Hindi-speaking ones. So it would make much more sense to pick up Korean with them, that would not require money. But I really want to learn Hindi. The third option (and the one that unfortunately makes the most sense), is that in the second half of this year I keep studying Chinese hard, and then 1 hour a day, a few more weekends, I study Korean basics and practice with my friends. That would leave little time for Hindi, but the fact is Korean has some great advantages right now and if life gives you lemons...

The other factor in my future learning is legacy: i.e., how much time and work will it take to keep my other languages to a decent, productive level. That is another post.

That is where I stand now on my language learning plans.

edit: mistakes were numerous and atrocious, trying to fix them...

[outcast]

So the summer has started and I need to get a move on. Yesterday I "started" my proposed "plan", but a nagging headache really set me back, I got only 50% of what I wanted done. What is my plan? it is the anti-winter plan I had, which if anyone remembered was extremely rigid with very specific daily goals.

Being summer, and being breezy-easy and all, I don't have such military like plans in mind, but I do have general lofty goals. I want to finish the HSK 6上 book, which I have been slowly making my way through since April, which gaps in between of no-study, by mid-July (really, I want to be done by next week).

I have reviewed at least twice now all the Spoken Series books (2 and 3 elementary, 1,2 & 3 intermediate, and in school glossed over advanced 2 book). When I am done with HSK 6 book I want to start the Advanced Spoken book 1. My plan is to work on this book until October, then move on to book 2.

I need to finish Boya Chinese book 6, the last two chapters we did not cover in class, and then do a review of the entire book. Then I will have done at least twice all the Boya series books from 3-4 (intermediate level) to 5-6 (vantage level). I will then start the Advanced level with book 7. I would like to be done with advanced book 7 by the start of the next semester, as the really thick Book 8 awaits in the wings.

I want to really work through the Kubler series of Basic and Spoken Chinese to reinforce my oral skills, and make them totally automatic at the every day speaking level. So I will really focus on this series in the next two months, the exercises, memory drills, transformation of sentences, translation exercises, and listening.

There is also a Beijing Language university series of reading books I have, I want to use those as extensive reading practice. My goal is to read 4-5 passages every day. These passages are about any imaginable topic, so they will expose me to a wide range of subject matter and its related specific vocabulary. My goal with these is reading speed and vocabulary acquisition by context. I will however make note of expressions and proverbs.

Finally, I want to resume New Practical Chinese reader, but I keep saying that any never deliver.

So in the immediate week or two, I want to finish HSK6上 and Boya book 6 Vantage, while doing some extensive reading. After that, start to work through Kubler's Series, and start the advanced books. So my general routine ideally would be:

Morning: work on new material in the Advanced books
Afternoon: do extensive reading, and work through Kubler's Spoken Series
Evening: review old HSK and Boya material, mainly through extensive listening, and watch tv shows.
Any time of day: try to fit NPCR, and shadowing of Spoken Chinese series dialogues as review of that series.

I do have the freedom at any time to just use time to talk to natives. As long as I am using Chinese and trying to honestly push my skills forward.

I will try to track my progress here, again, to give myself a sense of duty, accomplishment, and shame in front of people if I get lazy.

Can I speak basic, lousy Mandarin Chinese? I think so, I am now much more confident of giving an affirmative answer. Given the boost in my level from last time I did "intensive" learning, I may wait till September 1 to make it "official" (also since it would mark my 1 year anniversary of arriving, so it kind of sounds like a nice round number). But I am close to a major milestone in my language learning life... in my life, period!

ps - A twist here is that in August I may start doing one hour of Korean, and two hours on certain days, the extra hour being spent with a native. I have basically decided that this is a rare opportunity to pick the basics of Korean, that when I go back home to find a native Korean willing to take the time with me is basically impossible (and for free!). So I should take the opportunity. I know some may criticize my decision, but I do feel I have earned the right to start a new language and furthermore, I should seize this chance of getting invaluable help from a native while it is in front of me. More on this later as the time nears, I may open a new log for Korean (since this one is already deep into the post count about Chinese).

[Snow]

I know some may criticize my decision

No one has the right to do that! We are all free to study whatever we want, whenever we want.

More on this later as the time nears, I may open a new log for Korean

I'm definitely looking forward to your Korean log, if you do open one.

[outcast]

Haha, thanks Snow. I was suggesting that since I am still in China, some people may advice I just study Chinese and fully use the chance I have. It is a valid point. I just would say that I have, and will use the opportunity. I am paying for this extra half-year. So I just will sleep a little less... Starting a new language is very exiting so I will use that fact to wake up a little earlier and put an hour to 90 minutes of Korean (I can wake up at 6am for that!, at least for the first two to three months), then three times a week meet for an hour in the afternoon with a native friend. That way I still have the bulk of my day with Chinese, and end the day on Chinese. The chance to have free, unlimited help from a Korean native, and also help from other Korean acquaintances, is one I can't pass up, I have finally decided. Given I have Mandarin background the road of Korean should be a little less tortuous, and since my goal is more limited at least for now, the summit is not that high.