Opportunity Cost of FSI Category V languages

[rdearman]

The advice about not worrying about tones initially is good advice for a beginner. Many people are so worried about the tones that they don't learn pronunciation first. Tones are an additional complication in Mandarin, but like all languages you must pronounce the sounds properly to be understood, and then the tone give additional information about the meaning. It doesn't matter if you used the correct tone if the person doesn't understand the word your trying to pronounce. I don't think anyone says you should try to learn the language without learning the tones, I believe they are simply reinforcing the fact that you need to produce the sounds correctly before overlaying a tone.

[smallwhite]

*protests*

The tone doesn't give additional meaning, and it doesn't exist on top of but separate from the vowel. The tone and the vowel rely on each other to exist, the vowel must have a tone in order to be pronounced; though a wrong tone is better than nothing.

It's like the English words "be" and "bee". An unstressed "be" can only be "be" and can never be "bee". A stressed "be" OTOH sounds the same as "bee" or "B". The stress goes with the vowel and is essential, just like the Chinese tone is.

No comment on when to learn it, though.

[Denzagathist]

I think it is essential to learn the tones properly from the outset. When I studied Mandarin in university, we spent the first two or three weeks of the class (~10-15 hours) ONLY working on pronunciation. Before even learning all of the vowels of Mandarin we studied the tones, because they are the most novel and challenging aspect of Mandarin phonology to a speaker of a non-tonal language. It's comparatively far simpler to teach people to pronounce a sound that doesn't exist in their first language (e.g. Mandarin /ɕ, ʂ, y/ for a native English speaker) than to teach them to start using an entirely new layer of phonology that they are not accustomed to actively attending to.

It was only after having very thoroughly studied the tones and the ins and outs of Pinyin that we even began learning any basic words. If you don't study the proper pronunciation from the start, it's much harder to go back later and fix those ingrained mistakes. As smallwhite said, there is no such thing as a toneless vowel in Mandarin (even the "neutral" tone of Mandarin is actually still a tone; its realization just depends on the preceding syllable's tone), so learning without tones at first is a great way to make things more difficult for yourself later on.

When studying my Mandarin vocabulary in SRS, I mark the word as wrong even if I produce all the segmental features correctly and all that is wrong is the tone(s). A wrong tone is (almost) as bad as a wrong vowel. Some people claim that you shouldn't worry about tones because it is still usually possible to understand the meaning from context even if the tones are wrong, but the same can be said of vowels and stress in English (and Russian, and numerous other languages). But I don't hear anybody suggesting that you should put off studying vowel and stress distinctions in those languages.

[kulaputra]

I don't know have a dog in this fight, but you seem awfully opinionated on how to learn Mandarin for someone who's claiming A1 skills in the language. People who've actually learned the language and say that it's viable to skip characters indefinitely --- you dismiss what they say out of hand ...

I am rating my Mandarin at an A1 not because I've studied it for a month but because I haven't studied in years. Previously, I studied the language for years and was once close to fluent. I'm sure I could (and I plan to) get it back up to speed fairly quickly. "A1" is basically shorthand for all this.

*protests*

The tone doesn't give additional meaning, and it doesn't exist on top of but separate from the vowel. The tone and the vowel rely on each other to exist, the vowel must have a tone in order to be pronounced; though a wrong tone is better than nothing.

It's like the English words "be" and "bee". An unstressed "be" can only be "be" and can never be "bee". A stressed "be" OTOH sounds the same as "bee" or "B". The stress goes with the vowel and is essential, just like the Chinese tone is.

No comment on when to learn it, though.

I essentially agree with this, it's fairly meaningless to tell Chinese learners to ignore tone just like it would be meaningless to tell French learners to ignore vowels. You can't account for Chinese without tone anymore then you can account for French (or any other language) without vowels. Tone is an integral part of every Chinese syllable. If you're not acquiring (I prefer this word to "learning") tone, you're not acquiring Chinese.

I think it is essential to learn the tones properly from the outset. When I studied Mandarin in university, we spent the first two or three weeks of the class (~10-15 hours) ONLY working on pronunciation. Before even learning all of the vowels of Mandarin we studied the tones, because they are the most novel and challenging aspect of Mandarin phonology to a speaker of a non-tonal language. It's comparatively far simpler to teach people to pronounce a sound that doesn't exist in their first language (e.g. Mandarin /ɕ, ʂ, y/ for a native English speaker) than to teach them to start using an entirely new layer of phonology that they are not accustomed to actively attending to.

It was only after having very thoroughly studied the tones and the ins and outs of Pinyin that we even began learning any basic words. If you don't study the proper pronunciation from the start, it's much harder to go back later and fix those ingrained mistakes. As smallwhite said, there is no such thing as a toneless vowel in Mandarin (even the "neutral" tone of Mandarin is actually still a tone; its realization just depends on the preceding syllable's tone), so learning without tones at first is a great way to make things more difficult for yourself later on.

Precisely this. For Chinese learners not in a university setting that practices this kind of pedagogy, the Phonology unit in the FSI Chinese course does exactly this and I can't recommend it enough.

[ASEAN]

I don't know have a dog in this fight, but you seem awfully opinionated on how to learn Mandarin for someone who's claiming A1 skills in the language. People who've actually learned the language and say that it's viable to skip characters indefinitely --- you dismiss what they say out of hand ...

Some people have severe reading disablities in their native language, so learning how to read a language like Thai which has similiar looking letters and no spaces between words in a sentence is pretty much an impossiblity. I think it is beneficial to let them know that it may be possible to learn a language to an intermediate level without worrying about reading. The guy who speaks Mandarin but can't read a menu was a drug addict in Canada and got clean when he moved to Taiwan. He definitely wasn't a candidate for traditional learning methods.

The problem with this forum is that many are abnormally successful language learners, speaking half a dozen or more languages fluently, that they can't identify with the average language learner. Some have the idea of "it's my way or the highway", ignoring the fact that in many countries like the US and Canada, their way has been an utter failure for the average learner. Paul Noble and Gabriel Wyner couldn't learn languages the traditional way so they developed techniques to help them overcome hurdles.

[kulaputra]

I don't recall anyone suggesting learning Chinese characters the "traditional" way (either the way they are taught in the Sinosphere or outside of it, in formal academic settings). Certainly, I would not recommend it. That's not germane to the question of whether to learn to read/write Chinese in the first place.

Of course, ultimately it's your choice, but I want to point it there are more nuances to the subject then the common presumption that if learning Chinese (written and spoken) takes X hours and learning to read/write it take Y hours, it will take X - Y hours to learn spoken Chinese.

[Xmmm]

To most Chinese learners, including Emilio, the traditional Chinese characters can be overwhelming at the beginning. But don't worry, you don't need to know how to write to be fluent in a language. And we will let you in on a secret - character learning becomes so much easier and enjoyable after you've learned how to speak.

https://blog.glossika.com/glossika-cust ... ry-emilio/

[leosmith]

1. Do you believe the relative FSI ratios are somewhat accurate? If not, why?
2. Did/Does this effect your choice of language to study or the order you study multiple languages in?

First, nice post! I’m glad you’re drawing some attention to the more difficult languages (for me at least).
1. Yes, because the ratios more or less match my experience.
2. Maybe a bit, at least in the case of Korean. Everyone kept saying how hard it was, which attracted me to it even more.

I think Russian has taken much more than 2x as much time to reach the level I am at now, than if it were a Romance language

Agreed. And for me, Korean doesn’t belong in the highest level. So there are some exceptions.

For Japanese, the homophone situation is not actually that bad on native words such as flower 花 and nose 鼻

True. There are tons with the exact same pronunciation though, like 漢字 (Chinese character) and 感じ
(feeling).

The problem with this forum is that many are abnormally successful language learners, speaking half a dozen or more languages fluently, that they can't identify with the average language learner. Some have the idea of "it's my way or the highway", ignoring the fact that in many countries like the US and Canada, their way has been an utter failure for the average learner.

Don't you think it's a bit of a leap to equate urging you to learn the alphabet with championing failed methods taught in the US and Canada?

Paul Noble and Gabriel Wyner couldn't learn languages the traditional way so they developed techniques to help them overcome hurdles.

Did you mean Michel Thomas and Khatsumoto?

People who've actually learned the language and say that it's viable to skip characters indefinitely

From what I've read, about half the people say you should learn the characters from the beginning, most say you should be learning them by intermediate, and almost everyone says you should be using them heavily as an advanced learner. Maybe the ones who say it's viable to skip them indefinitely aren't interested in reaching a high level though.
Personally, I started out using pinyin only until I was a strong B1 because I was afraid of confusing hanzi with kanji. It worked – I spoke the language without using it’s writing system. But it was a mistake. Not the worst one I’ve ever made in language learning, but it ranks right up there. I wish I had learned the characters as I had encountered them, and that means learning how to write them too. Imo in the short term dropping characters completely, or even just not learning how to write them, will give you an advantage, but as you reach higher levels the advantage shrinks, finally becoming a deficit at higher levels. You can pay the price now or you can pay it later, but if you pay it later you’ll have to add on some interest.

The advice about not worrying about tones initially is good advice for a beginner. Many people are so worried about the tones that they don't learn pronunciation first.

Saying not to worry about tones is ok. What’s the use in worrying about anything, right? But skipping the tones in the beginning, or making a half-assed attempt at them, is a really bad idea, regardless of which polyglot said it was ok. Standard advice for self learners is to go through a pinyin table, one that has audio, and spend some time listening/repeating/reading entries every day until you feel pretty comfortable. Those tables are composed of complete syllables (initials + finals), so consonants, vowels and tones are included. It makes no sense to try to break them down into smaller pieces than that to master them. Tones are part of pronunciation, not something that gets added on later.

[Skynet]

This is how I decide on which language to learn:

a) Which language is spoken in the most countries?
b) Which language is spoken in countries with the most influential economic and academic research potential (to pursue my PhD)?
c) Which language offers high intelligibility between accents/dialects?
c) Which language has a history and culture that interests me?
d) Which language has a writing system that does not look like a series of squiggles, runes, or something of that ilk?
e) Which language is not a tonal language?

I answered these and concluded that French, German and Spanish were the logical choice. The ONLY reason that I would venture into JACK would be if I had a JACK-native wife AND we relocated to her JACK-speaking country.

I may be exaggerating, but I may have mastered FGS before reaching an intermediate stage in a JACK language.

[leosmith]

if I had a JACK-native wife

Just curious - did you invent that acronym? Fist time I've seen it, but I'll definitely use it. Because I don't speak Arabic, I can say "I don't know JACK!"