Background:
Native English speaker. Cantonese heritage speaker, but English dominated my childhood and all I have left is some basic daily life vocab and mangled grammar. Took some Mandarin classes as a kid, but was very unenthusiastic about them and stopped before middle school. I retained very little knowledge from those lessons, except a working knowledge of how tones and stroke order worked. Hooray?
For now I'm primarily focusing on Mandarin Chinese, with some dabbling in Japanese. My main goal in learning any language (excepting Cantonese) is mostly reading/listening comprehension, as reading (online, books, etc) is a big part of my life and is therefore my primary use case.
Mandarin
- I've taken 2.5 years of Chinese in college so far. Based off of the Chinese Grammar Wiki & some googling, I should be around B2/HSK4 passively reading/listening, but my active speaking/writing is not that great.
- So far, I've used the Integrated Chinese series for my first two years of Chinese (I highly recommend them for beginners who want a more structured introduction to Chinese, though the dialogues might be too school-and-relationships-focused for some), and for my third year we are using Discussing Everything Chinese (vol. 1 and vol. 2). I've found DEC to be much more interesting than IC topic-wise, as it introduces more "adult" topics, such as modern Chinese society, parental views on education, current events, and so on.
- I plan to study Chinese in college for all four years. This is the one resolution I'm 100% sure I'm going to keep.
- As for studying outside of class, I use Anki on-and-off for vocabulary, and for grammar the Chinese Grammar Wiki (as mentioned above) and my teachers' grammar notes are good enough for now. For dictionaries, I swear by Pleco, and I've bought the Pro bundle, but if you're just starting out, the Basic bundle will do. It has everything from stroke order to a million dictionaries to Cantonese pronunciation (which I use to get my daily dose of "ohhh, so that's what that word in Cantonese means and/or looks like!!" /mindblown). Unfortunately, I haven't found a good desktop dictionary that I like; for now I get by with Wiktionary and Google. Eventually when my reading comprehension is good enough I'd like to switch to a Chinese-Chinese dictionary like zdic.net.
- I'm having a hard time finding suitable reading material for my level; Mandarin Companion is a little too easy and repetitive for me, and native material online is often too difficult. Harry Potter doesn't work so well because of all the wacky names. For now I have a copy of The Little Prince (小王子), which I should eventually get around to reading, and Graded Chinese Reader 1500 Words, which I haven't touched much (though the difficulty level seems just right) due to the excessive pinyin and the frustrating pinyin block-out card thing.
Cantonese
All my relatives speak Cantonese, so I'm eventually going to have to learn how to speak better. For now I'm stuck in a limbo where my Cantonese knowledge is advanced enough that I find beginner courses boring, but not advanced enough to learn effectively from dramas. As my vocabulary in Mandarin increases I expect I'll be able to make more headway in that direction. If anyone has any tips, please let me know!
Classical Chinese (文言文)
- I'm planning to take Classical Chinese this semester, for several reasons: 1) to be fluent in modern Chinese, a basic knowledge of Classical Chinese grammar is very helpful, if not mandatory; and 2) Classical Chinese isn't a language I can study easily on my own.
- Since the class is offered every two years, this is the only chance I'll have to take it. The only downside is that the prerequisite is three years of Chinese classes, and I've only had 2.5. Adding to that my mediocre speaking skills, I don't know if I'll do so well in the class (though the prof gave me permission to take it), but I know I'll regret not taking it at all. Wish me luck...
- I'll be using Classical Chinese: A Functional Approach by Li and Dew.
- Extended list of resources by Tom Mazanec.
Japanese
- I've been interested in Japanese for a while, mostly due to my interest in Japanese media, but before college, never progressed past teaching myself hiragana and katakana due to the wall that is kanji. In hindsight, I could have started learning grammar, but I never got around to it.
- Decided to start taking Japanese after two years of Chinese. (I have to say, after learning hundreds of hanzi, kanji seem infinitely less daunting. In fact, I wish we learned more kanji in class... all the hiragana makes my head hurt.) I'm halfway through a year long intro course right now, but due to the month-long winter break, I think I've forgotten most of what I've learned. Whoops!
- Currently using Nakama 1.
- Dictionaries: jisho.org and Takoboto.
- Grammar: A hodge-podge of Nakama, lecture slides, and whatever the almighty google serves up. There's also IMABI, but the sheer scale of the website makes it a little difficult to search for things.
Eventually...
- French or Italian (I took Spanish for ~6 years, don't remember a thing. But that was before I discovered my language nerdery.)
- Swedish/Finnish (??) (Umlauts are cool.)
- German
That's enough for now, time to get back to studying. I'll put my plan for the week & progress so far in my next post, but for now it's probably going to be mostly Anki reviews.