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What are your hairy goals? | ||
Tags: Goals | Advanced Level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4936 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 65 of 111 17 August 2014 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, my reason for asking about Mandarin was because the original poster listed it as one of his languages he wanted to learn to a B2-ish level within a year. It would be nice to see someone respond who has taken Mandarin to that level and how long it took them to do it. The closest thing I can offer as anecdotal is my own Turkish studies, which many people love to claim is easy. And, in fact, it is pretty easy at the beginning stages. But the further I've gone with the language, the more I realize how lacking my knowledge in it really is. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4513 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 66 of 111 17 August 2014 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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You will always find holes in your knowledge. I do not claim perfect French for example,
and it's my strongest language that I did not start in childhood. I can find many holes in my French and I'm sure others can point them out. But that's not what B2 implies. B2 implies a certain set of abilities that is well within reach for anyone, Mandarin or no. The real truth is that many people get scared by Mandarin because it's a thing people love to propagate. The exact time varies by person, but a good example of someone who attained fluency within a year was Steve Kaufmann (although he did it on a diplomatic mission). I am sure he will admit he has gaps in his Mandarin too, and nobody will doubt or challenge his ability to speak it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JClangue Newbie Canada Joined 3562 days ago 15 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Catalan | Message 67 of 111 17 August 2014 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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So the other day I spent about an hour working on basic greetings with Mandarin and on
the tones. It doesn't seem that hard actually! And I memorized 10 characters and have spent some time writing them. I guess the people that say that the difficulty of Mandarin is overrated are right, huh? :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4513 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 68 of 111 17 August 2014 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's the same experience I had after a week of Mandarin or so. Just keep going and
chugging away and you'll get there in no time. Prove everybody wrong. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4060 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 69 of 111 17 August 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assuming studying Cantonese is comparable I'll throw in my 2 cents on the difficulties of studying Chinese languages.
Chinese grammar is quite simple compared to many other languages, so speaking and forming sentences isn't too difficult. What I find is tricky about the tones/characters is they make it much harder to practice with native materials. Unless you train yourself to hear tones accurately, its hard to listen to native speech with new words and be certain if what you're hearing is a word you already know or a new word with a different tone. The characters, I think, actually make it easier to pick up vocabulary with, and can help with listening if you have transcripts or subtitles, but learning them is still a slow process. I guess it depends on your learning style, I'd imagine if you had a lot of native speakers to practice with, it would be easier to progress. By comparison, I've recently been playing around with Japanese, and while the grammar seems to be a bit trickier, I find the vocab sticks much easier without having any tones to worry about, and I can pick up more from native material than I could when my Cantonese was at a comparable level. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JClangue Newbie Canada Joined 3562 days ago 15 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Catalan | Message 70 of 111 17 August 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Tarvos, I'll try to get that B2 in Mandarin in half the time that they say that
people usually do it in. I read about this Foreign Service Institute that says that Mandarin and other languages that are very different from English take three or four times more hours to learn than indoeuropean languaegs. I'll use a highly communicative approach since I have some Mandarin speakers in my area to practice with. Hopefully that makes the process a lot faster than with the traditional learning methods. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6509 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 71 of 111 18 August 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hairy goal? Well, learning all languages in Europe wouldn't be a bad thing, and I suppose it qualifies as hairy. Add a few Austronesian ones and maybe a few more on top of the pile and then it really looks like fun. But not Chinese (of any kind). I have seen their books, and you need a microscope to see the lines in the signs - even with the simplified system. My eyesight isn't moving in that direction. Edited by Iversen on 18 August 2014 at 1:42pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5013 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 72 of 111 18 August 2014 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think that one can underestimate the time to get to B2 and the gaps between the levels, in terms of active skills... In my experience (and roughly self-estimating my levels; I've not done any of the exams), I got to B1 in Italian in around four months and then it took another 20 or so to get to B2. And this was from already knowing French; I attribute my fast early progress to that but I agree with Cavesa's post a couple of pages ago that active skills still take a lot of hard work even if you know a similar language.
This is just from learning in my spare time though, fitting languages in around full time work and other interests. I'm sure that much faster progress is entirely possible if you can consistently dedicate several hours per day. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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