Today I’m not here to convince anyone. In other posts I’m trying to convince people, however this one is intended to make a self-assessment. I ask the questions you need to ask yourself to find out whether Chinese is for you. Let’s go!

Do you have enough motivation for Chinese?

Let me tell you something about Chinese: It requires sooooooooooooo much energy. Really! The more distant a language is to your native language, the more energy will be required to learn it. Attention! I’m not saying that Chinese is more difficult than Spanish, because it is not, but I do say, it requires much more energy, effort, dedication and motivation. Before I started with Chinese I tried Spanish, and failed miserably. Why? Because my interest in Spain was close to zero and I therefore had very little energy to learn it.

You need to find out what is your motivation. Do you like Chinese culture, cuisine, women (or guys)? There must be something that can feed you the energy that you will burn while learning. And if you are into Sauerkraut, then Chinese is not for you.

Don’t repeat my mistakes. More than 5 years ago I felt that one foreign language is not enough for my CV. By try and error I first tried Spanish and then tried Chinese. Don’t do it this way. If you consider Chinese a nice addition to your career, then find out what interests you about China. Do you have a urge to make a holiday in China? Do you want to live over there? What do you know about China and the Chinese? I mean first hand experiences, not things you heard from a friend who heard from a friend. Is that a culture that appeals to you?

If you aren’t sure, then talk to a Chinese persons in school, in university or at your workplace. Preferably talk to several Chinese people. Read something about China and see if you can relate to that.

It takes 10 years to learn Chinese

The exact duration of your learning may be different, depending on your circumstances and goals. Full time study in China is vastly superior to evening and weekend learning while doing a regular job in your homecountry. Getting to a level where you can order food can be done within months, being able to read the newspaper takes years. Here is what the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) thinks about required learning time for a native speaker of English:

600 class hours
Dutch, French, Spanish,….
900 class hours
Malay, Indonesian, Swahili,…
1100 class hours
Russian, Serbian, Tagalog,…
2200 class hours
Chinese, Japanese, Arabic
Link: List of Language learning time estimates

I want to add, these are just times in class, you have to add homework, repetition and actual speaking, reading and writing practice.

Do you really want to learn at least 10 hours per week for the next 10 years? Once you are done with that, you only need a few hours per week to maintain your Chinese level. Do you have the time to do your daily exercises?

Choosing Chinese at school as a foreign language

Chinese classes at school are becoming more popular. If you are still going to school and you have to choose a language, you might find yourself in the situation that you can choose between a number of languages, amongst these Chinese, and you don’t know which to choose. All top 20 languages by number of native speakers in this world are definitely a valid choice as a economically valuable language. Maybe Chinese is a top 5 choice, however without enough motivation you can’t learn. So you better choose that language out of the top 20 that you think is the most interesting one for you. I can only ask you to read again what I have said. Do you have the motivation? Are you ready to spend a lot of time every day?

Should I pursue a university degree in Chinese?

No!
Clear and simple. The problem with Chinese as a individual skill is it is not worth much. Chinese only shines in combination with other solid skills like computer science, mechanical engineering, biochemistry, economics and so on. Study a solid skill and then learn Chinese in your spare time.
There is one exception though. You can pursue a degree in Chinese at university if you win the lottery or you have rich parents or a rich spouse.

You should love to learn new words!

The difficulty distribution of Chinese grammar can be described as, easy to get started hard to master. You can easily get started, only later on it gets harder. The good thing is, there is no flexion, so don’t worry about learning different word endings for different cases. Learning vocabulary is particularly important. If a English native speaker wants to learn Spanish, he already knows more than 1000 words from the first day, but with Chinese the number of words you already is extremely low. Just a handful of loanwords, that’s it.

Conclusion

In other posts I like to talk how useful it is to learn Chinese. And the points I make are true on average. But your personal situation and motivation is not the average! When you want to asses your personal chances of success, then these points don’t mean very much. It’s all about your own motivation. Can you bring enough time and dedication to the table? The choice is up to you!

Without further ado, here is the list of time required to learn a language according to the FSI:

23-24 weeks (575-600 class hours)
Afrikaans
Catalan
Danish
Dutch
French
Galician
Italian
Norwegian
Portuguese
Romanian
Spanish
Swedish

30-36 weeks (750-900 class hours)
German
Indonesian
Javanese
Jumieka
Malay
Swahili

44 weeks (1100 class hours)
Albanian
Amharic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Burmese
Cebuano
Croatian
Czech
Dzongkha
Estonian
Finnish
Georgian
Greek
Gujarati
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Ilocano
Irish
Kannada
Kazakh
Kurdish
Kyrgyz
Khmer
Lao
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Marathi
Nepali
Pashto
Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)
Polish
Punjabi
Russian
Serbian
Sinhalese
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Tagalog
Tamil
Telugu
Tetum
Thai
Turkish
Turkmen
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Xhosa
Zulu

88 weeks (2200 class hours)
Arabic
Cantonese
Japanese
Korean
Mandarin
Mongolian
Taiwanese (Hokkien Min Nan)
Wu

I found the list on Wikibooks, but they don’t give a link to the original. I can only assume that the original is a print document.

According to the list, Chinese takes 88 weeks or 2200 hours. Thats 1.5 years, with 25 class hours per week. Ad in more learning time outside class, then this is like a stressful full time job. You can get some results in such a time frame, but it’s only realistic for people who don’t work and can stay in China.

Tip of the day:
Awesome people prefer to study languages that take at least 2200 class hours.

For the HSK test

The HSK test requires knowledge in handwriting Chinese characters. This is especially true for the higher levels of this test, namely HSK 5 and 6. I have to find out how much handwriting in need to pass this test. I’m sure handwriting will NOT be my strong point here, but I do need to pass the handwriting section. Yes I do want to do the HSK test at somepoint in the future. People like certificates

Who is handwriting anyway?

Most text is written on the computer today. So why even bother with handwriting Chinese characters. And if I’m somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and I need to take some notes with a pen and paper, I can still do it in English. I’m not a journalist, who needs to write down word-by-word notes.

It feels so incompete

This is the worst part I guess. I was asked if I can understand English a few times in my life. I answered yes. Yes meaning I can listen, speak, read and write it. What would my answer be for Chinese in 2 or 3 years from now? Yes, but I can’t write. That sounds like I picked up the language somewhere on the street, but never got any formal lessons in it. So strange. Also, there is some part inside me that says, that I should be able to write.

It takes up so much time

It takes to much time to lern to handwrite. Soooooo much.

I think we have talked about the ability to handwrite in Chinese before. But I haven’t found a final answer for myself, this topic is still going around in my head.

• Should I learn to handwrite Chinese characters?
• If yes, how many characters should I learn?

Please advise.

Peggy is from Taiwan and has created this wonderful channel with numerous lessons. Beginning with saying “Hello” until intermediate topics, like how to get a room on a hotel. I really like the lessons, because their quality is quite high and can be easily be understood (no nasty background noise). Also the videos are quite fun, because Peggy has a lot of energy and the videos are recorded at authentic places. The hotel lesson seems to be recorded in a real hotel, at least some part of it. Furthermore, all important information is displayed in the video subtitles.

Peggy talks pretty standard, but she does have a slight Taiwan accent. A few words are Taiwan specific, but these are so few it doesn’t really matter. And for some people a Chinese lesson straight from Taiwan might just be perfect. There is also a PeggyTeachesChinese Website. There is a little additional content on the website and if you like Peggy’s Chinese tutoring videos you might think about booking her as a teacher. Just check her website. Finally I want to mention, Peggy has really good looks. Even if you don’t want to learn Chinese, you still might be interested.

If you want to learn some Chinese right now, no matter your current Chinese level, head to Peggy Teaches Chinese on youtube right now and select a suitable video lesson.

In summer 2007, I went to Chengdu for a summer course of Chinese. It was then, that I realized despite one year of Chinese learning, my Chinese still sucked. After returning from Chengdu, I did a little bit more. I took the intensive course, which was two hours a week and I also learned one hour per week by myself. Unfortunately I didn’t learn during the holidays.

In 2008 I went to Kunming and Hong Kong for several months. I could speak some Chinese then, I had some short and simple conversations then, but looking back it was all very basic. Sure I was very happy at that time about my Chinese skills, but then it wasn’t much more than elementary Chinese.

Coming back to Europe late summer 2008 I did not take any further courses, but I started learning by myself. In the beginning it was rather not so regular learning. One month of busy learning, then another month without any learning. But over the time things got better. Currently I do have a little time, because I graduated, but I did not start working yet. Right now I’m averaging 20 hours of Chinese learning per week. And hell yeah, I really see progress now. Sure I’m not pounding on vocabulary 20 hours per week. As recently stated most is reading, but I also do relaxing stuff like watching a Chinese TV show.

Bottom Line
Bottom line is, spending more time on learning Chinese will result in more Chinese finding its way into my brain. While in year one of my Chinese learning journey my effort was roughly 50 hours total, now it is 50 hours in two and a half weeks. And I can say with definite certainty, more time invested results in better achievements, massive amounts of time invested result in massive improvements. 2010 is almost over and I’ll soon post an assessment of Chinese learned this year and plans for next year. If you want to learn more Chinese, spend more time on learning. I guess this is one of the best pieces of advice I can give on learning Chinese.

Junjie previously didn’t learn Chinese characters, but this week he started writing massive amounts of Chinese characters. His artistic handwriting style is unique and might be seen in international exhibitions soon. Buy one of his works, while the prices are still humane.

A few days ago I met a nice woman from Harbin and like magic we could converse in Chinese for the whole afternoon. No need to speak English. To be fair, I must say that Harbin people seem to speak perfect textbook putonghua, noch accent at all, which was helpful to me. Still, my vocabulary was good enough to express pretty much everything I wanted to say and I also could understand everything she said to me. And if I didn’t understand one of her words, I was able to understand her explainations in Chinese.

I’m so happy now Just wanted to say…. I know, a lot of self praise, but I think I can do that once in a while

Next step: Learn even more Chinese. Maybe in 2 or 3 years from now I can use my Mandarin Chinese for work. That would be really awesome.

My current Chinese learning routine:
Read, read and read again. I read text from my regular learning textbook and I’m re-reading my Hanyu Feng books (I need to make a separate books about these, very helpful).
Some listening to Chinese while doing other things like going for a walk or cleaning my room.
And finally a few vocab drills, but not that many. Currently I aquire new words mostly through reading.

http://ihome.ust.hk/~lbsun/terms.html

Searching for 学习 gives a lot of insight.

What you do is basically search for a single Chinese character, or word, or even longer phrase, chengyu or proverb. Then you get a list of example sentences where your searchphrase is used and appropriate translations. In fact you get a long list of translations so you can easily see how a word is used. On the right hand side jukuu provides additional information, like standard translations and a pie chart of translation frequency. Now the best part is it works the other way as well. Jukuu can also help with example translations when entering an English word or short phrase.

Together with the Wikipedia translation method this should be a good way to translate most words and sentences properly. Have fun.

Website: jukuu.com