Tried Speaking/Italki For the first time after 1.5 years of Massive Input / Chinese Milestone / Appreciation Post

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Thanks JanFinster.

Most of the combinations of characters as the more characters that I knew seemed more easier to guess the meaning and to a surprise, I got it right and went straight to known instead of lingqing first. There was a quote from Steve that I don’t know exactly from one of his videos. It was along the lines of:

“If you know a character, you probably know about 5 words since it can be combined with other characters” (Not exact but what I remembered)

I’m Vietnamese-American, but I dont speak the language in which I don’t have any passive assistance in this case.

I speak with mistakes but the messages go through. I have the habit in speaking fast in English which perhaps helped me speak a bit faster in mandarin which gives me a chance to make more mistakes and give my tutor the fluency delusion.

I’m totally convinced that the listening carried my speaking to a fair level that I can get my messages across at a decent pace due to me listening to lots of native and fast content. I struggle sometimes when speaking in terms of trying to say a complicated long sentence or prounouncing a word that I have not heard often enough of. I only listened to fast content from the 500 hour listening mark since I know that I have to eventually deal with the speed and pace of them eventually. It’s more of adapting to all the native speakers that I have been listening to that gave me this perspective and ability.

In terms of shadowing, I did it for 20 minutes a day everyday until the 29 hour mark back when I was around 15,000 known words.

I can quote something that @Imani once said to me and it stuck with me to this day since the 90hours of listening mark that gave me my motivation. It was on the lines of

“Every 100 hours of listening is a level up” -Imani

To my mind, as I kept listening, it seemed more of “Every 100 hours of listening is a level up but every 1000 hours is an evolution”

I think that the 2000 hours evolutionized my speaking along with my listening to the next level.

That’s what I believe and think.

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Excellent testimonial! When you say that you find any content with subtitles from YouTube that you can import to LingQ, do you mean Chinese subtitles or English subtitles? I haven’t been spending much time on LingQ at all because I like using Language Reactor on YouTube so that I can have both Spanish and English subtitles up. I try to follow the Spanish ones unless I don’t understand something, which can be frequently depending on the video. I feel like if I just had Spanish I’d be too far off from understanding, but if I only had English then it would be too much of a crutch. I’d really love to use LingQ more though!

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https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=的+-eng&sp=EgIoAQ%253D%253D

One of the lingq members found a youtube lingq to find only videos with subtitles. I forgot the username. Sometimes it’s simplified or traditional but the link is what I used since the one member mentioned it.

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Congrats!!! I was watching you do a lot of input on the challenge board, so I know you have put a lot of time and effort in!

Really cool and encouraging to see progress like this - Chinese just takes a lot of time and effort, but it is such a beautiful and fascinating language despite the difficulty, awesome that you are able to have conversations now.

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I very much agree with chytran on the importance of listening, I have in fact been inspired by the insane numbers he pulled in some of the challenges and I aspire to listen even more. If I could give a learner of Mandarin one advice it would be to prioritize listening comprehension. When I started learning I completely misjudged the difficulties of Chinese and didn’t consider the challenge of listening at all.
In regards to speaking, I consider listening comprehension to be a necessary condition, it is is of course not sufficient on its own; to speak well, dedicated practice is needed.

As an aside, I’m pretty sure chytran’s listening goal used to be at 10.000 hours :thinking: I still consider that a reasonable number, it can serve as a good guide and it puts you in touch with the realities of learning such an exotic language. With a bit of luck I myself might reach this goal in this decade :slightly_smiling_face:.

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The user who shared this originally is @iaing. If you search for a different word, e.g. one using traditional characters, you can influence the results. Although some Cantonese content shows up as well.
In case anyone is interested, I have shared a Google spreadsheet on my profile, it contains a list of channels I collected using this and similar searches. But it has always been a bit random it’s also not exactly easy on the eyes, in short I haven’t touched it in a long time.
Technically you don’t need the URL, you can also use the “Filters” when searching on YouTube and select the ‘Subtitles/CC’ option. It will just not exclude English subtitled videos.
Another good source for videos is https://www.bilibili.com/ （B站） but I think it’s not supported by the LingQ import extension.

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宝剑锋从磨砺出 梅花香自苦寒来。跬步千里， 终有所得。君贵在锲而不舍，持之以恒。学以致用，吾等勉乎哉。

→ Most of the combinations of characters as the more characters that I knew seemed more easier to guess the meaning and to a surprise, I got it right and went straight to known instead of lingqing first.

I would say that’s probably the most heuristic approach with excellent efficiency toward learning an Asian language such as Chinese. How do you cope with more subtle aspects of the language from a learner’s stance?

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=14054

When I am at a more advanced level, I use the resources in the target language for reference as they provide more comprehensive and reliable information IMOP.

I could not have agreed more with the importance of listening. It is an indispensable complement to other abilities in the language, such as recognizing characters with a deeper understanding which helps you develop a capacity similar to what you have mentioned above, in addition to reading comprehension and oral fluency, etc. In general, learning activities and distinct abilities in the language tend to reinforce each other mutually to form an integrated whole so language learners can have an arsenal of tools at their disposal whenever the timing and circumstance are opportune.

Practicing minimal pairs and paying more attention to the speaker’s tone, intonation, and smooth sentence flow can also be helpful. Sometimes a language learner may pause or even stutter in the middle of the sentence to do a quick retrieval from memory. What do you recommend from your experience?

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Most of the characters that are known are usually a 1-3 character range, beyond 4+ is when I start lingqing, and I realize that it doesn’t appear in most common context in speech but mostly in the realm of novels, philosophy, politics, medical, etc opinion wise. If I do eventually struggle and see those kinds of words 15+ times, it’s usually because I don’t know a character in the combined word or my mind haven’t got used to seeing it enough like a painting. I don’t import or read books in chinese, which I don’t encounter to many of those 4+ words. 99% of the content I listen to relates to an interviews and speeches. How I cope is getting used to it like a rare treasure or a rare painting in a musuem that I don’t often analyze and realize. Eventually, I might not even need it or encounter it. Very rarely perhaps. I only know very few words that are 4+ characters and above. Ex: 从头到尾 is probably the only chengyu I only know. Anything politics, medical, history is when those lengths of words appears often such as 共产主义中国, which is easier to remember since they’re common words used in politics in china.

→ Learn Chinese：What is the difference between 互相 and 相互 ； 适合 and合适？thanks.? | General Chinese - eChineseLearning Answers

I should eventually understand the difference between it’s counterpart, but I usually just say whatever my brain thinks is right. Until a native speaker tells me it’s wrong or is uncomfortable with something I said, I would consciously find out what part of my speech was off and adapt.

–>such as recognizing characters with a deeper understanding which helps you develop a capacity similar to what you have mentioned above

I agree. In my opinion, there is an alternative mindset to approaching how Words and listening relate.

  1. You can only listen to what you can only read. 2. You can only speak to what you can only read and understand from listening to the words that you can read.

Example, If I recognize 4000 words and understood them when reading, my maximum potential for listening vocab only goes up to 4000 so I need more words in my reading arsenal. That’s how I work personally. It’s hard to fully force words out from words that I can’t read or don’t understand in a listening sense.

I can be learning “100” words a day but in the reality it’s probably just 30 genuine words. Then for listening, same logic, each 12-16 minute lessons, I might of acquired 16 words per day but the irony is that it’s subconscious and just have to assume and then it is sent it to the “known words” of the listening realm (hidden stats).

The stats could look like:
Known words(read):
Known words(listening)

In terms of tones, I don’t even know if my tones are good, I’m just happy if the other person understands me ahaha, but I was told that my tones are heavy. Not sure what that means. I mostly listen to male speakers for so many hours that I pick few words to say it one way and another few words from another speaker another way. When you’re about say something, you might imagine how would this person say it in real time and attempt to mimic the exact style and speech pattern. My speech pattern might sound off sometimes but eventually each word that I have an accent imprinted on will carry to the next word with similar vocal structure.

The only recommendation I have is to tackle hard topics above the average topic level. Let’s say there’s a difficulty ranking from 1-3 and 2 is the average conversation difficulty. I will only focus on level 3 difficulty (speech speed, vocab level, etc) so that when I have a level 2 conversation, it’s a lot more easier. If the speaker speaks normal speed, find content that is faster than that speaker. It’s equivalent to the Flash superhero from the DC universe in comics when everything is slow to him in normal time but he had to train hard to expand the difference of speed. The speech tones will follow from time but the intensity of how fast you want the speech tones to come is based on the difficulty of the lesson.

Also, I truly believe that every 1000 hours of listening is an evolution. That is a language learning philosophy that I will stand by to the end.

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→ I should eventually understand the difference between it’s counterpart, but I usually just say whatever my brain thinks is right. Until a native speaker tells me it’s wrong or is uncomfortable with something I said, I would consciously find out what part of my speech was off and adapt.

I agree. It helps to learn the common usage of words by recognizing parts of the speech about the word and using contextual clues.

→ Example, If I recognize 4000 words and understood them when reading, my maximum potential for listening vocab only goes up to 4000 so I need more words in my reading arsenal. That’s how I work personally. It’s hard to fully force words out from words that I can’t read or don’t understand in a listening sense.

Because of the nature of the Chinese characters, many new words are merely a different combination of learned characters. You have set up the framework upon a strong foundation in the language. The spontaneity with the ability to concoct any random sentence may be something for you to work on at your level. Concentrating on a particular topic rather than individual words may help a learner stay focused and ensure a smoother conversation with the native. That’s something I have in mind at a certain point in my language-learning journey.

→ In terms of tones, I don’t even know if my tones are good, I’m just happy if the other person understands me ahaha, but I was told that my tones are heavy.

That’s the least worrying; your tone will improve with more deliberate practice over time. It’s quite a fascinating experience that you shared with us. We indulge more in every encounter than just learning the language, especially at your level. Thanks for your advice. All the best!

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The Asian beauty standards is one I know all too well for better or worse :sob:. I do wonder what they think about sports or sports betting, though. I don’t see ブックメーカー サッカーに賭ける方法・概要解説 getting mentioned often enough.

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Was the 2884 hours of listening done over the 16 months? If so that’s nearly 6 hours a day with no breaks. Not very achievable for most people.

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During a 9month phase, I went 8 hours/ daily as consistent as possible until the 2300hour phase from 90hours. It was a brutal phase

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Sticking to such a schedule takes a lot of willpower and discipline, and forming a good habit of doing things consistently with effective time management might be the key.

Please share with us if you have encountered any hurdles along the way and what essential skills or things you have done that you consider crucial for making a breakthrough in the journey.

I must admit that grammar and pronunciation have always been my weaker side when learning a new language. The first foothold in the language is one of the most challenging steps, and I have tried tackling the language from different aspects. Once many things in the language suddenly and magically make more sense and start to click in my brain, consuming content lesson after lesson is just feeding an avid sponge-like mind, figuratively speaking.

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There were numerous hurdle that my mind had to deal with:

  1. Is it really gonna take years?
  2. Can I do this?
  3. What is my main motivation? (long term discipline)
  4. What are my side motivations? (short term discipline)
  5. Staying patient. (toughest one)
  6. Fighting the urge to speak

Essential Skills: (More of wisdom and discipline routines)

  1. How to keep stress closes to 0 when active listening
    a. take a 12-15 minute power nap to reset stress to 0 or do active listening the
    moment you wake up. If I had hours to study, I would repeat the process.
    b. passive listen while you’re doing anything unimportant.
  2. How FAST you can lingq
  3. Understanding the difference between active and passive listening, action-wise.
  4. Keeping a steady routine determines everything. I didn’t have a huge motivation, I only treat it like a duty that I have to do to survive in life. (intense mindset ahaha)
  5. Active listen to content that you have already lingqed and read, passive listen to content that you have already actively listened to.
  6. Words are everything. Words determine results. Words determine the future. Words determine the long term motivation. Words solve majority of problems.
  7. Find your motivation (main and side motivations). I think we need both.

In terms of grammar, the more italki lessons I have, I will notice that I can’t say a certain sentence, and I would hunt the structure down after from intense curiousity and embarrassment. Then somehow I would remember fairly quickly since it’s common in the reality but never used it myself.

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Thank you for shedding some light on the topic with these interesting suggestions.

The hurdles mentioned above in language learning are general for both novices and experienced learners. I can relate to the numbers 5 and 6 in particular. One thing that I experienced as a beginner was unjustified anxiety about being able to do or deal with blah, blah, and blah things with the instantaneous result expected, making the exotic writing system of a foreign language stuck in my brain included. The overwhelming learning materials, goals, and many overkilling learning methods are doing more harm than good for us. I find that reviewing lessons focusing on a different aspect or core skill of the language from time to time would generate a more desirable outcome than stretching myself with more advanced and challenging content.

Interestingly, you have listed stress management with such straight forward solution as part of the essential skills. The saying “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” has proved its point that learning depends on the learner’s mental and physical strength as much as one’s willingness.

One thing I would like to add to the essential skills list is the ability to identify the necessary skill to be acquired to advance learning to the next level. For example, I didn’t have the urge to speak when I started learning Korean. However, practicing the pronunciation of essential Korean Hanguls has helped me retain new Korean words more efficiently. I prefer to take the lessons in a more structured manner with gradual difficulty and receptiveness of the content taken into consideration. Learning with these lessons ensures maximum efficiency.

Accumulating vocabulary words has never been a significant problem for me in any language. More straightforward grammar in Chinese would not present a considerable challenge since you have built a good foundation.

Just being curious, were you surprised to learn that 跳舞 consists of two words vs. dance in English and 听课 vs. attending a class? There are equivalent words in a similar format in Korean. It’s a remarkable ability to develop if we can learn things more intuitively IMHP.

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“5. Active listen to content that you have already lingqed and read, passive listen to content that you have already actively listened to.”

This must be the most challgenging for me. It is just too boring for my brain. Whenever I finish an article, my brain wants novelty and move on rather than doing the same over and over…Obviously, this is also a reason for my slower progress (I only have about 1-1.5 hours per day for it anyway)