Spanish and Chinese Update
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
- I've found others talking about their language learning journeys on TH-cam helpful so I hope this is useful to some people. A long way to go but I am enjoying the process of learning foreign languages...
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Native Chinese here, who also grew up speaking English. Honestly, Chinese is tough. It’s best you get a language partner or a language tutor to give you feedback on your pronunciation. Chinese pronunciation requires you to use parts of your mouth muscles that you don’t normally use. So kudos to you who are learning Chinese.
Thanks Adrian! One day I might dabble in a bit of 福州话 but that's a long way off for now!
Non-native studying Chinese. The spoken pronunciation is hard. I still can't even hear (听懂) some sound distinctions that are obvious to natives. Was that tu or cu? xiao or shao? pao or bao? When I try to look up words by pinyin (phonetic, using the Roman alphabet) I repeatedly make mistakes.
greetings from germany, i am also studyin chinese and spanish ^^
Cool! English, German, Chinese and Spanish! I don't know what the total number of speakers of those are combined but that's not a bad combo!
Just found your channel this morning, really enjoying your videos! Pablo & Dreaming Spanish are the best, I learned Spanish there, & he was a real inspiration to me.
Thank you ☺️. Yeah, I’m really enjoying the ALG method. It does take a lot of input but is so easy it’s not a problem!
@@matt_brooks-green I first heard about ALG & comprehensible input from a site called 'All Japanese All The Time," that recommended aiming for 10,000 hours of hearing the language, so I was mentally prepared for the idea that it would take a while!
I think no matter how you learn, it takes a lot of hours to truly reach a high level of fluency; memorizing vocab & studying grammar can give the illusion of rapid learning, but the ability to speak & understand naturally in a real-speed conversation requires unconscious competence, which is going to take as long as it takes.
In some ways this can be frustrating as learners, but it also makes sense - why would the brain bother with the level of remodeling & investment of resources required to acquire thousands of words & hundreds of thousands of phrases, if the language isn't a major long-term feature of the environment?
But like you say, with ALG it's easy & effective, and once we get to the intermediate level, we can watch a lot of native content that's really interesting in its own right!
@@ComprehensibleMandarin Exactly that. Although it takes a significant number of hours because the hard work is done unconsciously we can just enjoy the process
Hi Matt, I’m loving the channel so far, I can relate to you very well. I am 41, failed to learn French in my 20’s and early 30’s, dropped the idea of ever learning a third language (Spanish native speaker, learned English as a need to work), then as I turned 39 I told myself I need to try a language to learn how to learn so ended up using Italian and Portuguese for the training my language learning skills and to gain the confidence I had long lost. I’m finally on month two of French, which was my original life goal, always interested in hearing ideas, that’s how got to your channel (through days of Swedish/French). One thing I’d love to hear from you, perhaps the topic of one of your episodes, is how and why you got interested in Chinese and Spanish. How strong your drive to go through the pain of Chinese (heard horror stories on how difficult it is yet some people thrive through pain) might lay on the core of your motivation. It totally makes sense to learn both languages since such a great number of the population of the world speaks each, yet, perhaps in order to build a rapport with your audience, if you feel comfortable, we’d love to hear it!!!! Keep up the great work!
Hi Pablo! I know the feeling very well indeed! How are you finding French? Yeah, that might be an idea for a video at some point. Motivation isn't everything but it certainly helps having a reason to learn the language. I really appreciate you coming and checking out my videos. Good luck with your French!
Hi Matt, thanks for your video. My journey has started almost the same as yours with Spanish uncovered and now dreaming spanish, but i am a few hundred hours behind than you. I did do some tutoring for a bit but stopped. I am now inspired to find a tutor who is willing to do crosstalk or even a combo of TPRS.
I’m glad the video helped in some way. Yeah, if you search for a fun looking tutor on italki it will help give you some momentum and keep you accountable every week 👍
Studied Chinese at postgraduate level 30 years ago after finishing my first degree. We used the mainland"s Practical Chinese Readers volumes 1 and 2. Recently bought secondhand the remaining volumes 3, 4, 5 and 6 on Taobao website and now going through them for reference. The HSK is for foreigner learners. For native speakers, the Chinese government has another, more difficult test, the 普通話水平測試 Putonghua Shipping Ceshi (PSC). I recently bought a reference book for candidates hoping to take the PSC, the book is the 普通話水平測試事實綱要. It has a list of 3795 characters that candidates are expected to know plus a vocal list of 17041 words. It even has a list of the different words used by the six regional dialects such as 上海 and 廈門。 It also has a 60 short passages that candidates are expected to be familiar with. As part of the PSC test, candidates will be given one of these passages to read aloud in front of examiners, to be completed in 4 minutes. What is great about this reference book is that it has a CD ROM of the MP3 files of the recordings of these 60 passages as read by native speakers. However some of the passages will be quite difficult, as the test was designed for native speakers. The link following is the recording and text for the first passage that has found its way onto TH-cam:
th-cam.com/video/rr0FphE5wqQ/w-d-xo.html
The passage is a tribute to a tree, the 白楊樹.
Thanks for sharing Danny. I'm really excited to get back to Chinese at some point next year. Will check it out!
I’ve studied a couple languages to B2 already and working on Korean now. Unfortunately the novelty of just reading in the target language isn’t so motivating like it was in previous languages so graded readers and something like Story Learning would probably put me to sleep. I’m trying to motivate myself - realized watching videos like yours helps. Keep up the good work. Regarding Chinese characters (from studying Japanese) after you learn about 1000 is when I started feeling pretty competent. I also lived in Japan for a couple years which really helps.
I’m no polyglot giga-chad but in my limited experience already the one size fits all approach to languages doesn’t take that sort of thing into account. Reading helped my Chinese; a lot of my Spanish is just TH-cam creators. Do what you enjoy, as ever
Found your channel recently. It is great because it is much more relatable to than other youtubers. I just starting with language learning. In school i studied Spanish for two years but forgot all of it. I am learning German now and im at a A2/B1 level. Next summer I hope to start learning Spanish again.
Thanks Coleson. Good luck with the German!
In my opinion, you'll remember Chinese characters quickly. Of course, you'll need around 42,478 characters to reach C1 level (but who's counting?), but the easy stuff is still there. I checked out "Zero to Hero", got a couple of their course books here. And they are good, a good course, but it's a very traditional course (at least the books are).
I am stoked to have found your channel (through Lamont). I am about to publish my video on my current level of Russian (6 minute video, 4.5 minutes are me going ummmmm…) . I am considering doing Ollys course on Russian, but I am not an absolute beginner now am I an intermediate…I am listening a LOT on most days, like maybe 2 hours in total? But when I try to speak it’s a garbled mess. I want to try to find a community tutor who doesn’t correct me, where we just focus on communicating? But idk if that’s a good idea or not. Also I am considering Chinese next… or Arabic…. Or Turkish. 😵💫 but first once Russian is stable? Ta ta for now!
Do what you enjoy is always the answer but we all know the more you commit to one language the more you will improve. Also, the more input you get the more you will naturally start to speak correctly because to do it wrong would just sound weird to you
I also tried learning Russian, but used David Akulian (on verbling, and perhaps preply or italki) and is the sweetest person. His English is amazingly of perfect American accent for not even leaving the Armenia/Ukraine and Russia sphere.
I've been wondering about your headphones, since they didn't seem to go in your ears. Very cool.
Will cover it in the Q&A 👌
Good video , here a native speaker from Spain , don't give up on spanish , is a language that pays off , if you master spanish you'll be able to understand a lot of portuguese ( specially brazilian portuguese) I learned brazilian portuguese in 1 year , these two languages spanish and portuguese are complementary, never surrender is the best advice , and a lot of input and speak, speak and speak , these are my advice , great language channel , greetings from Spain.
Thanks Jose Carlos! Not giving up at all. Also, started watching La Casa De Papel last night and VERY motivated with my Spanish at the minute 😄
At around 10:20, you are talking about goals and progress. You mention that we should be happy with any progress we are making, and I agree. Progress is the reward. Goals are great and all, but how many goals have we attained that didn't feel as good as we thought it would? I believe goals are necessary, but effort and friction are the rewards. Great video.
Totally! Destination goals might help with motivation but input goals are where it's at. We will never get to the destination if we don't have a method to get there!
I would say, if you feel like you want to start speaking, then don't wait for the arbitrary 1000-hr milestone. I 100% understand the reluctance to start speaking--with French I deferred and deferred, and it made starting to speak seem more formidable rather than less. With Spanish, I became an ESL teacher in a district with a lot of Spanish and Portuguese speakers, and so I found myself forced to start speaking with them before I might have otherwise felt "ready". And the result is that, a year later, my Spanish is far more fluent than my French ever was. I started learning Portuguese at the same time and began to speak it with my students a couple months in, and now, even though my knowledge of Portuguese is significantly lower than my knowledge of French, my ability (and confidence) to speak the language is far higher.
Hi James, you're right. Speak when you want. I've been holding off because I know my production of the grammar will be wrong early on. I'm not studying grammar and so I am not able to 'monitor' my output in the way someone who learnt all the rules would. I hit 600 ours on input recently so at about 700 or 800 I will probably start. Well done with all those languages! good work!
I fell in love with language learning when I started studying French in school. But after school I quickly discovered that I could understand almost no spoken French... I only fixed it after hours and hours of input (my French is much better now.)
After hearing about Krashen's theory of comprehensible input, I was sold. I started learning Spanish with Dreaming Spanish a couple years ago (I haven't studied consistently so my Spanish isn't as advanced as it could be). Now I'm learning Portuguese and I'm progressing so so fast (since I could already understand a fair bit of Portuguese). I'm starting to get a bit tired of all the romance languages though, and I'm trying to decide what language to learn after Portuguese.
I may switch between languages too much lol
Ultimately do what you like 😊. But like you say, consistency is key!
Recently started Japanese. I've been into language, linguistics, writing systems for a good while and every day wonder why someone hasn't taken this clusterfuck of a writing system behind the shed and put it to rest. Being functionally illiterate in a language where I've already absorbed a decent amount of vocab passively is infuriating.
I know the feeling. One of the biggest mistakes I made with Chinese for years was ignoring the characters. It's a pain to get started but the feeling of finishing a book in a different writing system is great. Easy graded readers and extensive reading was the way for me
I’ve made a document giving lots of resources for input and information for learning Japanese if you are interested: docs.google.com/document/d/1LH82FjsCqCgp6-TFqUcS_EB15V7sx7O1VCjREp6Lexw/edit
I'm so glad that I came across your channel this week, hopefully a lot more people will too. I was looking for a review for Spanish Uncovered because after about 3 years of German I'm looking to start something new as an experiment and wanted to make use of DreamingSpanish too. I'm still not where I want to be with German but it's at a pretty solid level that I'm interested in something new. Do you think you would have done well enough just starting with DreamingSpanish? I'm unsure about whether I want to use Uncovered as it's more reading focused and Dreaming is all about audio, which I quite like. What are your thoughts on starting with just listening?
Great question. So I have watched/ listened to nearly 2,600 Dreaming Spanish videos so I feel qualified on this on 🤣.
You will need context for new words. As a beginner you will need to watch hours of Dreaming Spanish videos before you can just rely on listening. Once you are out of the beginner stage though, I think there is no reason not to listen to the audio of the intermediate videos everywhere you go (I’ve run out of intermediate videos 😭).
Spanish Uncovered felt like it gave me a leg up because you listen and read the same material again and again (it comes with an audio file for the story). It then explains this in the video lessons. If you fancy there are worksheets but that wasn’t for me. If you have the money I felt Spanish Uncovered was worth it but it isn’t the longest story in the world and as soon as you are done with it you’ll be looking for more content… Dreaming Spanish is well placed to continue onto but you can forego Spanish Uncovered if you can put in the time to watch Dreaming Spanish.
Long answer which I hope makes sense! 🤣😅
Nice, i'm kinda on the same track - get Italian to 1000 hours or so, and maybe then move on to Cantonese. great videos, can't wait for more
Good work. Cantonese is enticing and terrifying at the same time! Thanks for coming and checking out the channel
Hi! Here from Days of French and Swedish. I'm interested in your takes, experiences, and input. Thanks! English speaker learning French (experienced) & Irish (new).
Thanks for stopping by! I have no desire to speak lots of languages at a low level but hopefully one day once my Chinese and Spanish are actually good I will do French and Irish. How are you finding Irish so far?
@@matt_brooks-green it's very iinteresting! Different ways of looking at the world makes for different languages. OR... different languages create different ways to look at the world. Which is the cart and which is the horse? In Irish, no one "has" anything. To have is not a thing. Items we have are instead "upon us." Possession and ownership is less emphasized. Instead, there's more a feeling of stewardship while things are "upon" you.
And how can you not love a language where hello is "God to you" and the response is "God and Mary to you!" Even though I'm not Catholic, I find it charming!
Hi have you seen the channel
“mandarin corner “? From what I can see they are a channel based off the comprehensible input theory. Also your thoughts please on whether you think it would be possible to learn Chinese without learning the characters, just using pinyin (as this option is available on mandarin corner through the subtitles.
Hi Damen, I have. I think their stuff is great, though I haven't used it much. When I come back to Chinese I think I will probably use it a load more given my experience with Spanish. Honestly, learn Chinese characters from day one. It is a pain but I learnt the lesson the hard way. There are loads of basic graded readers you can buy within Pleco. I would start there. Not being able to read will limit your Chinese, not least because you can't get as much input if you don't have the ability to read stories. Good luck
@@matt_brooks-green I was told this, and perhaps it's true for some folks. Some of us have visual difficulties with so many strokes in some characters. I did well in my first year of a Chinese course at a university, but learned nearly nothing in the following two years, due to my lack of visual memory ability! I would love to be fluent in listening and perhaps get comfortable with a little speaking, but reading in characters must not get in the way of learning those skills, and it truly has. It caused me to eventually lose my ability to just hear the words and have a feeling for what they mean. Until I can read characters like pinyin, where I actually hear the words in my head, the characters are an absolute impediment to confidence and progress. Others' learning styles may well be different.
I'd be interested to know if you feel you'll have to actively 'unlearn' some of your Chinese (i.e. bad speaking habits) when you take it up again. Matt v. Japan has a Japanese course where he argues that a lot of Japanese learners can't move forward because they haven't been taught properly to hear the subtle pitch changes in Japanese and so have to effectively 'unlearn' their speaking/hearing in order to move forward. I've spoken to quite a few Chinese and Vietnamese friends who say that most westerners, including those with claimed high level language skills, can't really get the tones right - many aren't even fully aware of this (people are too polite to tell them). I suspect a lot of this is due to bad habits learned early in their studies.
Hey Philip, that is a really interesting point. I am really interested to see how that goes. I understand a lot more about language learning now and I think you are right. What that will look like in practice I don't know though. I am looking forward to getting to that stage and finding out though!
How many hours of input do you do? apparently if you do 5 hours a day (working day) you can reach 1000 hours in 9 months
At least 2 hours of listening a day is my goal. You could do that in theory though I doubt many people would, especially with a full time job and other commitments. I think your brain would probably be fried by the end of each day too. Not sure how sustainable that would be
@@matt_brooks-green Very true. I'm a student and I could only pull that off maybe during summer holidays but definitely not at any other time
If you can learn Chinese, you are unusual. Chinese is, HARD.
True! I believe that you should learn like children do - listen to fluency, then speak to fluency, then learn to read to fluency if you wish to, and THEN learn to write to fluency. Trying to perfect four skills at once as currently taught is a recipe for failure.
I’m guessing you’re a native speaker? If so, how do you know if it’s hard or not?