I‘m Chinese learning English and I saw your video in the recommend list randomly and found it really helpful for my English study as well🤣 Thank you for sharing.
The fact that I heard everything you said in here and only just from watching drama's 😲, I didn't realize I understood so much until this video for real. Never thought of learning.
After hearing Yoda talk like an ancient Chinese 神 from 西遊記 I really want a star wars show but the Jedi are Chinese sages and shit. How epic would that be.
This video is so high quality and thorough I was expecting it to have at least 500k views. Great Video you'll definetly gain subscribers over the course of time!
@@chocomint4015 Thank you for the kind comment! I’m just starting to ramp up on TH-cam again so maybe I’ll build subs over time, we will see. I’m just happy if this video helps at least some people 😁
I'm doing something similar by watching dramas. Nothing structured... I watch informational videos when I feel like it, and practice writing as I feel compelled. This learning style is not for everyone, but it can work.
I learned Chinese growing up but as time has gone on, it has started to fade away a bit. This is an amazing video and breakdown of your whole process that I honestly think I would apply to other languages that I'm learning in addition to Chinese. I love the Notion set up and it has sparked a few ideas for me as well. Thank you for sharing!
Your approach is really great! I’ve actually been using a similar method, but I only start using movies and advanced content once I reach an intermediate level. In the earlier stages, I focus on comprehensible input that is appropriate for my level. This allows me to build the basic vocabulary and grammar structures necessary to form a linguistic core. Once I have that foundation, I feel more prepared to dive into more advanced content like movies. In my opinion, trying to consume advanced input too early, without that core, can be overwhelming and less effective. By focusing first on content that matches your level, learning becomes smoother and more efficient. By the way, I want to congratulate you on the significant progress you’ve made in just one year-it’s truly remarkable! And you give very valuable advice in your video to learn Chinese, which I really appreciate
Hey - thank you for the comment, I'm glad that you've been having luck with the approach! I think your approach of gradually taking on more difficult content makes a lot of sense and is also what most "experts" would recommend. I've been experimenting with how much of this to do myself - and so far will still consume "advanced" content sometimes if I feel really motivated, or if I already know what it means because I've consumed it in English (and thus it's already somewhat "comprehensible"). It seems like that works also - because when I go back to simpler content, it seems like I have really improved on understanding that as well, even if I didn't spend very much time practicing consuming simpler content.
Bruh I gotta say this input based method is exactly how I learned my English. I basically grew up listening to Dre, Em, Kendrick Lamar and then started to binge Marvel stuff, LoTR, etc. All of that helped immensely and was so much fun along the learning journey. Now I'm watch cocomelon and skibidi toilet on youtube to get that alpha rizz rizzing all the shawty up no cap on god. gotta get that gyatt my guy. 💀💀💀
Best video I've ever seen for chinese learners. I've been studying for some months and I've been using the comprehensible input method, so I can manage to understand HSK3 conversations, but I'm still probably at HSK1 when speaking. Your tips are awesome, I was only using anki but will probably start using skritter and chatgpt too.
Hey, I’m really glad you enjoyed the video! I need to test myself using HSK someday. I have only taken HSK 1 so far and passed, but haven’t tried the others. Good luck in your studies!
It's not bad, however: - spending so much time on learning to write characters is a waste of time. One types pinyin. Look up any scholars and foreigners who speak amazing Chinese. They'll all say it's a waste of time learning to write characters. Common for people to know, say, 6000 characters, but can only handwrite 600 clearly. - need to spend more time on pronounciation. Harder to fix it later. For instance, his xue is very wrong, sounds more like shui even. Spend more time with the pinyin pronounciation chart. Lots of materials for how to do this out there, even without a teacher.
@@magnus_9189sdf Thanks for this comment! Agreed I’m likely spending much more time on handwriting than I need to, and that I need to eventually spend much more time on pronunciation. Plan is to continue learning both for now, but I appreciate these observations.
160 subs? Have you been involved in content creation prior to starting YT? For an hour+ long video you've got great depth of information without getting lost in the tangents of irrelevant info. Great vid!
@@detached336 Thank you so much! Yes, for years I’ve been making other types of content on and off TH-cam as well, but this is my first Chinese learning video. And half of my existing 160 subs have come from this video alone 😁. I’m hoping that will grow over time!
So cool Josh! Especially loved the color-coded subtitle portion of the video. Would love to see/hear more about your journey here. Hope all else is well! Andy
This is so true. I managed to learn Chinese via watching movies bt with subtitles. I generate subtitles via Immersive translate mostly when the movies lack the subtitles.
Now how to do that??? I am sooo interested. 6 episodes at the end of my current drama (Escape from the Triangular slopes) are not subtitled!! And then there's Blossoms Shanghai that I'd like to watch, but would like to find subtitles to. Thing is: both those dramas, esp the first, use different languages and dialects, including an artificially made-up one for the first!!
@@florfred1786 Yeah, the way I have handled this recently is using AI generated subtitles. Lots of options, but the tool I use right now is SubtitleEdit. You just have to put the video or audio in, and it uses the OpenAI Whisper model to generate. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well.
Great video. It popped up in my suggestions because I've been learning Mandarin for 2 years now. I watch a LOT of Mandarin language videos. Some that teach the language, and a few that are just IN Mandarin. I've made a lot of progress, but I also know I don't listen as much as a should. It's so hard getting comfortable with not knowing every word you hear. It makes me want to pause the audio and look up the word. Which happens every few seconds still.
Thanks so much for the comment and kind words! I totally relate to the idea of it being hard to not know every word. One thing that helped me is to focus on the words that I DO know, and how much of the overall meaning I'm getting (which you can often get from context, even if you don't understand very much of the actual language spoken). And just remembering that understanding ANYTHING in a language that is so different is a pretty big accomplishment. Also trying to put myself back in the mindset of being a little kid, who didn't really care if he understood everything or not. Tracking my progress has also helped remind me that I am getting better and better each day, even if there are large parts that I don't understand. We'll see how I feel when I'm more at your level - hopefully I'll still feel good about all of this :)
@@jlykes BTW, you've probably already found this channel www.youtube.com/@DANLIAOFreeToLearnChinese But in case you haven't I recommend it. It's ALL in Mandarin, and there's a lot of it. The 老师 is really good at teaching the language. Her channel is the best I've found by far.
hi Joshua I just subscribed your channel after watching a little bit of this video （ I 'll finish it later on when I 'm available ）, and as a Chinese I just wanna remind you that : If anyone wants to learn Chinese language from movies, they 'd better learn that from the ones that take Chinese as mother language. I made this suggestion cuz I found most of the movie stories you 've showed in the video above are originally told in English （turned into Chinese version , tho）, which are fine but still missed some real Chinese language vibes . What's more , we even call such films as 译制片，which in our context refers to the films that remain a strong style of non-Chinese （and even never tried to get rid of it LOL）
Hey, thanks for the tip here! Yeah I definitely need to move on to some content that is originally Chinese. They are much harder for me to understand at the moment, but hopefully should be easier over time. I think there are a lot of options on Netflix for when I’m ready 😁
This motivates me to keep doing what I am doing right now! I also use the same techniques as you!! But although I am learning a different language which is the Thai language but it still has helped me to make my practices on how I learn languages better so thank you!!
Hey bro, very good job at starting this language! it is a process， one that I have been on for the last 20 years, but it does get easier. I will say Im proud of you that you "kept the tones", something that many of these so called "fluent foreign Chinese speakers" do not do. its easy to speak words really fast, its even better when you keep the tones. So keep it up and I know you will get there, you have an interesting approach. - 齐昆
Hey, thanks for the kind reply, I really appreciate it! Will do my best to keep up with the tones all day also work on the other aspects of pronunciation.
This is such an amazing video man. I'm learning Japanese but came here for your methods! I will defintely add some of these. I also use SRS with Anki. I read some manga along with my Yomitan dictionary at hand. I've recently also added gaming to the mix to get a different type of input. And then of course anime or movies/series. These are some really great resources and tools! Thanks for introducing me to Language reactor. It looks great! All the best with your Language learning journey Joshua!
Hey, thank you for such a kind message, I'm glad that you enjoyed the video even if you are learning a different language. Good luck in your efforts as well!
Wow, there seems to be a lot of work involved in study management. When I was a child, I thought that native English speakers must speak their language like the way they are dubbed in Hollywood movies for Chinese audiences. However, it wasn't until I learned English to a high level that I realized the vibe, rhythm, speech speed, and even the mentality of how real native English speakers communicate are quite similar to how Chinese natives speak their own language in real life. The dubbed version is a new creation that is more theatrical and exaggerated for Chinese ears. But I don't mind if Mandarin learners talk like that, as long as they are able to perfectly capture that level of emotional expressiveness. It would be quite exotic and charming to hear people speak that way in everyday life. The beginning of the video was fun 😂. I can sense how you perceive Chinese language, much like how I initially perceived English - it must feel like a very logic-based approach. As a native Chinese speaker, I always find that each syllable seems to match what it means, as if it mimics the sound and form of nature. When I became able to percieve how the English sounds are associtated with the sound of nature in a figurative way, it was a real game changer for me. Maybe as you progress, you'll get to that point as well. One more thing - your Mandarin pronunciation is good. However, I've noticed that the way you use your vocal cords and how you breathe when making sounds is not quite like a native Chinese speaker. Moreover, sometimes the tongue position is slightly different from what is considered the most accurate, especially when you repeat the same nuance despite the AI's accurate repetition. It's almost as if your brain is filtering out those subtle differences. I wouldn't say it's wrong, per se, but that's where the accent is defined, making you sound a bit foreign. I hope this information is helpful, but don't feel bad about it. Even Xiao Ma has a noticeable accent, but it's his natural integration and deep intimacy with the language that impresses native speakers, as if he has a Chinese soul despite the occasional accent. Great video, very informative, and good learning! You're so smart, you've got this.👍
Thank you so much for the thoughtful comment! I really appreciate it. Thank you also for the perspective on my pronunciation. Not surprised at all that I would have an accent, especially at this point. I'm definitely striving to be as native-like in my pronunciation as possible, but ultimately also don't see an accent/sounding a bit foreign as a bad thing (assuming I'm understandable / pronouncing things mostly correctly). After all, I definitely am foreign, which will also be obvious by my appearance. :) But it will be a fun challenge to make my accent as authentic as possible, and hopefully improve on as I practice speaking more!
@@jlykesIndeed, having an accent is not necessarily a bad thing. It's part of your identity. FYI, there is a TH-camr teaching Chinese pronunciation very well. Her channel is Rita Mandarin Chinese. You can check it out. Her English has a strong accent influenced by her Chinese. But that doesn't disqualify her skill in teaching at all. She really knows the details that most people are unaware of, even as native Chinese speakers. Actually, if I have to put it in analogy, your current Chinese has a strong American English accent that sounds like her English with a strong Chinese accent. But fun fact, her American husband, Laoma Chris, has an almost perfect Chinese pronunciation. You can also check out his channel. I'm sure you'll be intrigued by how he achieved that level of fluency in Manderin. Valuable tips are hidden in his content. In the end, thank you for your response. I can't help but provide more info. Wish you have a wondeful journey.😊
@@Leo-54lyah thanks for those suggestions! I had watched a few of Rita’s videos (even on pronunciation), but not Laoma Chris, so just found his channel. Appreciate your analogy between my accent and Rita’s, helps me put it into perspective (it’s really hard for me to tell what I sound like, as you might imagine). If I’m already as understandable as Rita, then I’ll count that as a win given I had only really started practicing speaking in the month or so before I filmed the video. But then I’ll use Laoma Chris and others as people I can aspire to accent-wise. Thank you so much!
Rrraahhh 😡 I'm so jealous, I've been learning mandarin for 10 years and my level is slightly higher than yours. You're doing great! Keep up the good work 👍 and thanks for the tips.
Great video! I've been learning Chinese for a while, and I've gotta say I'm really impressed with how systematically you're tackling this. You should consider trying something like HelloTalk to chat with random natives. You can join voice rooms, live streams, etc, and native English speakers are *always* in high demand. Also, don't worry too much about your level. There are so many people that are *much* lower level than you that are on there giving it a shot Also, just one thing I noticed regarding your pronunciation (I know you're not super focused on output yet) To my (admittedly non-native) ears, your "shi" sounds a bit too much like "she". The same will go for zhi/zhe, chi/che, and ri/re Good luck! Maybe I'll see you on HelloTalk. Your progress after only one year is super impressive!
Hey, thank you so much for the supportive comments! HelloTalk is something that I definitely plan to check out in the future, so I'm glad that you have found it useful. Thanks also for the pronunciation feedback. Between your comment and those from others, I'm realizing I'm going to have to spend a lot of time on pronunciation at some point. So I will for sure focus on this piece specifically. Thank you!
I can appreciate your level of dedication. I have some similar methods, and hope we run into each other someday and have a chance to chat since i'm also in the bay area.
Hey - yeah, creating custom GPTs is pretty easy. In fact, if you just went into ChatGPT, you might be able to figure it out without even any instructions. You basically just tell ChatGPT what you want the script to do in plain language. I had found some videos on TH-cam about it at the time, but can't remember which ones (should be easy to search). On the custom scripts - that's a bit more complicated. But I'm hoping to post some of these to my GitHub at some point for those who might be interested.
I loved this video, your systems are really impressive! I've been learning Chinese years although not as intensively as you, I wish I could speak with you I would like to create similar databases to track the words I come across. PS. I've also quit drinking and Andrew Huberman's video partially helped me make that decision!
Thank you so much, I’m really glad you got something out of the video! There is a chance that I write some kind of program to help people track words, we will see. Also cool that you quit drinking! I’m a little over two years in, need to make my next update.
@@jlykes I don't like the idea of having to update characters/words list across skritter/lingq/language reactor and anki. How do you keep them all synced up?
@@yeti1989 yeah so honestly right now I do it manually. LingQ is my main database since it gives you the ability to rank how well you know words on 1-5 scale. Once I know a word at the 4 level, I learn it in Skritter, and then update it on LR. It’s pretty annoying but works for now. I might write some kind of program that makes this smoother.
Wow, so comprehensive! Thank you for sharing. We might see a product on sale after some time - Joshua Lykes' Mandarin(where you will have a step by step guide for beginners). Also the book you made is amazing. Not sure if you can sell it but I would buy one for HSK1 😊
Haha, thank you for the comment! Nothing to sell as of now lol. But if I end up succeeding with this approach, we will see. Also appreciate your comment about the book - I’m working on a video now that will show how to make these.
Kudos to you for making this much progress within a year, impressive! But learning Chinese by watching dubbed TV and movies is generally not the best idea if you want to learn more everyday vocabulary. Just imagine learning Japanese by watching Japanese dubbed version of Friends. I would encourage you to watch more Chinese original shows/movies, first with subtitles, then slowly turn off subtitles. I'm sure you will learn more quickly, especially your choice of words will sound more natural to a Chinese native.
Hi Joshua, your video is so enlightening and inspiring for me to learn English also, thanks for sharing! And I somehow couldn’t help make a revise on your final script since it is still not perfect and natural enough as we speaking Chinsese, hope it will help you a little bit, and enjoy your journey on learning Chinsese! 小弟：大哥，你吃饭了吗？/你吃了吗？ 大哥：没呢/还没吃，我肚子好饿(would be better saying shortening phrase in spoken language) 小弟：为什么你还没吃饭？/你怎么还没吃饭？ 大哥：因为我需要学习中文/因为我要学中文 小弟：你是怎么学习的？用什么方法？(need to add a suffix 的) 大哥：每天我看两小时这本书，再上一个小时课，还用这些flashcards (notice the order of the timing words in this sentence) 小弟：大哥，不对不对，你这样不行 大哥：怎么了？ 小弟：我发现了更好的方法，如果你使用它，学习中文会更容易 大哥：你的方法是什么？/你是怎么学的？ 小弟：我不上课，也没有老师，就只看电影和看书(a much more natural way, the original expression is so English-minded) 大哥：真的吗？你成功学会中文了吗？(notice how to put the suffix 了 in the right place) 小弟：当然/必须的(a popular saying recent years)，这个方法叫input-based learning 大哥：好吧，跟我说两句中文听听(I would say the original expression is too unnatural and a little confusing) 小弟：bla bla bla 大哥：你好像只学了电影里的东西，没什么用 小弟：还真不是，非常有用（我不同意is a little bit sharp in tone, we rarely say so to a friend or acquaintance)。 小弟：我学会了很多词、了解了很多事，最重要的是，很好玩(still need to notice the usage of 了) 大哥：好吧好吧，让我试试/那我试试
amazing process! and a great video. The one thing i would say that's missing is practice in real life. Look for a language exchange buddy, Its more fun than spreadsheets and the social awkwardness is a real motivator
大哥 thank you for showcasing your approach in such a clear manner. This immersive method of acquiring a language is the way to go! I’m also approaching a year of Chinese learning doing very similar techniques. Btw how did you find avatar last air bender in Chinese dub?
Hey thanks for the comment! I found Avatar a while back on one of the Chinese content sites (I think it might have been Bilibili, but I can’t remember for sure). It was somewhat difficult to find - since those sites are all in Chinese, and I might have needed a VPN (can’t remember).
I learned through similar methods haha, mainly podcasts and street interviews. I highly recommend you watch rita mandarin for informative videos about learning Chinese and pronunciation
Honestly it would be amazing if you could make a video where you explain how you actually import movies and subtitles in Plex, I haven't found any good ressources about it
Id love to do this with thai as im basically getting nowhere two years on! But seems much less common to find marvel films for example, which would be great as i really want to rewatch them from the start
Hey, yeah, I could see Thai being a tougher language to find stuff in. I just checked the Marvel films on Disney+, and it looks like they're not available in Thai. But you might be able to find other content. For instance, I just looked a few shows I've used for input or thought about using on Netflix - 3 Body Problem, Arcane, and Avatar The Last Airbender (new live action version). All appear to have Thai available! So my guess is there's a lot of other stuff there as well.
On Temu there are a lot of books in Chinese :) And the other I am learning with is a game Genshin Impact. And this game is free, and beautiful, and can hear the native pronanciation.
Very interesting video! I have been learning korean for some times now using similar methods of immersion. I also really like categorizing and organizing data, so I would be interested to know how you made the weekly column chart on google sheet? I have a google sheet where I have been tracking my hours for two years but my graph look nowhere as good as yours, and I can't for the life of me get it to look like that lol
Thank you! Yeah, it’s just the “Stacked Column Chart” type in Google Sheets with a bunch of formatting applied. Which parts are you having trouble replicating? I can try to help!
@@jlykes Thank you for your reply!. My column are not at spaced out as yours so my graph is kinda hard to read, but I figured it's due to the fact that my data range is bigger so there it nothing I can do!
Ok yeah, I think having a pretty big data range would be one of the big things there. You could try segmenting your data into separate charts to have things spaced a bit better. For instance, if your X axis is time (like mine), you could have one chart for one year, one chart for another year, etc.
Great video! I think you know more Mandarin than me, and I'm Malaysian chinese. 我觉得你的华语是的很好现在! 可能 你会说比我更多的华语. 我称赞你因为我觉得你的方法很好. 虽然我的华语很差, 但是我同意你的感觉.我不要 开一本书. 我觉得开书是bosan (boring in Malay). Btw if you want to know how bad I am in mandarin, it took me like five minutes to write this sentence from memory lol. Good luck on your journey of learning mandarin!
@@jlykes No problem man. For sure, always nice to see someone learning Mandarin. Also hope my own writing in Simplified characters was understandable💀💀🤣
@@fanta6285 Well, at least I understood it! Though I had never heard Chinese referred to as 华语 - sure that's my own lack of knowledge :). And also I'm starting to read more books now, finding them less boring / difficult :)
@@jlykes Oh, you don’t need to apologise for not knowing. It’s natural and you’ll know more things as you immerse yourself more in Mandarin speaking circles. I guess I can help with giving you some terms to recognise, I think. Pardon my bad mandarin maybe even I’ll make mistakes in this, but here goes: So mandarin chinese is referred to by it’s speakers with a few terms. As mentioned, in Southeast Asia (including places like Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia) we call it 华语. 华 means something like great or magnificent, or united. 语 as you know means “language”. So basically southeast asian chinese call it “splendid language”😂 The Mainland chinese will use these 普通话 (pǔ tōng huà). It means something like “a common language”, owing to Mandarin’s recent status as a lingua franca amongst all Chinese communities. They’ll also call it 中文 (zhōngwén) which means something like “middle language” (literally, since 中 means middle). The Taiwanese and I think Hong Kongers will most likely use 国语 (guó yǔ). State language literally💀😂 since they use traditional, this will be the writing they use: 國語. Traditional is much harder to write but it’s beautiful in my opinion! And good that you’re reading mandarin books. It helps a lot in recognising the little details that Chinese characters may have that maybe a digital interface would miss. Also if you are trying to read different Chinese character fonts, books will help immensely since they sometimes print non-standard fonts in both Traditional and Simplified too!
Really well done. I also suggest you to get a language teacher. It will help you. Anyway you are doing very well. I have been studying Chinese for like 10 years.
Thank you! Yeah, it's something I'm definitely considering for at some point in the future. Especially when I start speaking more - if I feel like I need more help on pronunciation, that's where a teach might be especially useful.
@@jlykes Nah...don't get a language teacher. Very very few of them are truly world class. I would focus on getting input from native people who are not language teachers. Note all their observations on your pronunciation and how natural your Chinese sounds and THEN find a pronunciation teacher that is properly certified in Knight Thompson Speechwork and is either a native speaker and has that certification or has been studying Chinese for many years but has that certification. These people are the only people that deserve money for their expertise. They teach Hollywood actors and other VIP people accurate accents and dialects . Other teachers including university professors that specialize in phonetics and phonology are still mostly amateurs when it comes to accurately transferring accents to their clients. Bring up your notes form native speakers during your sessions with the dialect coach plus their own observations on your speaking and how natural your chinease sounds. This way in max 2 years you could have the progress that looks impossible to your usual polyglot wannabees.
@@encapsulatioAh this is really interesting, thanks. I hadn’t heard of Knight Thompson, but I will look into it. It would be fun to be coached by someone who teaches Hollywood actors, lol.
Have you thought of moving to China for a period of time? That's what I plan to do next year to accelerate my learning. Just 4 months in using Duolingo and consuming content online. My main focus for now is just being able to make small talks, then go from there. I think that focusing on what you care about and enjoy the most is the best way to approach it.
Hey yes, I have thought about that! It is definitely something I might do, but most likely not any time soon. I would probably wait until I have a good base in Chinese first. I have heard of a lot of people moving to foreign countries and actually not really picking up on the language that well unless they know it already, because they end up in an English-speaking bubble. And, I think a lot of the work of learning Chinese can be done outside of the country (at least if you're using an immersion-based approach like I am). But we will see how I feel as I get farther into it!
@@jlykes Those that don't pick up the language while living in the country where it's spoken are those that are really not interested in learning. Someone who's already putting in the work to learn while outside of the country like yourself , will pick it up way faster when surrounded with the language. But yes it's good you are doing what you do even while not in the country. I think I will be ready to go to China with one year of learning. Most foreigners go there with close to zero knowledge of Mandarin. You should make a vlog in your city in Mandarin with just simple phrases while walking the streets, I think it will help you practice speaking, and give you more views on youtube. I will definitely watch it.
Yeah really good points, I probably would do a lot better there since I already have so much motivation to learn. Good luck on your studies and eventual trip to China. If I go, I will very likely vlog as well!
@@paxvlog hmmm not completely. I've been learning Chinese for a year and 4 months, mainly on my own, very intensively, through immersion, anki, TH-cam, books, hello/super Chinese applications and many others. After some time, I joined the Confucius Institute to test myself with other people, mainly those who study sinology. I was positively surprised, my pronunciation was rather one of the best, my level was also top. After 7 months of self-study, I attended HSK3 classes. Then I started meeting with the teacher who taught me, among other things, to improve my language. And unfortunately it doesn't work like that. I thought that if I had the opportunity, I would speak Chinese almost all the time, but that's not true. I mainly spoke English, why? because when you talk to people, you mainly want to get to know them or express yourself. If you learn a foreign language for several months, you won't be able to do it. when she talks to me in Chinese, I often get angry or feel frustrated because I can't understand certain things. The comfort zone still exists even though you learn a given language intensively, so don't think that Chinese will magically come to your mind when you go to China, or that after a year of learning you will start speaking normally, it doesn't work like that. Of course, I also agree with everything else you said. my meetings with her, of course, greatly improved my speaking skills. I am able to carry on a conversation to a limited extent, but being surrounded by people from China will not make you fluent in this language. That's why I plan to go after 2-2.5 years of study, but I still think it's very quick
I'll reply in English since it would be hard for me to convey my thoughts on this in Chinese :). Thanks so much for the feedback! Not surprising to hear that my speaking is obviously influenced by the English way of phrasing things. I'm so early in my journey, I still have a pretty limited amount of vocabulary to draw from, and probably haven't seen enough examples of the more natural way to convey thoughts - so then rely on what the English way would be as a crutch. I'm hoping this is something that will improve as I get more vocabulary, and see more examples of naturally-phrased language in my input!
Love this content! I'm also using the input method to learn Mandarin Chinese. :) where did you find inception in Mandarin? I absolutely love that movie.
Thank you so much for this comment, really appreciate it! I had to venture into some Chinese websites using a VPN to find movies like Inception. I can’t remember what specific one for this, but if you can find the Chinese name for the movie and search it on Google, it often surfaces some of these sites. It’s a bit hit and miss, quality of video is typically low, so I have also sometimes just taken the audio and merged that with high quality video from the English version of the movie using video editing software to sync the sound.
Yeah, I think a lot of the concepts apply! Main difference I've heard is Simplified vs. Traditional characters, and some differences in pronunciation and word choice.
I am just starting now, i was thinking more of short news segments on different topics such as on CCTV or possibly some you tube channel. That way the clip can be analyzed and completed and become part of a personal archive of clips you have done. Any recommendations for channels or content?
Hey - so I haven't really done a lot of news stuff, so don't have great recommendations. I think The Chairman's Bao might have some news stuff, but I'm not entirely sure unfortunately! You could probably also try searching Google using something like 中国新闻 (China news) and see what comes up...
@jlykes I'm in Beijing at the moment though working rather than studying Chinese. After 7 weeks here I had my first Chinese class online this week. Thanks for your tips.
Haha, I plan to make other shorter videos on other specific topics in the future! But I wanted to try an in depth one for this one, which I know doesn’t suit everyone. Feel free to skip this one, or else watch at 2x speed, or skip around to the sections you might find most useful.
Posting here to help your channel engagement rather than on the discord server. Which GPT model did you use to make your graded reader? This is a really good idea. I know that there's a limited amount of words you can pass in. A chapter even is too long. Did you do it several paragraphs at a time or can some of the GPT4 models handle larger document sizes? Have you run into any inconsistancies? I know I asked chatGPT (3.5) to generate a story on a choose-your-own-adventure esque set of prompting and after sometime, past events were skewed resulting in story inconsistancies
Ah, thank you for posting here! Definitely appreciate the engagement :). So it was mostly GPT 4o, with some regular GPT 4 thrown in there. Using that, I was actually able to pass through a chapter at a time, so it wasn't too bad. If I recall, I think I created separate TXT files for each of the 17 chapters in the first book, and then passed them in that way. On inconsistencies - I'd say that it did a pretty good job at producing natural language, at least according to a couple of native friends. The biggest problem was that I got pretty wildly different levels of simplification / summarization for each chapter. Sometimes it would spit out something that was almost as long / complicated as the original chapter, other times it would spit out like a 4 paragraph summary. I eventually got OK results by editing the prompt, re-prompting it ("Actually, could you make that even simpler" or "actually, can you re-do it but keep more of the original dialogue and detail from the story"). But it was annoying and I'm going to be looking for ways to streamline it in the future (for instance, passing in more than one chapter at a time, maybe also providing it an example of the level of detail I want to get to, etc.). Will hopefully be making a deep dive video on this at some point!
That's pretty cool, you are able to memorize vocabulary and pronounce the tones properly. Now to reach the fluency you must work on the smoothness, by talking to natives, getting some feedback. That's very important as well. + sub 加油!
Lots of awesome stuff here... I'm making something like language reactor, but for videogames. I'd be interested in showing it to you if you're up to it. It works for Chinese. Cheers
The way I do it is screen record using a program like OBS. Sometimes the quality isn't as good, so if you want, you can also use video editing software to merge the video with a higher quality version. To keep it ethical, I'd just make sure you are actively subscribed to Netflix, Disney+, etc. if you are watching any media you pull this way. For subtitles, there are tools that you can use to download from Netflix, Disney+, etc. (though might require some coding) - hopefully can find using Google. More often than not though, the subtitles coming from these services don't match the dubbing. So in that case, I use AI to create a version. For instance, right now I'm using SubtitleEdit (which uses the OpenAI Whisper model to autogenerate subs). It's not perfect, but it works pretty well! I can make a video on this process if there's enough demand.
@@jlykes i'm subscribed to disney+ and have been curious on how to follow your method in pulling in content like this. please do setup a video on this process. Very curious!
This is my plan, i wouldnt learn in anotherway anyway This is the only option because im learninh by fun or i wouldnt love to learn this dofficult language Im getting better my input is getting better
Hey, are you talking about the book or the movie? I can't remember what part of the video you might be referring to, but I found the books easily online, and then I also have just the SUBTITLES for the movies that I pulled from TH-cam (if you go buy or rent LOTR on TH-cam, they have subs for it in many languages including Mandarin). I unfortunately haven't found the movies dubbed in Mandarin, despite a ton of effort looking for them. I did find The Hobbit movies on one of the Chinese sites (I think it might have been iQIYI). If anyone finds the dubbed version of LOTR, I would love to know about it!
Yeah so I haven't really gone down this route. The couple of times I tried to look for physical media with Chinese dub/subs, it didn't seem to be particularly available in US stores like Amazon. If I were searching, I'd probably start with companies based in China or Taiwan. Like, if you can find the Mandarin name for the media, search Google for that, I wonder if Mandarin companies selling that stuff would pop up. Otherwise, if you don't care about physical media and only digital, a few useful places I've found are Disney+ & Netflix. Some Chinese sites like iQiyi and Bilibili also sometimes have dubs of US-original content, but those sites can be hard to navigate and you might need a Chinese phone number and/or VPN to be able to access.
I'm suprised u re not using Migaku, is there a reason for not using it? I think it would quite fit some approaches u got and maybe reduce ur time spent micromanaging. Thats at least my experience so far using migaku since a few month (learning japanese currently - maybe back to chinese in the future :)) btw: with ur workflow u sound more like an obsidian than a notion-guy :D
Yeah so I had tried Migaku a while back and found it somewhat useful, but a little clunkier and buggier than some of the other alternatives. But that was before their recent redesign, so I still need to try the latest. I ended up using the older version mainly for when I wanted to create sentence cards in Anki using actual audio from the media, since Migaku was better at that than the alternatives I found. But these sentence cards haven’t been a super big part of my workflow (I don’t even remember if I mention it in the video), which means I haven’t used Migaku much. I’ll have to check out Obsidian. I’ve heard of it but don’t know much about it!
@@jlykes Alright, that explains it to me. I'm just in the progress of switching to around 90% sentence mining having the audio of sentences and, some difficult to remember, words only on the front - the rest is on the back of the card (pitch etc.). Also i found migaku quiet useful with texts online and youtube (which i prefer due to the natural - uncleaner - language compared to movies). I studied a lot of languages in school and at university in the past but it never took me to above intermediate level. It rlly took me a long time to start focusing on the "acquiring" of languages - I'm giving myself 2 years of that immersion-experiment to check out how far i come, compared to the traditional methods. In that aspect we seem to be on a similiar journey :) I'm excited to see where your journey will lead you. Also you may already know that resource but when i learned chinese i rlly liked thechairmansbao, which is kinda what you re already doing with gpt :)
@@n1m4r35 Yes, it does seem like we’re on a similar journey! In my head I’m also giving myself a couple of years to see how far I get. Though my expectation is it will take a lot longer than that to get to any real level of proficiency. Thanks for the tip on The Chairman’s Bao. I’ve heard of it but haven’t seriously looked into it!
Yeah, that came from one of the Chinese sites. It was like Bilibili or iQiyi - can't remember which one exactly. I don't think you need a VPN for all of the stuff on those sites, but if I remember correctly, I did need it in this case.
Not sure yet! I'll most likely try to at least visit someday though. Perhaps stay for a few months. But my guess is I would come back to the US after a while.
My main problem in chinese is to remember the hanzis. I remember easily the sonds (pinyin) and I know that the sound means but I can't see a hanzi and recognize it :( It's so haardd Do you think that anki is the only way to do it? I struggle so much with anki, I don't know what I put in the front and back
So I have had good luck with Skritter (which is kind of like Anki), and then using the Memory Palaces technique that I linked in the description from Mandarin Blueprint. Their method is to create a mnemonic device that helps you remember all parts of the word (hanzi, meaning, character, tones). That method helped me a lot especially for my first few hundred characters, and now that I have a lot under my belt, I noticed that most other characters are just combinations of other components I already know, so they stick a lot easier.
One other thing - I’m actually learning to write all of the Hanzi. A lot of people don’t think you need to do this, but I do feel like it has helped me remember them a lot better
@@jlykes thank you so much!! I'm rn searching a cheaper option to skritter, here in brazil it is very expensive hahahaha maybe I just need to give up and use anki lmao
@@wally9112 yeah I think Anki is same idea, I basically just use Skritter because it makes handwriting practice easier. But you could also just write on paper when reviewing cards if you wanted to do that
Thank you! Yeah this video is really without more than a few hours of speaking practice on my own, without a ton of feedback from natives yet. So yeah I definitely need to work on the pronunciation more.
I've only used it a little. I think it's a great app, but it feels like most of the content there is specifically made for language learners and not things that I would read otherwise. So I have gravitated more towards other content made for natives. What about you?
@jlykes I've been going for a about 6 months on this journey only 30 minutes a day with some days being an hr or 2. Hello chinese, hsk books and du chinese as well as duolingo and comprehensible input videos on TH-cam hs1k to ks2
1st tone is high/level; 2nd tone is midlevel to high; 3rd tone starts midlevel, drops lower, then rises back to where it started; and 4th tone starts mid, then drops to low level. Your miss-numbering of the four tones is a terrible disservice to your watchers.
Because he learned through listening mostly, those tone description don't eally work in practice. If you listen to real speaking and real sound frequencies, his descriptions in the video are a more accurate and natural way to describe the tones. For just one example, 3rd tone rarely goes back up. Only in grammar books or for emphasis. Edit: i guess the misnumbering itself was just ordered by what is comfortable in the English brain
His numbers were incorrect, but not that big of a deal. The description of the 3rd tone as a low tone is how the tone is usually pronounced most of the time. The falling-rising description only applies when said in isolation.
@@哈林-k5e Yeah, sorry I finally went back and re-watched this part of the video. It honestly took me a bit of time to figure out what the original commenter was talking about. I actually don't think I was intending to map the tones back to the official numbers you see in instructional materials, as I don't really use those numbers very often. I try to avoid using pinyin at all, and if I am, it's the version with the little tone markers (and not the tone numbers). Or, using hanzi colored by tone (red = high, green = low, yellow = rising, blue = falling). In this case I was really just explaining them in what felt like a logical order using the example "shi". I started with 是 (high to low tone) because that's probably the most common variation of "shi" and the first one that came to my mind as I was explaining. And then I literally just went in random order through the rest in the order that different variations of "shi" came to mind. And then as some people noted, I believe my explanation of the low tone is closer to how most people pronounce it in most cases vs. the textbook explanation of going down and then back up (which I believe tends to happen only when the tone is pronounced in isolation). Apologies for any confusion - this is a consequence of me learning in a non-textbook way! FWIW I think native speakers don't really think about tones at all - it's really just a (very useful) construction we put on top of the language to try to explain how pronunciation works for natives. And they certainly don't think about tone numbers - which is a completely arbitrary numbering we have put on top of the concept of tones. So I think this only really matters if you are trying to match up what I'm saying to what is put in official instructional materials!
Haha, they say the tones are one of the hardest things for language learners to get right, so I'm doing my best here to at least somewhat include them in my speaking :P
Good structured learning. However greatly lacking in pronunciation. Your xue sounds like shui. Stop for a month and only focus initials and finals pronounciation. Also, for the purposes of communicating in the language, spending time learning to handwrite is a waste, unless you of course just love that aspect. Learn to read and recognise.
Thank you for the comment! Yup I definitely need to work on my pronunciation, which I will focus on much more greatly when I have a better foundation in understanding. For now I’ll continue learning to hand write as well - I know that most people don’t think it’s needed, but I want to learn anyway. Thanks for watching!
@@magnus_9189sdf In truth I even debated whether to film the skit given I’ve spent so little time on practicing pronunciation up to this point. I was pretty sure it would be pretty far off and that I’d get lots of corrections. I ended up going for it to challenge myself, start getting some feedback from folks, and hopefully serve as a record of where I started. So I appreciate any and all critiques, from you or others, and I’ll use it to try to improve in the future!
Creating your own simplified version of a book you actually want to read is a brilliant idea!
@@chienbanane3168 thank you for the comment! Working on a video about how to replicate this process right now 😁
I‘m Chinese learning English and I saw your video in the recommend list randomly and found it really helpful for my English study as well🤣 Thank you for sharing.
That’s great, I’m so glad you found it helpful even for English!
The fact that I heard everything you said in here and only just from watching drama's 😲, I didn't realize I understood so much until this video for real.
Never thought of learning.
Haha, looks like your learning method is working pretty well!
After hearing Yoda talk like an ancient Chinese 神 from 西遊記 I really want a star wars show but the Jedi are Chinese sages and shit. How epic would that be.
Haha yeah that would be pretty epic!
This video is so high quality and thorough I was expecting it to have at least 500k views. Great Video you'll definetly gain subscribers over the course of time!
@@chocomint4015 Thank you for the kind comment! I’m just starting to ramp up on TH-cam again so maybe I’ll build subs over time, we will see. I’m just happy if this video helps at least some people 😁
I want to know more, this is kind of what I do when I'm not being lazy.
Absolutely! More videos to come hopefully :)
I'm doing something similar by watching dramas. Nothing structured... I watch informational videos when I feel like it, and practice writing as I feel compelled. This learning style is not for everyone, but it can work.
Nice, interesting to see your approach. Good luck!
I learned Chinese growing up but as time has gone on, it has started to fade away a bit. This is an amazing video and breakdown of your whole process that I honestly think I would apply to other languages that I'm learning in addition to Chinese. I love the Notion set up and it has sparked a few ideas for me as well. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much for the kind words - I'm really glad that you found the video useful!
Your approach is really great! I’ve actually been using a similar method, but I only start using movies and advanced content once I reach an intermediate level. In the earlier stages, I focus on comprehensible input that is appropriate for my level. This allows me to build the basic vocabulary and grammar structures necessary to form a linguistic core. Once I have that foundation, I feel more prepared to dive into more advanced content like movies. In my opinion, trying to consume advanced input too early, without that core, can be overwhelming and less effective. By focusing first on content that matches your level, learning becomes smoother and more efficient.
By the way, I want to congratulate you on the significant progress you’ve made in just one year-it’s truly remarkable! And you give very valuable advice in your video to learn Chinese, which I really appreciate
Hey - thank you for the comment, I'm glad that you've been having luck with the approach! I think your approach of gradually taking on more difficult content makes a lot of sense and is also what most "experts" would recommend. I've been experimenting with how much of this to do myself - and so far will still consume "advanced" content sometimes if I feel really motivated, or if I already know what it means because I've consumed it in English (and thus it's already somewhat "comprehensible"). It seems like that works also - because when I go back to simpler content, it seems like I have really improved on understanding that as well, even if I didn't spend very much time practicing consuming simpler content.
Bruh I gotta say this input based method is exactly how I learned my English. I basically grew up listening to Dre, Em, Kendrick Lamar and then started to binge Marvel stuff, LoTR, etc. All of that helped immensely and was so much fun along the learning journey. Now I'm watch cocomelon and skibidi toilet on youtube to get that alpha rizz rizzing all the shawty up no cap on god. gotta get that gyatt my guy. 💀💀💀
Nice, that sounds like a fun approach, I'm glad it worked for you! Hopefully it works for me too :)
Great video, and love your attitude!! 加油 👊🏻
Glad you enjoyed it!
Best video I've ever seen for chinese learners.
I've been studying for some months and I've been using the comprehensible input method, so I can manage to understand HSK3 conversations, but I'm still probably at HSK1 when speaking.
Your tips are awesome, I was only using anki but will probably start using skritter and chatgpt too.
Hey, I’m really glad you enjoyed the video! I need to test myself using HSK someday. I have only taken HSK 1 so far and passed, but haven’t tried the others.
Good luck in your studies!
It's not bad, however:
- spending so much time on learning to write characters is a waste of time. One types pinyin. Look up any scholars and foreigners who speak amazing Chinese. They'll all say it's a waste of time learning to write characters. Common for people to know, say, 6000 characters, but can only handwrite 600 clearly.
- need to spend more time on pronounciation. Harder to fix it later. For instance, his xue is very wrong, sounds more like shui even. Spend more time with the pinyin pronounciation chart. Lots of materials for how to do this out there, even without a teacher.
@@magnus_9189sdf Thanks for this comment! Agreed I’m likely spending much more time on handwriting than I need to, and that I need to eventually spend much more time on pronunciation. Plan is to continue learning both for now, but I appreciate these observations.
160 subs? Have you been involved in content creation prior to starting YT? For an hour+ long video you've got great depth of information without getting lost in the tangents of irrelevant info. Great vid!
@@detached336 Thank you so much! Yes, for years I’ve been making other types of content on and off TH-cam as well, but this is my first Chinese learning video. And half of my existing 160 subs have come from this video alone 😁. I’m hoping that will grow over time!
I just began learning mandarin recently and this video is a goldmine, so much info thank you, I really like your brain!
Thanks for the comment, I’m glad you found the video helpful!
Really well done, appreciate the effort you put into this! Excited for the 2000h update
Thank you so much!!
Really interesting and a practical way to learn. Thanks.
So cool Josh! Especially loved the color-coded subtitle portion of the video. Would love to see/hear more about your journey here.
Hope all else is well!
Andy
Oh so amazing to hear from you, how are you doing?? Glad you enjoyed the video 😁
This is so true. I managed to learn Chinese via watching movies bt with subtitles. I generate subtitles via Immersive translate mostly when the movies lack the subtitles.
Ah, I'll have to try that!
Now how to do that??? I am sooo interested.
6 episodes at the end of my current drama (Escape from the Triangular slopes) are not subtitled!!
And then there's Blossoms Shanghai that I'd like to watch, but would like to find subtitles to.
Thing is: both those dramas, esp the first, use different languages and dialects, including an artificially made-up one for the first!!
@@florfred1786 Yeah, the way I have handled this recently is using AI generated subtitles. Lots of options, but the tool I use right now is SubtitleEdit. You just have to put the video or audio in, and it uses the OpenAI Whisper model to generate. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well.
As a chinese, I think your mandarin chinese is quite good for 1 year based on your intro skid.
Thank you, I really appreciate it! Hopefully it will be even better in the next update :)
Watching your videos is a way to learn English as well🧐
Haha I didn't think of that, but great to hear it!
Great video. It popped up in my suggestions because I've been learning Mandarin for 2 years now. I watch a LOT of Mandarin language videos. Some that teach the language, and a few that are just IN Mandarin. I've made a lot of progress, but I also know I don't listen as much as a should. It's so hard getting comfortable with not knowing every word you hear. It makes me want to pause the audio and look up the word. Which happens every few seconds still.
Thanks so much for the comment and kind words! I totally relate to the idea of it being hard to not know every word. One thing that helped me is to focus on the words that I DO know, and how much of the overall meaning I'm getting (which you can often get from context, even if you don't understand very much of the actual language spoken). And just remembering that understanding ANYTHING in a language that is so different is a pretty big accomplishment. Also trying to put myself back in the mindset of being a little kid, who didn't really care if he understood everything or not.
Tracking my progress has also helped remind me that I am getting better and better each day, even if there are large parts that I don't understand. We'll see how I feel when I'm more at your level - hopefully I'll still feel good about all of this :)
@@jlykes BTW, you've probably already found this channel www.youtube.com/@DANLIAOFreeToLearnChinese
But in case you haven't I recommend it. It's ALL in Mandarin, and there's a lot of it. The 老师 is really good at teaching the language. Her channel is the best I've found by far.
@@davidlericain I hadn’t seen this channel actually, so I will check it out. Thank you!
hi Joshua I just subscribed your channel after watching a little bit of this video （ I 'll finish it later on when I 'm available ）, and as a Chinese I just wanna remind you that : If anyone wants to learn Chinese language from movies, they 'd better learn that from the ones that take Chinese as mother language. I made this suggestion cuz I found most of the movie stories you 've showed in the video above are originally told in English （turned into Chinese version , tho）, which are fine but still missed some real Chinese language vibes . What's more , we even call such films as 译制片，which in our context refers to the films that remain a strong style of non-Chinese （and even never tried to get rid of it LOL）
Hey, thanks for the tip here! Yeah I definitely need to move on to some content that is originally Chinese. They are much harder for me to understand at the moment, but hopefully should be easier over time. I think there are a lot of options on Netflix for when I’m ready 😁
This motivates me to keep doing what I am doing right now! I also use the same techniques as you!! But although I am learning a different language which is the Thai language but it still has helped me to make my practices on how I learn languages better so thank you!!
Ah I’m so glad the video helped you, thanks for watching!
Mad props to you man, keep it up!
Thank you!
Awesome video, I really appreciate your thoroughness and transparency in describing your methods and progress. Also, well done! Keep it up!
Thank you for the kind comment, glad that you got something out of the video!
Hey bro, very good job at starting this language! it is a process， one that I have been on for the last 20 years, but it does get easier. I will say Im proud of you that you "kept the tones", something that many of these so called "fluent foreign Chinese speakers" do not do. its easy to speak words really fast, its even better when you keep the tones. So keep it up and I know you will get there, you have an interesting approach. - 齐昆
Hey, thanks for the kind reply, I really appreciate it! Will do my best to keep up with the tones all day also work on the other aspects of pronunciation.
This is such an amazing video man. I'm learning Japanese but came here for your methods! I will defintely add some of these. I also use SRS with Anki. I read some manga along with my Yomitan dictionary at hand. I've recently also added gaming to the mix to get a different type of input. And then of course anime or movies/series.
These are some really great resources and tools! Thanks for introducing me to Language reactor. It looks great!
All the best with your Language learning journey Joshua!
Hey, thank you for such a kind message, I'm glad that you enjoyed the video even if you are learning a different language. Good luck in your efforts as well!
What a peed dive into immersion learning, i really enjoyed this video.
Really glad you enjoyed it!
keep up the journey!
Thank you!!
Wow, there seems to be a lot of work involved in study management. When I was a child, I thought that native English speakers must speak their language like the way they are dubbed in Hollywood movies for Chinese audiences. However, it wasn't until I learned English to a high level that I realized the vibe, rhythm, speech speed, and even the mentality of how real native English speakers communicate are quite similar to how Chinese natives speak their own language in real life. The dubbed version is a new creation that is more theatrical and exaggerated for Chinese ears. But I don't mind if Mandarin learners talk like that, as long as they are able to perfectly capture that level of emotional expressiveness. It would be quite exotic and charming to hear people speak that way in everyday life. The beginning of the video was fun 😂.
I can sense how you perceive Chinese language, much like how I initially perceived English - it must feel like a very logic-based approach. As a native Chinese speaker, I always find that each syllable seems to match what it means, as if it mimics the sound and form of nature. When I became able to percieve how the English sounds are associtated with the sound of nature in a figurative way, it was a real game changer for me. Maybe as you progress, you'll get to that point as well.
One more thing - your Mandarin pronunciation is good. However, I've noticed that the way you use your vocal cords and how you breathe when making sounds is not quite like a native Chinese speaker. Moreover, sometimes the tongue position is slightly different from what is considered the most accurate, especially when you repeat the same nuance despite the AI's accurate repetition. It's almost as if your brain is filtering out those subtle differences. I wouldn't say it's wrong, per se, but that's where the accent is defined, making you sound a bit foreign. I hope this information is helpful, but don't feel bad about it. Even Xiao Ma has a noticeable accent, but it's his natural integration and deep intimacy with the language that impresses native speakers, as if he has a Chinese soul despite the occasional accent. Great video, very informative, and good learning! You're so smart, you've got this.👍
Thank you so much for the thoughtful comment! I really appreciate it.
Thank you also for the perspective on my pronunciation. Not surprised at all that I would have an accent, especially at this point. I'm definitely striving to be as native-like in my pronunciation as possible, but ultimately also don't see an accent/sounding a bit foreign as a bad thing (assuming I'm understandable / pronouncing things mostly correctly). After all, I definitely am foreign, which will also be obvious by my appearance. :) But it will be a fun challenge to make my accent as authentic as possible, and hopefully improve on as I practice speaking more!
@@jlykesIndeed, having an accent is not necessarily a bad thing. It's part of your identity. FYI, there is a TH-camr teaching Chinese pronunciation very well. Her channel is Rita Mandarin Chinese. You can check it out. Her English has a strong accent influenced by her Chinese. But that doesn't disqualify her skill in teaching at all. She really knows the details that most people are unaware of, even as native Chinese speakers. Actually, if I have to put it in analogy, your current Chinese has a strong American English accent that sounds like her English with a strong Chinese accent. But fun fact, her American husband, Laoma Chris, has an almost perfect Chinese pronunciation. You can also check out his channel. I'm sure you'll be intrigued by how he achieved that level of fluency in Manderin. Valuable tips are hidden in his content. In the end, thank you for your response. I can't help but provide more info. Wish you have a wondeful journey.😊
@@Leo-54lyah thanks for those suggestions! I had watched a few of Rita’s videos (even on pronunciation), but not Laoma Chris, so just found his channel. Appreciate your analogy between my accent and Rita’s, helps me put it into perspective (it’s really hard for me to tell what I sound like, as you might imagine). If I’m already as understandable as Rita, then I’ll count that as a win given I had only really started practicing speaking in the month or so before I filmed the video. But then I’ll use Laoma Chris and others as people I can aspire to accent-wise. Thank you so much!
Rrraahhh 😡 I'm so jealous, I've been learning mandarin for 10 years and my level is slightly higher than yours.
You're doing great! Keep up the good work 👍 and thanks for the tips.
Ah thank you for the kind words, glad you appreciated the tips. Good luck in your studies!
Great video! I've been learning Chinese for a while, and I've gotta say I'm really impressed with how systematically you're tackling this. You should consider trying something like HelloTalk to chat with random natives. You can join voice rooms, live streams, etc, and native English speakers are *always* in high demand. Also, don't worry too much about your level. There are so many people that are *much* lower level than you that are on there giving it a shot
Also, just one thing I noticed regarding your pronunciation (I know you're not super focused on output yet)
To my (admittedly non-native) ears, your "shi" sounds a bit too much like "she". The same will go for zhi/zhe, chi/che, and ri/re
Good luck! Maybe I'll see you on HelloTalk. Your progress after only one year is super impressive!
Hey, thank you so much for the supportive comments! HelloTalk is something that I definitely plan to check out in the future, so I'm glad that you have found it useful.
Thanks also for the pronunciation feedback. Between your comment and those from others, I'm realizing I'm going to have to spend a lot of time on pronunciation at some point. So I will for sure focus on this piece specifically.
Thank you!
I can appreciate your level of dedication. I have some similar methods, and hope we run into each other someday and have a chance to chat since i'm also in the bay area.
Thank you for the comment, and yes it would be cool to run into each other!
This video is fantastic. I am definetly going to use your system for organizing and subtitling media content. 非常感谢！
I'm so glad you found it useful, thanks for watching!
Wow would really love to see how you created you scripts and gpts :) Well done!
Hey - yeah, creating custom GPTs is pretty easy. In fact, if you just went into ChatGPT, you might be able to figure it out without even any instructions. You basically just tell ChatGPT what you want the script to do in plain language. I had found some videos on TH-cam about it at the time, but can't remember which ones (should be easy to search).
On the custom scripts - that's a bit more complicated. But I'm hoping to post some of these to my GitHub at some point for those who might be interested.
Excellent review, wish I was younger and starting now, so many great tools available. I also use Skritter.
Thanks for watching, and glad it was helpful! Yeah I agree - so many great tools available now that make it so much easier.
such a good video!!!!
Thank you very much, I appreciate it!
I loved this video, your systems are really impressive! I've been learning Chinese years although not as intensively as you, I wish I could speak with you I would like to create similar databases to track the words I come across.
PS. I've also quit drinking and Andrew Huberman's video partially helped me make that decision!
Thank you so much, I’m really glad you got something out of the video! There is a chance that I write some kind of program to help people track words, we will see.
Also cool that you quit drinking! I’m a little over two years in, need to make my next update.
@@jlykes I don't like the idea of having to update characters/words list across skritter/lingq/language reactor and anki. How do you keep them all synced up?
@@yeti1989 yeah so honestly right now I do it manually. LingQ is my main database since it gives you the ability to rank how well you know words on 1-5 scale. Once I know a word at the 4 level, I learn it in Skritter, and then update it on LR. It’s pretty annoying but works for now. I might write some kind of program that makes this smoother.
Wow, so comprehensive! Thank you for sharing. We might see a product on sale after some time - Joshua Lykes' Mandarin(where you will have a step by step guide for beginners). Also the book you made is amazing. Not sure if you can sell it but I would buy one for HSK1 😊
Haha, thank you for the comment! Nothing to sell as of now lol. But if I end up succeeding with this approach, we will see. Also appreciate your comment about the book - I’m working on a video now that will show how to make these.
@@jlykes Perfect! I will keep an eye out for it.
Kudos to you for making this much progress within a year, impressive!
But learning Chinese by watching dubbed TV and movies is generally not the best idea if you want to learn more everyday vocabulary.
Just imagine learning Japanese by watching Japanese dubbed version of Friends.
I would encourage you to watch more Chinese original shows/movies, first with subtitles, then slowly turn off subtitles. I'm sure you will learn more quickly, especially your choice of words will sound more natural to a Chinese native.
Thanks for the suggestions here! Yeah I definitely need to expand the kind of content to include more Chinese original stuff.
Hi Joshua, your video is so enlightening and inspiring for me to learn English also, thanks for sharing! And I somehow couldn’t help make a revise on your final script since it is still not perfect and natural enough as we speaking Chinsese, hope it will help you a little bit, and enjoy your journey on learning Chinsese!
小弟：大哥，你吃饭了吗？/你吃了吗？
大哥：没呢/还没吃，我肚子好饿(would be better saying shortening phrase in spoken language)
小弟：为什么你还没吃饭？/你怎么还没吃饭？
大哥：因为我需要学习中文/因为我要学中文
小弟：你是怎么学习的？用什么方法？(need to add a suffix 的)
大哥：每天我看两小时这本书，再上一个小时课，还用这些flashcards (notice the order of the timing words in this sentence)
小弟：大哥，不对不对，你这样不行
大哥：怎么了？
小弟：我发现了更好的方法，如果你使用它，学习中文会更容易
大哥：你的方法是什么？/你是怎么学的？
小弟：我不上课，也没有老师，就只看电影和看书(a much more natural way, the original expression is so English-minded)
大哥：真的吗？你成功学会中文了吗？(notice how to put the suffix 了 in the right place)
小弟：当然/必须的(a popular saying recent years)，这个方法叫input-based learning
大哥：好吧，跟我说两句中文听听(I would say the original expression is too unnatural and a little confusing)
小弟：bla bla bla
大哥：你好像只学了电影里的东西，没什么用
小弟：还真不是，非常有用（我不同意is a little bit sharp in tone, we rarely say so to a friend or acquaintance)。
小弟：我学会了很多词、了解了很多事，最重要的是，很好玩(still need to notice the usage of 了)
大哥：好吧好吧，让我试试/那我试试
This is amazing - thank you so much!!!
哇，谢谢你一五一十地把你的学习方法分享给我们！❤
不客气！
you are awesome! could you teach us how to create shortcut pages like the ones you've done e.g. word helper? much appreciated!
Hey, great suggestion! Let me add it to the list of things to make a video about if I get the chance to 😁
amazing process! and a great video. The one thing i would say that's missing is practice in real life. Look for a language exchange buddy, Its more fun than spreadsheets and the social awkwardness is a real motivator
Thank you, and good tip on the exchange buddy! It’s something I’ll probably do eventually.
well done. Great informative video. Your Chinese sounds good (-:
Thank you! 😃
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍amazing video
Thank you 👍
大哥 thank you for showcasing your approach in such a clear manner. This immersive method of acquiring a language is the way to go! I’m also approaching a year of Chinese learning doing very similar techniques. Btw how did you find avatar last air bender in Chinese dub?
Hey thanks for the comment! I found Avatar a while back on one of the Chinese content sites (I think it might have been Bilibili, but I can’t remember for sure). It was somewhat difficult to find - since those sites are all in Chinese, and I might have needed a VPN (can’t remember).
It's on Bilibili
Amazing bro
Thank you!
I learned through similar methods haha, mainly podcasts and street interviews. I highly recommend you watch rita mandarin for informative videos about learning Chinese and pronunciation
Nice, how did using this learning method work onto for you? Anything you’d do differently if you were starting again?
@@jlykes Honestly just starting to do things other than duolingo earlier haha
@@rairaidj1haha got it
Honestly it would be amazing if you could make a video where you explain how you actually import movies and subtitles in Plex, I haven't found any good ressources about it
Thanks for the suggestion! I am planning to make a couple of videos touching on this topic, we'll see how long it takes me to get to them though :)
You speak well. 你说的很好。
Thank you so much for the compliment, I appreciate the encouragement!
Id love to do this with thai as im basically getting nowhere two years on! But seems much less common to find marvel films for example, which would be great as i really want to rewatch them from the start
Hey, yeah, I could see Thai being a tougher language to find stuff in. I just checked the Marvel films on Disney+, and it looks like they're not available in Thai. But you might be able to find other content. For instance, I just looked a few shows I've used for input or thought about using on Netflix - 3 Body Problem, Arcane, and Avatar The Last Airbender (new live action version). All appear to have Thai available! So my guess is there's a lot of other stuff there as well.
On Temu there are a lot of books in Chinese :) And the other I am learning with is a game Genshin Impact. And this game is free, and beautiful, and can hear the native pronanciation.
Nice, I haven't heard of those, I'll need to look out for them!
Very interesting video! I have been learning korean for some times now using similar methods of immersion. I also really like categorizing and organizing data, so I would be interested to know how you made the weekly column chart on google sheet?
I have a google sheet where I have been tracking my hours for two years but my graph look nowhere as good as yours, and I can't for the life of me get it to look like that lol
Thank you! Yeah, it’s just the “Stacked Column Chart” type in Google Sheets with a bunch of formatting applied. Which parts are you having trouble replicating? I can try to help!
@@jlykes Thank you for your reply!. My column are not at spaced out as yours so my graph is kinda hard to read, but I figured it's due to the fact that my data range is bigger so there it nothing I can do!
Ok yeah, I think having a pretty big data range would be one of the big things there. You could try segmenting your data into separate charts to have things spaced a bit better. For instance, if your X axis is time (like mine), you could have one chart for one year, one chart for another year, etc.
@@jlykes Oh that's a good idea! I will try like that
Great video! I think you know more Mandarin than me, and I'm Malaysian chinese. 我觉得你的华语是的很好现在! 可能 你会说比我更多的华语. 我称赞你因为我觉得你的方法很好. 虽然我的华语很差, 但是我同意你的感觉.我不要 开一本书. 我觉得开书是bosan (boring in Malay). Btw if you want to know how bad I am in mandarin, it took me like five minutes to write this sentence from memory lol.
Good luck on your journey of learning mandarin!
Really glad that you liked it, 谢谢你！
@@jlykes No problem man. For sure, always nice to see someone learning Mandarin. Also hope my own writing in Simplified characters was understandable💀💀🤣
@@fanta6285 Well, at least I understood it! Though I had never heard Chinese referred to as 华语 - sure that's my own lack of knowledge :). And also I'm starting to read more books now, finding them less boring / difficult :)
@@jlykes
Oh, you don’t need to apologise for not knowing. It’s natural and you’ll know more things as you immerse yourself more in Mandarin speaking circles. I guess I can help with giving you some terms to recognise, I think. Pardon my bad mandarin maybe even I’ll make mistakes in this, but here goes:
So mandarin chinese is referred to by it’s speakers with a few terms.
As mentioned, in Southeast Asia (including places like Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia) we call it 华语. 华 means something like great or magnificent, or united. 语 as you know means “language”. So basically southeast asian chinese call it “splendid language”😂
The Mainland chinese will use these 普通话 (pǔ tōng huà). It means something like “a common language”, owing to Mandarin’s recent status as a lingua franca amongst all Chinese communities. They’ll also call it 中文 (zhōngwén) which means something like “middle language” (literally, since 中 means middle).
The Taiwanese and I think Hong Kongers will most likely use 国语 (guó yǔ). State language literally💀😂 since they use traditional, this will be the writing they use: 國語. Traditional is much harder to write but it’s beautiful in my opinion!
And good that you’re reading mandarin books. It helps a lot in recognising the little details that Chinese characters may have that maybe a digital interface would miss. Also if you are trying to read different Chinese character fonts, books will help immensely since they sometimes print non-standard fonts in both Traditional and Simplified too!
Oh wow, thank you so much for the information! I didn’t realize the language went by so many names, really good for me to know. So interesting!
Really well done. I also suggest you to get a language teacher. It will help you. Anyway you are doing very well. I have been studying Chinese for like 10 years.
Thank you! Yeah, it's something I'm definitely considering for at some point in the future. Especially when I start speaking more - if I feel like I need more help on pronunciation, that's where a teach might be especially useful.
@@jlykes Nah...don't get a language teacher. Very very few of them are truly world class.
I would focus on getting input from native people who are not language teachers. Note all their observations on your pronunciation and how natural your Chinese sounds and THEN find a pronunciation teacher that is properly certified in Knight Thompson Speechwork and is either a native speaker and has that certification or has been studying Chinese for many years but has that certification.
These people are the only people that deserve money for their expertise. They teach Hollywood actors and other VIP people accurate accents and dialects .
Other teachers including university professors that specialize in phonetics and phonology are still mostly amateurs when it comes to accurately transferring accents to their clients.
Bring up your notes form native speakers during your sessions with the dialect coach plus their own observations on your speaking and how natural your chinease sounds.
This way in max 2 years you could have the progress that looks impossible to your usual polyglot wannabees.
@@encapsulatioAh this is really interesting, thanks. I hadn’t heard of Knight Thompson, but I will look into it. It would be fun to be coached by someone who teaches Hollywood actors, lol.
我也是用你这个方法学会了英语。哥们，加油！
谢谢你，加油！
Have you thought of moving to China for a period of time? That's what I plan to do next year to accelerate my learning. Just 4 months in using Duolingo and consuming content online. My main focus for now is just being able to make small talks, then go from there. I think that focusing on what you care about and enjoy the most is the best way to approach it.
Hey yes, I have thought about that! It is definitely something I might do, but most likely not any time soon. I would probably wait until I have a good base in Chinese first. I have heard of a lot of people moving to foreign countries and actually not really picking up on the language that well unless they know it already, because they end up in an English-speaking bubble. And, I think a lot of the work of learning Chinese can be done outside of the country (at least if you're using an immersion-based approach like I am). But we will see how I feel as I get farther into it!
@@jlykes Those that don't pick up the language while living in the country where it's spoken are those that are really not interested in learning. Someone who's already putting in the work to learn while outside of the country like yourself , will pick it up way faster when surrounded with the language. But yes it's good you are doing what you do even while not in the country. I think I will be ready to go to China with one year of learning. Most foreigners go there with close to zero knowledge of Mandarin. You should make a vlog in your city in Mandarin with just simple phrases while walking the streets, I think it will help you practice speaking, and give you more views on youtube. I will definitely watch it.
Yeah really good points, I probably would do a lot better there since I already have so much motivation to learn. Good luck on your studies and eventual trip to China. If I go, I will very likely vlog as well!
@@jlykes Sounds good, and good luck to you too.
@@paxvlog hmmm not completely. I've been learning Chinese for a year and 4 months, mainly on my own, very intensively, through immersion, anki, TH-cam, books, hello/super Chinese applications and many others. After some time, I joined the Confucius Institute to test myself with other people, mainly those who study sinology. I was positively surprised, my pronunciation was rather one of the best, my level was also top. After 7 months of self-study, I attended HSK3 classes. Then I started meeting with the teacher who taught me, among other things, to improve my language. And unfortunately it doesn't work like that. I thought that if I had the opportunity, I would speak Chinese almost all the time, but that's not true. I mainly spoke English, why? because when you talk to people, you mainly want to get to know them or express yourself. If you learn a foreign language for several months, you won't be able to do it. when she talks to me in Chinese, I often get angry or feel frustrated because I can't understand certain things. The comfort zone still exists even though you learn a given language intensively, so don't think that Chinese will magically come to your mind when you go to China, or that after a year of learning you will start speaking normally, it doesn't work like that. Of course, I also agree with everything else you said. my meetings with her, of course, greatly improved my speaking skills. I am able to carry on a conversation to a limited extent, but being surrounded by people from China will not make you fluent in this language. That's why I plan to go after 2-2.5 years of study, but I still think it's very quick
1年能学成这样确实很棒了 。 但不好意思我想提醒一下，下一步你努力的方向是：尝试用中文思维方式去表达，你说的句子很明显还是英文的思维方式。 虽然能理解你想表达的意思，但是句子的语序看得出来受英语的影响，是有语误的。 加油
I'll reply in English since it would be hard for me to convey my thoughts on this in Chinese :). Thanks so much for the feedback! Not surprising to hear that my speaking is obviously influenced by the English way of phrasing things. I'm so early in my journey, I still have a pretty limited amount of vocabulary to draw from, and probably haven't seen enough examples of the more natural way to convey thoughts - so then rely on what the English way would be as a crutch. I'm hoping this is something that will improve as I get more vocabulary, and see more examples of naturally-phrased language in my input!
Love this content! I'm also using the input method to learn Mandarin Chinese. :) where did you find inception in Mandarin? I absolutely love that movie.
Thank you so much for this comment, really appreciate it! I had to venture into some Chinese websites using a VPN to find movies like Inception. I can’t remember what specific one for this, but if you can find the Chinese name for the movie and search it on Google, it often surfaces some of these sites. It’s a bit hit and miss, quality of video is typically low, so I have also sometimes just taken the audio and merged that with high quality video from the English version of the movie using video editing software to sync the sound.
Lol I learned to speak English like native speakers by watching the original version of these films, too
As a native Chinese speaker myself, I think you're doing great already, bro! Keep up the good work
Thank you for the comments! Cool to hear things how you learned English, sounds like it worked well for you judging by your English 😁
@@jlykes Thx, man😃
@@jlykesLet me know if u have any problems understanding Chinese stuff😂
@@trent_tsuthanks, will do!
mainland china. i want to learn mandarin from taiwan but im sure this is helpful too
Yeah, I think a lot of the concepts apply! Main difference I've heard is Simplified vs. Traditional characters, and some differences in pronunciation and word choice.
I am just starting now, i was thinking more of short news segments on different topics such as on CCTV or possibly some you tube channel. That way the clip can be analyzed and completed and become part of a personal archive of clips you have done. Any recommendations for channels or content?
Hey - so I haven't really done a lot of news stuff, so don't have great recommendations. I think The Chairman's Bao might have some news stuff, but I'm not entirely sure unfortunately! You could probably also try searching Google using something like 中国新闻 (China news) and see what comes up...
@jlykes I'm in Beijing at the moment though working rather than studying Chinese. After 7 weeks here I had my first Chinese class online this week. Thanks for your tips.
@@siemprestruggle9272Of course, and best of luck to you!
make it short pls pls
Haha, I plan to make other shorter videos on other specific topics in the future! But I wanted to try an in depth one for this one, which I know doesn’t suit everyone.
Feel free to skip this one, or else watch at 2x speed, or skip around to the sections you might find most useful.
Posting here to help your channel engagement rather than on the discord server. Which GPT model did you use to make your graded reader? This is a really good idea. I know that there's a limited amount of words you can pass in. A chapter even is too long. Did you do it several paragraphs at a time or can some of the GPT4 models handle larger document sizes? Have you run into any inconsistancies? I know I asked chatGPT (3.5) to generate a story on a choose-your-own-adventure esque set of prompting and after sometime, past events were skewed resulting in story inconsistancies
Ah, thank you for posting here! Definitely appreciate the engagement :). So it was mostly GPT 4o, with some regular GPT 4 thrown in there. Using that, I was actually able to pass through a chapter at a time, so it wasn't too bad. If I recall, I think I created separate TXT files for each of the 17 chapters in the first book, and then passed them in that way.
On inconsistencies - I'd say that it did a pretty good job at producing natural language, at least according to a couple of native friends. The biggest problem was that I got pretty wildly different levels of simplification / summarization for each chapter. Sometimes it would spit out something that was almost as long / complicated as the original chapter, other times it would spit out like a 4 paragraph summary. I eventually got OK results by editing the prompt, re-prompting it ("Actually, could you make that even simpler" or "actually, can you re-do it but keep more of the original dialogue and detail from the story"). But it was annoying and I'm going to be looking for ways to streamline it in the future (for instance, passing in more than one chapter at a time, maybe also providing it an example of the level of detail I want to get to, etc.).
Will hopefully be making a deep dive video on this at some point!
That's pretty cool, you are able to memorize vocabulary and pronounce the tones properly.
Now to reach the fluency you must work on the smoothness, by talking to natives, getting some feedback. That's very important as well.
+ sub
加油!
Thanks for the comment and the sub! Yeah I agree I need to work on those things to reach fluency - it will be a journey!
Lots of awesome stuff here... I'm making something like language reactor, but for videogames. I'd be interested in showing it to you if you're up to it. It works for Chinese. Cheers
Hey sure, I don't really play video games, but feel free to share!
Hey, how do you get Arcane and other series on Plex, even more with Chinese subttitles ? Is it connected to Netflix and Disney + ?
The way I do it is screen record using a program like OBS. Sometimes the quality isn't as good, so if you want, you can also use video editing software to merge the video with a higher quality version. To keep it ethical, I'd just make sure you are actively subscribed to Netflix, Disney+, etc. if you are watching any media you pull this way.
For subtitles, there are tools that you can use to download from Netflix, Disney+, etc. (though might require some coding) - hopefully can find using Google. More often than not though, the subtitles coming from these services don't match the dubbing. So in that case, I use AI to create a version. For instance, right now I'm using SubtitleEdit (which uses the OpenAI Whisper model to autogenerate subs). It's not perfect, but it works pretty well!
I can make a video on this process if there's enough demand.
@@jlykes i'm subscribed to disney+ and have been curious on how to follow your method in pulling in content like this. please do setup a video on this process. Very curious!
@@edliang1909 Yeah for sure, I have it on the list of potential videos to make :)
This is my plan, i wouldnt learn in anotherway anyway
This is the only option because im learninh by fun or i wouldnt love to learn this dofficult language
Im getting better my input is getting better
Good luck to you!!
@@jlykesxie xie! thank you for sharing your method as well
Hey bro, where did you find the lord of the rings in mandarin? I have been looking for ages
Hey, are you talking about the book or the movie? I can't remember what part of the video you might be referring to, but I found the books easily online, and then I also have just the SUBTITLES for the movies that I pulled from TH-cam (if you go buy or rent LOTR on TH-cam, they have subs for it in many languages including Mandarin).
I unfortunately haven't found the movies dubbed in Mandarin, despite a ton of effort looking for them. I did find The Hobbit movies on one of the Chinese sites (I think it might have been iQIYI). If anyone finds the dubbed version of LOTR, I would love to know about it!
@@jlykes yes I was referring to the movies, I will let you know if I find them. Keep up the good work man!
@@manucass1000 OK yes, please do let me know, I would love to find them!
Any advice for finding bluray movies with Chinese dubs?
Yeah so I haven't really gone down this route. The couple of times I tried to look for physical media with Chinese dub/subs, it didn't seem to be particularly available in US stores like Amazon. If I were searching, I'd probably start with companies based in China or Taiwan. Like, if you can find the Mandarin name for the media, search Google for that, I wonder if Mandarin companies selling that stuff would pop up.
Otherwise, if you don't care about physical media and only digital, a few useful places I've found are Disney+ & Netflix. Some Chinese sites like iQiyi and Bilibili also sometimes have dubs of US-original content, but those sites can be hard to navigate and you might need a Chinese phone number and/or VPN to be able to access.
I'm suprised u re not using Migaku, is there a reason for not using it? I think it would quite fit some approaches u got and maybe reduce ur time spent micromanaging. Thats at least my experience so far using migaku since a few month (learning japanese currently - maybe back to chinese in the future :)) btw: with ur workflow u sound more like an obsidian than a notion-guy :D
Yeah so I had tried Migaku a while back and found it somewhat useful, but a little clunkier and buggier than some of the other alternatives. But that was before their recent redesign, so I still need to try the latest. I ended up using the older version mainly for when I wanted to create sentence cards in Anki using actual audio from the media, since Migaku was better at that than the alternatives I found. But these sentence cards haven’t been a super big part of my workflow (I don’t even remember if I mention it in the video), which means I haven’t used Migaku much.
I’ll have to check out Obsidian. I’ve heard of it but don’t know much about it!
@@jlykes Alright, that explains it to me.
I'm just in the progress of switching to around 90% sentence mining having the audio of sentences and, some difficult to remember, words only on the front
- the rest is on the back of the card (pitch etc.).
Also i found migaku quiet useful with texts online and youtube
(which i prefer due to the natural - uncleaner - language compared to movies).
I studied a lot of languages in school and at university in the past but it never took me to above intermediate level.
It rlly took me a long time to start focusing on the "acquiring" of languages
- I'm giving myself 2 years of that immersion-experiment to check out how far i come, compared to the traditional methods.
In that aspect we seem to be on a similiar journey :)
I'm excited to see where your journey will lead you.
Also you may already know that resource but when i learned chinese i rlly liked thechairmansbao, which is kinda what you re already doing with gpt :)
@@n1m4r35 Yes, it does seem like we’re on a similar journey! In my head I’m also giving myself a couple of years to see how far I get. Though my expectation is it will take a lot longer than that to get to any real level of proficiency.
Thanks for the tip on The Chairman’s Bao. I’ve heard of it but haven’t seriously looked into it!
Where did you find a Chinese dub of Avatar TLA, using VPN?
Yeah, that came from one of the Chinese sites. It was like Bilibili or iQiyi - can't remember which one exactly. I don't think you need a VPN for all of the stuff on those sites, but if I remember correctly, I did need it in this case.
1:11:30 2500words to be at a Fluent level
👍🏾
Do you plan to move to China/Taiwan since you learn Mandarin?
Not sure yet! I'll most likely try to at least visit someday though. Perhaps stay for a few months. But my guess is I would come back to the US after a while.
好方法！学习外语都通用 谢谢！
不客气！
My main problem in chinese is to remember the hanzis. I remember easily the sonds (pinyin) and I know that the sound means but I can't see a hanzi and recognize it :( It's so haardd
Do you think that anki is the only way to do it? I struggle so much with anki, I don't know what I put in the front and back
So I have had good luck with Skritter (which is kind of like Anki), and then using the Memory Palaces technique that I linked in the description from Mandarin Blueprint. Their method is to create a mnemonic device that helps you remember all parts of the word (hanzi, meaning, character, tones). That method helped me a lot especially for my first few hundred characters, and now that I have a lot under my belt, I noticed that most other characters are just combinations of other components I already know, so they stick a lot easier.
The other thing is that if you read a lot, you start to see common characters over and over again, and they become even easier to remember
One other thing - I’m actually learning to write all of the Hanzi. A lot of people don’t think you need to do this, but I do feel like it has helped me remember them a lot better
@@jlykes thank you so much!! I'm rn searching a cheaper option to skritter, here in brazil it is very expensive hahahaha maybe I just need to give up and use anki lmao
@@wally9112 yeah I think Anki is same idea, I basically just use Skritter because it makes handwriting practice easier. But you could also just write on paper when reviewing cards if you wanted to do that
Gonna try watching One Piece in German
Nice, good luck!
@@jlykes thank you! Im also going to be adopting most of the methods that you shared in the video! Im going to have to continuously come back x)
@@TwinflameByondNice, I'd be very curious to hear how it goes for you!
佩服
谢谢！
很有趣
谢谢！
Nice Chinese
Thank you so much!
what about donghuas ..
I haven't really looked at these yet, but might check them out at some point.
@@jlykes I recommend you the donghua "battle through the heavens" very good
@@elliscaicedo9045nice, I will look out for it!
Need work on pronunciation but if you don't live in china or with Chinese people you sound good for one year.
Thank you! Yeah this video is really without more than a few hours of speaking practice on my own, without a ton of feedback from natives yet. So yeah I definitely need to work on the pronunciation more.
hey bro ,that's fabulous!!!我艹～～牛逼～～～
Thank you!!
Do you use Duchinese?
I've only used it a little. I think it's a great app, but it feels like most of the content there is specifically made for language learners and not things that I would read otherwise. So I have gravitated more towards other content made for natives. What about you?
@jlykes I've been going for a about 6 months on this journey only 30 minutes a day with some days being an hr or 2. Hello chinese, hsk books and du chinese as well as duolingo and comprehensible input videos on TH-cam hs1k to ks2
@jlykes I don't use native content, but I get what you mean. Graded readers are boring, but you need to start somewhere
Yeah, I have also done a bit of Mandarin Companion’s graded readers and found that helpful. Multiple paths to the same destination hopefully 😁
@jlykes pleco is a great app and in the add ons they have the graded readers
大道至简，多听，多看，多模仿，绝对会越来越流利跟自然。you can take my words to the bank, hahaha
Haha thank you, I hope you're right because that's the plan that I'm still following. Hopefully it will lead me somewhere good :)
1st tone is high/level; 2nd tone is midlevel to high; 3rd tone starts midlevel, drops lower, then rises back to where it started; and 4th tone starts mid, then drops to low level. Your miss-numbering of the four tones is a terrible disservice to your watchers.
I didn’t know I misnumbered them. Sounds like I have a lot to learn!
This is the real tone formula of Chinese pinyin "one flat (ā) two voices (á) three turns (ǎ) four descends (à)"（“一声平(ā)二声扬(á)三声拐弯(ǎ)四声降(à)”）
Because he learned through listening mostly, those tone description don't eally work in practice. If you listen to real speaking and real sound frequencies, his descriptions in the video are a more accurate and natural way to describe the tones. For just one example, 3rd tone rarely goes back up. Only in grammar books or for emphasis.
Edit: i guess the misnumbering itself was just ordered by what is comfortable in the English brain
His numbers were incorrect, but not that big of a deal. The description of the 3rd tone as a low tone is how the tone is usually pronounced most of the time. The falling-rising description only applies when said in isolation.
@@哈林-k5e Yeah, sorry I finally went back and re-watched this part of the video. It honestly took me a bit of time to figure out what the original commenter was talking about. I actually don't think I was intending to map the tones back to the official numbers you see in instructional materials, as I don't really use those numbers very often. I try to avoid using pinyin at all, and if I am, it's the version with the little tone markers (and not the tone numbers). Or, using hanzi colored by tone (red = high, green = low, yellow = rising, blue = falling).
In this case I was really just explaining them in what felt like a logical order using the example "shi". I started with 是 (high to low tone) because that's probably the most common variation of "shi" and the first one that came to my mind as I was explaining. And then I literally just went in random order through the rest in the order that different variations of "shi" came to mind. And then as some people noted, I believe my explanation of the low tone is closer to how most people pronounce it in most cases vs. the textbook explanation of going down and then back up (which I believe tends to happen only when the tone is pronounced in isolation).
Apologies for any confusion - this is a consequence of me learning in a non-textbook way! FWIW I think native speakers don't really think about tones at all - it's really just a (very useful) construction we put on top of the language to try to explain how pronunciation works for natives. And they certainly don't think about tone numbers - which is a completely arbitrary numbering we have put on top of the concept of tones. So I think this only really matters if you are trying to match up what I'm saying to what is put in official instructional materials!
哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈，你的声调很像在唱歌🎤
Haha, they say the tones are one of the hardest things for language learners to get right, so I'm doing my best here to at least somewhat include them in my speaking :P
牛逼！！！
谢谢！
Good structured learning. However greatly lacking in pronunciation. Your xue sounds like shui. Stop for a month and only focus initials and finals pronounciation. Also, for the purposes of communicating in the language, spending time learning to handwrite is a waste, unless you of course just love that aspect. Learn to read and recognise.
Thank you for the comment! Yup I definitely need to work on my pronunciation, which I will focus on much more greatly when I have a better foundation in understanding. For now I’ll continue learning to hand write as well - I know that most people don’t think it’s needed, but I want to learn anyway. Thanks for watching!
@@magnus_9189sdf In truth I even debated whether to film the skit given I’ve spent so little time on practicing pronunciation up to this point. I was pretty sure it would be pretty far off and that I’d get lots of corrections. I ended up going for it to challenge myself, start getting some feedback from folks, and hopefully serve as a record of where I started. So I appreciate any and all critiques, from you or others, and I’ll use it to try to improve in the future!
Hopefully you don’t become a #blackinchina youtuber, otherwise keep it up bro
Haha, I haven't heard of those kinds of TH-camrs, but now I'm tempted to look some up :P
Your Chinese is so American
Haha, good to know. Maybe it will become more native-like over time
非常牛逼
谢谢！
You definitely need to work on your tones and pronunciation..
Thanks for the feedback!
dork 😂
Haha, yes I am!
@@jlykes you should delete this video or something 😭😭🤣
Hahaha