How long does it take to learn Chinese?

By Confused Laowai | Date: July 21st, 2010 | Category: Language

I follow quite a lot of language learning blogs, either people on their own missions or people who are just interested in language learning. One of these guys is Benny from Fluent in 3 Months, whom travels to various countries and immerses himself in them to learn the languages. His dedication is admirable, and I wouldn’t mind doing what he does. Pretty awesome. His next goal is conversational Hungarian in 3 months. He chose Hungarian, because it is apparently one of the hardest languages to learn.

Firstly, it absolutely discourages me that he can learn the languages in 3 months (all his previous missions). However, this is obvious in my case, ’cause I have very few exposure to Chinese and can’t immerse myself. I’m studying it at University at about 5 hours a week of class, plus about another 5-10 hours of extra homework afterwards. I’ve studied for 2 and a half years, and I’m only now reaching mild conversational fluency, but I guess my reading is a lot better, ’cause we focus on that a lot more.

You can perhaps blame my study method, however, I’m trying to console myself now, that Chinese is indeed a difficult language, if you come from English. The relative difference is immense and along with the characters, makes it double the effort. This makes sense when you look at the US Foreign Service categorizes Chinese in. It is in group four along with Arabic, Korean and Japanese. All of them share a non-roman alphabet.

In the comments posted on The Linguist , someone adds that it is impossible to learn Chinese within three months. I think so too. The difference is just too big: the characters, the tones, the pronunciation, getting to grips with amazingly simplistic grammar, most words having only two syllables and extremely homophonic nature of the language. However, I think when you get the grips of all these you can roll will Chinese and get used to it very quickly. I’m reaching that point. Although I don’t live in China, I’m starting to see signs of Mandarin progression. I’m actually getting to spontaneous speech. It’s fun!

Another factor that one should take into account, when it comes to language learning, is to consider, if you have learnt a second/foreign language before. I highlight this, because Mandarin is my first foreign language. I grew up with Afrikaans and English natively, but Mandarin is my first new language from scratch. I’ve since started looking at other languages, such as Na’vi (from the Avatar Movie), Dutch (very very similar to Afrikaans), Spanish and a bit Japanese & Korean very briefly. It came to my realization, that I would be able to learn new languages much easier, because I now understand the processes that I’ve been – and still am – going through when it comes to acquiring a new language. Thus, it gets easier with more experience. Thus, that is why Benny is having such success, having learnt 8+ languages.

However, if you had to think, given full immersion and lots of effort, how long it would take to reach fluency Chinese? Sometimes I think learning Chinese first is a blessing and a curse. If you stick through it, you can say that you’ve learned one of the hardest languages on the planet, however the curse: you need some dedication and a lot of it… and as a bonus, as is happening with me, I feel jaded in language learning.

I’m learning Chinese people. It’s probably the furthest away from English as you can get. Besides those others in category 4: Arabic, Japanese and Korean, what will I challenge myself with next? Anything else is going to be so boring. Where are my characters? What is this roman alphabet? Where are my tones? Where is the history?

Yeah, yeah, some other languages are also unique, but nothing makes me more proud now to say that I can actually speak, read, listen and write a bit of Mandarin. 加油！加油！加油！

Related posts:

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  • http://www.sarajaaksola.com Sara

    It's hard to say how long will it take to learn Chinese. I studied it for 1,5 years in Finland and now 4 months in China. Only when I get to China my speaking and listening started to improve. But still after about 2 years I'm still in the beginning of the journey. I can survive in daily living and maintain a relationship, but lots of work need to be done. I hope to say that after BA degree and 4 years of studying I could finally say that I'm fluent in Chinese.

    I do have experience in language learning because in Finland we have to study English and Swedish. I also tried German once. But those languages are so different from Chinese that I need new methods for it.

  • http://twindie.net NielDLR

    Yeah, I think it is paramount to go to China for at least some time to
    solidify the language. I have all this Chinese knowledge in my head, but I
    don't use it, but once one goes to China, it acts like a Pandora's Box
    unleashing all the knowledge you have.

    Concerning the German. I agree. Studying different languages, means
    different methods. I'm however keen to start learning a new language, just
    to have a comparison with my Mandarin acquisition. Then I can improve on
    both methods.

    Good luck with your studies!

  • kailin524

    I agree with Sara. You can't really tell how long it would take you to learn a certain language, and in this case, Mandarin is quite hard to learn at first. I've been learning Mandarin (self-study with the help of the internet) for 2 months now, although my study routine is quite messed up sometimes 'cause of my work. It's really quite hard to learn Chinese in just three months. It's just different when you are not used to characters. When you mentioned about having full immersion plus really putting a lot of effort in learning, I think one can learn Mandarin quickly, though I can't come up with an estimate of how many months. But as Sara mentioned, probably after 4 years of extensive studying, one can say that he/she is already fluent in Mandarin.

    I would like to invite you to check out our online application at http://l-lingo.com I have been personally using our application to learn Mandarin, since I've always wanted to learn it. The great thing about this is that it's not boring and it's so easy to use, not to mention a large bulk of the lessons are free. We would like to invite you to check out our application and give your feedback, because we would like to shape our program to give learners a great learning experience. A lot of the feedback that we get from our users have already been integrated into the program, 'cause we believe that the users should be the one to determine how they want their learning to be like. We would appreciate it if you could check out our free language learning application.

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  • http://sarajaaksola.com/ Sara

    I just had to post a comment to your old post, because Benny from Fluent in 3 months is trying Chinese now. I think it’s not possible to be fluent in Chinese in three months, but it will be very interesting to see how he manages with his studies and what the outcome will be. Hopefully I’ll learn a thing or two too!

    What you think about his project?

  • http://niel.delarouviere.com NielDLR

    Yeah I saw that.

    I’m reserving my thoughts on it for now. It’s a tough subject, but I’m waiting to see more progress before I give my proper opinion. Since he announced it, I’ve been thinking about it. I’m more inclined to go for the early pessimistic outlook that it is impossible, but I’m giving myself some more time.

    I’ll post a blog post soon in the coming month though.

  • 孔文翰

    “fluent in 3 months” is a load of bullshit. in only 3 months, there is no way you can consider yourself fluent in a foreign language. and by fluent i mean the ability to write, read, speak, and understand perfectly. it takes much time and effort. there are people who have been studying chinese for many years and still have problems. i have been studying putonghua for about 2 years and i would never even dare to call myself fluent. i can chat with chinese people about many topics, as long as they are kept basic. deeper things are really hard for me to express, and it is frustrating indeed. but i love chinese so i will consider studying it for the rest of my life. and i believe a lifetime is necessary to learn this beautiful language. in summary, language learning is a lifetime feat and cannot to completly learned in just 3 months.