Hi, my name is Niel, otherwise known as Confused Laowai. I blog about my exciting, yet often confusing adventure learning Chinese.
Benny’s 3-Month Mandarin Mission: A Follow Up
Benny’s Mandarin mission ended about two weeks ago. Here is his post and interview with John from Sinosplice. I did a big post when he started his mission, detailing my thoughts and concerns about learning Chinese in 3 months. Like many others, I was skeptical. Why wouldn’t one be? I talked about specific Chinese problems, but I also detailed my thoughts on why I think it’s hard to compare learning methods and an inherent paradox [...]
On Learning Chinese in 3 Months
[P.S - you are in for big post here! But do read please] So, the language learning community is buzzing, especially the Chinese one, with the news that Benny is attempting to become fluent in Mandarin in 3 Months. Now, phew, where to start on this doozy of a topic. I remember writing about this briefly last year, asking How Long does it take to Learn Chinese? A few others have already posted their thoughts on [...]
The Illusion of Language Learning
Sometime I get sick of it. Sometimes I get discouraged. Sometimes I get upset. Sometimes I get ridiculously excited. Sometimes I get really inspired, but let me get this straight language learning is incredibly awesome, with all its ups and downs. Language, like most things in life, is what you make of it. To me there are currently two camps in the whole language learning community. Those that go the linguistic way or are “realistic” [...]
How long does it take to learn Chinese?
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, [...]
