To sum up: Level 1 2 months (Jan to Mar 2017) Level 3 11 months (Jan to Dec 2017) Level 4 1 year 5 months (Jan 2017 to June 2018) Level 6 4 years (Jan 2017 to Jan 2021)
Vietnamese here, our language is the closest to mandarin (not counting cantonese and other Chinese dialects), it's still took me 2 years of concentrated effort for hsk6. But hsk6 is just middle level on practical usage. For watching drama and douyin without subtitle, it took me another 2 years of leisurely watching Chinese anime weekly. Their writing system is truly a nightmare, but the reward of unlimited access to Chinese entertainment is well worth it
Videos like this are so much more motivating than the hundreds of comments of "i became fluent in six months!" When it takes me longer to learn Chinese than calculus, it makes me feel like i'm not wired for languages
for me the difference is the lack of material. for calculus you have a textbook. thats all you need. for something like german its so hard to get content. its all regionblocked and i cant seem to buy german books. i remember watching a german dub on netflix a while back. and the subtitles were different than what was being spoken.
I don't think you need the HSK Even as a native you can still suck at writing texts. Reading, listening and (speaking on a casual level) is enough lol.
i started chinese in china too . this is my second year of master degree and i found my self always studying chinese . i passed the hsk 5 after the first year of chinese program but still far from writing master thesis . so i would say don't do what i did hahahahah
And I was thinking I could become fluent in 2 years learning chinese as a hobby for like 2 hours a day after work. xD It's going to take way more than than...
@@tatendachirwa4575 its just literally studying Chinese everyday for a lot of hours, and the fact that the sholarship winners study in China, makes this process faster as they need to adapt quickly
I’ve spent about 100,000 hours studying English humor and Western culture, and many years studying Chinese culture. My native language is Chinese. I teach Chinese in humorous way and with cute pictures. Hope somebody recommend my videos to those who want to learn Chinese.
I've heard that In China they don't allow children to learn Pinyin until they're 6 years old they already know hundreds of characters, because it actually inhibits learning the language..
I’m a Chinese, I learned Pinyin since I was in kindergarten (I was 3 years old). Teachers always teach new 汉字Hanzi with Pinyin so the students can know how to pronounce. I think Pinyin is very helpful and a must to learn Chinese language.
@@williampennjr.4448 I just did a search and found that this law does exist now. But I think it is because the Chinese students are under a lot of competitive pressure, so the current education department tends to lighten the burden on children. In my opinion Pinyin is still necessary, it is definitely good for learning Chinese. Pinyin is also an important part of the primary school Chinese exam.
Getting tones perfect is not needed. Its the context of the sentence that matters most. Chinese people will understand you even if you get it half right.
Here is my plan...just buy the Pimsluer language audio CDs volume 1 thru 5 and listen to all the CDs.....forget learning to read or write Manderin Chinese, just learn to.speak and understand it....I have learned a lot just listening to the Pimsluer beginner manderin CDs......try it...!!!
Actually you get to a point where it becomes very difficult to build a large vocabulary without reading characters. I know at least 10 or 15 characters for Shi at HSK LVL 4, as conversation becomes more complex and specific it's easy to get lost. You also miss out on the ability to understand new words based on the characters used and how they appear in other words. That connection becomes massively important. I suggest adding just 5-10 minutes a day memorising characters as you learn conversational Chinese.
HSK6 is considered C2 yet it only has 5000 words, while C2 from Taiwan (TOCFL) has 8000 words. Also, the HSK exams have a very specific format that you can train for. I met many people who have HSK6 whose Chinese is atrocious, I assume they went through some heavy test training to be able to pass it. I am preparing myself for HSK5 now, even though I have been speaking Chinese for ten years already, but didn't take any exams yet. Feeling lazy to learn HSK6 vocabulary at the moment. Maybe some day.
@@bywonline No, in Europe HSK4 is considered B2 despite being so little vocabulary. This is one of the reasons they recently changed the whole HSK levels, making it more similar to the Taiwan TOCFL, because the old (but still used) HSK1-6 was not consistent with other languages levels.
@@bywonline "HSK4: Certificate of Chinese Is the fourth level, which is an intermediate level and is equivalent to level B2 of theCommon European Framework of Reference for Languages. Knowledge of 1,200 words is required in order to pass the exam."
What did you do to improve your Chinese speaking level? If you were in the situation where you couldn't find someone to speak Chinese with , what would you you do to improve speaking? , I am now HSK 4 student but still my speaking is not good i keep failing HSKk but it's due to that i study alone and have no one to talk to
Same here. I'm almost done with hsk 4 but my speaking is rather poor. Too much of my early learning was focused on flashcards and apps and didn't really help my speaking
she mentioned in the video that she lived in china during that time (or perhaps still living there). you can practice your speaking skills through language exchange apps like hellotalk, etc.
Watch a lot of the like reality shows in chinese and just repeat back to it. Don’t learn speaking from official shows/movies etc bc that chinese is too formal? Idk how to explain in english lol
I'm Chinese, and it just so happens that I also need to pass the IELTS exam so if anyone wants to improve or even refine their Chinese language skills they can look me up.🤨🥰
a very informative video, thanks. I have one question, I am currently studying my MSc in China, but i don't feel like i am interested in it anymore. so i have decided to pursue chinese language. however it turns out getting scholarship for language program is not as easy as for Engineering. Do you have any suggestions on how could i get a scholarship to study chinese?
I believe if someone arrived in China in 2017 having never studied Chinese and with nobody to help them, then even getting to a destination would have been very difficult.
In other words, the most painless and fastest way to learn Chinese is to be born from Chinese speaking parents. I'm kidding. I am learning Mandarin and even if it's difficult I enjoy it a lot.
I don't know but I would guess it would take longer to learn them together than one after another. It seems to me like going to the gym and wanting to loose weight while gaining muscle at the same time, it may work well at the beginning but in the long run you will have to focus on one thing to be efficient.
Actually, most Chinese are not mandarin native speakers, so most of them have a quite basic vocabulary. I don't think they could easily pass it, maybe only the university students.
Who says you have to learn to speak the whole language??? For travel to china or speaking Chinese in a restaurant all you need to do is learn enough to make small talk and communicate some .....thats enough.....it will get you by when you visit China.....😅😅
you need to memorize those, but sometimes i skip them and move to the next characters and after a few days, i get back to those. the tones are so confusing to hear and speak too. i do 4 hours class per week, and study up to 4 hours per day after work. 中文 is so hard... 加油你可以的!
@@toddjohnson271 couldn't agree more. my laoshi told me to at least remember the first and last tones for every sentences. that could help. because usually tones in the middle keep changing bc of the context.
@@naritul8438 I'm only at the point of adding vocabulary, learning hanzi, and tones. Brutally difficult. I can see why english is so hard for chinese. Complete opposites.
@@toddjohnson271 huft, i can diligently memorize hanzi but tones are on the next level. i am still figuring out how to memorize them. how long have you been learning chinese?
Hi, wondering how would someone who masters hsk4 grammar and has a large vocabulary of 25,000 words, compared to someone who masters hsk6 grammar but has a vocabulary of 5,000 words, go in china?
I don't know why yt keep recommanded Chinese learning video to me, whereas I have ZERO interests in learning Chinese...because it's my NATIVE TONGUE, ffs!
@@youneschebini5280 I’m at a low level speaking Chinese even though I’m going on four years of learning it and I’m more into some of their music! Do you have any favorite Chinese musicians if so who! Faye Wong is a favorite of mine! I’ll be learning mandarin for life!🫠
@@youneschebini5280 Younes, you caused me to do extra work which was fine! Wo zhidao wong fei, after discovering a few females chinese singers it's difficult for me to listen to men! I do have a few men songs but 98 percent or 99 is women! I'll give your guys a 👂 listen! Ni zhidao Zhang Wei Jia, if not give her a listen her awesome collection and breeze rain and Lei Ting 2018 album! Feng Fei Fei wo xihuan especially Zhang Sheng Xiang Qi! I got me a little bit! It would be too much work to pinyin this! Let me know what you think about Zhang wei jia and lei ting music! I do have a secret singer that I've compared to most great singers from different genre and she's still at my to! How well you write characters or hanzi? Thanks, hen feichang Xie Xie!