you such an inspiration man , this is my forth month in chinese and actually i began since the 1st day memorizing the chinese symbols as long as with the normal letters or what they call it pinyin , i can memorize any symbol with no problem and i'm focusing more about 25 lessons for begenniers trying to memorize all of them with pronounciation and typing and ofcourse hand writing i'm so close to achieve this goal , after this i'll focus on the most common 1000 chinese symbols which they use on daily basis , thank you Chris for your motivation , you're absloutly right anyone can do this
I've been studying Chinese for merely three months and I already love it. I'm quite busy with high school and other languages, so I might be slower than other learners, however your words really encouraged me to pursue this long and eventually fulfilling path. I will definitely check out the material you kindly offer and I also subscribed to this channel!! 谢谢您！
great mind! really mastering one foreign language is way better than those so called " multi-lingual “ youtuber ....cuz you actually started to understand culture behind the barrier, rather than greeting to people in 20 languages..
I think so too. There's not that much point in learning a very small amount of a lot of languages. Best to pick one or two at most and go into depth, that way you'll get the most back. Unless you have huge amounts of free time, of course.
@@FluentinMandarinDotCom There's not a thing as in that's better or this is better, it just depends on what a person likes to do if they're learning languages because they're interesting and fun
Thank you, thank you, I really think your videos teaching Mandarin are the best of all , I can see you’re very genuine, I am a Chinese from Malaysia, educated in Chinese, thanks so much for my parents who let us study in a Chinese Community school for 6 years in primary school then high school, I truly appreciate your hard work n dedication, I have shared your videos teaching Chinese with my two daughters, hopefully they’ll be interested in the way you’re teaching, thanks again 👍👍🙏🙏
With Chinese anyone can learn it but you need to stay focused and maintain your aim to succeed in the language. I have studied 2.5 years and I still make many mistakes as you can see in my uploaded videos of my Skype lessons but I have made the commitment to learn and maintain the Chinese language for life :-)
Gregory Rivers who is a TV Chinese Soap Opera actor has been here over 20 years I was in a movie with him and he was amazing to watch on set reading the Chinese lines on his phone then doing it in the scene...
Thank you so much for such uplifting video. I've been learning Chinese for 1 year, and your videos really help me to understand it better. Thanks a lot!
you're my man! that's exactly the way I'm currently learning Chinese! And, yes, i also think motivation is the absolutely most important thing. thanx for all the effort! keep making those vids pointing out things ppl don't normally get to learn in usual courses, they help A LOT!!
It's always a joy to go back to your videos! They're so inspirational. I'm in the middle of learning Japanese and I'm on my 80th kanji. It's really a blast to learn and hearing you claim that it really is achievable boosts up the joy. Keep posting videos! They're wonderful. Have good one, sir!
it's not like we don´t have time, what we really don´t have is a guidance, we don´t know where to start to study it. It's like, we should learn pyinyi, characters, tones or grammatic? We don´t have any knowledge in vocabulary what makes more hard to get grammar, but we need grammar to create even simple phrases that make sense, it also helps us to learn how things works in the language. The beginning part of learning a new language is the most difficult because of this.
Thank you! One thing i keep doing every day even if i don't have time to sit and study, is to listen to anything in Chinese, an audio book or a podcast. And i guess this helped a lot in becoming better in pronunciation and tones . Since i don't live in a Chinese speaking country i felt i have to listen to the language everyday in order to get used to it.
+NorahIK Just keeping it up is really important, even if you only do something small. Plus, living in a Chinese speaking country isn't as crucial as people say: I studied the language for quite a few months before I first used it in a Chinese speaking country :_)
been studying Chinese language for 10 years, every day a couple of minutes. Sometimes several hours, but also days or even weeks without studying. I reached a point where I can read 500 words books (500词级) slowly. Far from being able to have a simple conversation though. Whenever I talk to a native speaker they will insist on speaking English, and also complain about my tones. At this point I lost all ambition and studying Chinese became like a second nature, a thing that I just do, like brushing teeth or having meals. I guess that in another 10 years I probably will be fluid.
When I first started learning Mandarin as a European I found it super difficult at the beginning, even though Chinese was a third foreign language for me. And when I started practicing it with native Chinese I made the same mistakes over and over and over again and no matter how hard I studied I would keep messing up whenever I tried to say a simple sentence or even a short phrase to a Chinese person. I would repeat one sentence to myself dozens of times, then go out to use it on someone and mess up completely. However, after all the struggle, I've reached a breakthrough point and from then on my learning has become exponential.
I strongly agree with you. I started learning Chinese a few weeks an I can creative simple sentences and recognize some basic characters and this is happening because I am still findinf a time to practice in some way. Congrats! I love your chanel!!!!!! Thanks for posting such great videos!!!
Thank you for taking an interest in the chinese language and culture! A lot of westerners opt to learn japanese even though japanese is derived from chinese.
It's very inspiring to see you speak Mandarin so well. I've been learning for about a year but my biggest obstacle is getting over my fear of making mistakes or being too embarassed to speak. Do you have any advice?
Practise speaking on your own first or with a language partner online, you can start with typing to ease into it, then try to have longer conversations.
I agree. I don't think chinese is that difficult, it just has a really steep learning curve at first, but once you get that platform down of knowing x amount of characters and being able to verbalize and understand the words when listening I feel it then becomes easier to progress from there. Chinese is an amazingly logical language and great number of the the more advanced vocabulary is made of a simpler words added together, you really see this in the characters and once you've learnt enough of it, it starts to seem easier and you think ''oh, these 2 together for that word, that makes sense''. It really is a rich tapestry that all fits together, it just takes time to learn the amount you need for it to be internalized and then for using the language to feel more natural. If you persist it really is just a question of time.
Yes, in many ways, Chinese is quite logical. It just takes some time to learn the components and the characters that fit together to form full characters or words. Once you get over this learning curve, it gets much easier!
Fluent in Mandarin.com Exactly, I learnt to read and write all vocab up to and including HSK 4 in about 7 months, just by practicing a few hours every day and consistenly reviewing previously learned vocab so it wasn't forgotten and became internalized. My spoken level seems to develop much slower than reading, writing and listening level. I can only dream of being able to one day speak the language as well as you. 你的汉语口语比我好多了！
Thank you so much. Your videos are so clear and detailed and helpful. I feel my learning this fascinating language is being greatly accelerated and made much more enjoyable thanks to your generosity in passing on your valuable understanding and experience in such a thorough way.
That works wonders when applied consistently. I've done it with German and it's magnificent a technique; way better than sitting 4 hours in a row getting bored every 30mins e.e'
I have been learning Chinese for a while and I think it is quite easy. Supposed you have to spend 700 - 800 hours of learning to gain a good level (C1). You need to master pronounciation, writing, grammar, syntax and vocabulary. If you can learn 20 words a day in any language: Italian: pronounciation: 1-2 h, writing 1 h, grammar and syntax 40 h, listening comprehension, speaking and other excercises 50-100 h, vocabulary acquiring (by any means) > 500 h Polish: pronounciation: 2-3 h, writing 3 h, grammar and syntax 80 h, listening comprehension, speaking and other excercises 100-150 h, vocabulary acquiring (by any means) > 500 h Chinese: pronounciation: 4-8 h, grammar and syntax 30-50 h, listening comprehension, speaking and other excercises 50-120 h, vocabulary acquiring (by any means) and writing words > 500 h It does not take longer to learn Chinese words. The difficulty in pronounciation can be masterd in < 1 % of your learning time. When people say you need to know 5000 characters to read a newspaper, it implies you know more than 30.000 words actively. I doubt that there are many people who were able to acquire more than 8000 words in any foreign language. I could speak and perfectly understand Italian and English with no more than 4000 words. Same for almost every other language I have learnt so far.
I feel really weird about I am into your channel and it seems really convictive to me to learn Chinese. And I am not sure if I am trying to learn Chinese or English here.
Thanks for this, im taking chinese in school right now (my first year) and my teacher is so horrible he doesnt really teach us, but now we have a student teacher and we've been learning alot. I gave up even with the student teacher but after watching this i guess ill start trying again.
+En Ers A teacher than doesn't really teach you. That doesn't sound ideal ! If you feel like giving up, maybe just take a break, and then take a different approach..
True the "been learning a language for x years" is really relative and shouldn't discourage us because in this period of x years how much focused time did that person have learning the language?
Thank you So-So Much! Your videos are Raw Awesome! Thank you for your dedication and commitment. You're a Great Inspiration - just hearing your language fluency, is Amazing.
You are very inspiring. I have wanted to learn Chinese since I was in grade 5 but I could never afford lessons and I didn't have the courage to ask my mom. Now I am in grade 10 and I've started learning Chinese on my own. I still can't get lessons but I am trying to teach myself using books, apps and videos like yours. I wanted to ask if you could give me any practical tips and advice on teaching myself Chinese. A lot of people have said its impossible for me to teach myself such a hard language, but I really would like to prove them wrong and challenge myself. I would like to teach myself as much as I can, until I get the opportunity to study it in university. Any advice? (Websites, apps, learning routines?)
Check out my other videos, search for them on my channel for example 'How to learn to Mandarin fluently' and 'How I learned to speak Mandarin' and 'How to learn Mandarin fast' etc. I give a lot of specific advice and talk about techniques in those videos.
I think anyone would find the East Asian languages ABSOLUTELY fascinating when they've really got their feet wet. I speak a half-dozen European languages and read a half-dozen more, but I wish I'd taken up an East Asian language earlier in life because I believe the experience can break one out of one's parochialism as regards language and give one a whole new world of language tools. Before I started learning Mandarin (and I'm still barely into HSK 3) I'd heard that Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, et al.) had no grammar. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just not what we think of grammar as the subject has been modeled on Latin in the West. I may have been making the mistake that some Chinese-learners have made to restrict myself to pīnyīn and not attempt to learn the kànzì of the writing system; but I find that, in the lessons where both are presented, the kànzì are becoming familiar. I once went with a work mate to a big bookstore in New York to buy a Japanese dictionary. Although his spoken Japanese was as fluent as his English and his wife was Japanese, he was only beginning to learn the written language. I'm certain that as I progress I'll be finding I'm able to write down in the proper kànzì what I've learned with the aid of pīnyīn. I don't have a need to progress to fluency--which would be nice, to be sure. Like my Japanese-speaking friend, I'm an amateur linguist; so the very mechanics of it fascinates me. Accordingly, to submerge myself in the learning process is itself a source of enjoyment in my old age (going on 80). How much this has to do with the fact that increasing familiarity breaks down hurdles to the enjoyment of the experience I don't know, but it probably plays a big part. So push on, learners! 加油 ! (Jiāyóu !)
I am very impressed by your Chinese and Cantonese. I love your British accent very much. Can I know what kind of British accent do you have specifically? I am going to learn and imitate your accent through your channel. Haha. Hope to see more videos from you. Thank you :)
You're right only that it takes more than 30 minutes a day to reach fluency in a language. I learned Russian just as good as you learned Chinese, it took 4 years of self study and a massive amount of effort. The problem with any language, and even more with chinese, is that you have to learn tens of thousands of words to be fluent. Sometimes understanding words is not as easy as just translating them. In my case I had to use a very powerful Russian to Russian dictionary, and many times while looking for the meaning of one Word I found other words I didn't know and had to look for as well creating impressively massive chains. It was tough but I made it, 4 years of Paramount effort. I say if you don't have enough motivation to even dedicate the language enough time to study, you're better off not studying anything because you will never learn anything.
I tend to learn more easily after having conceived "the big picture". It is useful for me to have cursory knowledge/understanding of an entire system and work backward, sort of reverse engineering, in order to understand the smaller "moving parts". I'm curious to know if you might be able to explain or give insights into how Mandarin is organized/functions as a whole--and how that contrasts to English. Additionally, (apart from listening comprehension) my greatest difficulty with Mandarin is that when I produce sentences, I tend to revert to English grammar patterns. Any suggestions for breaking this habit?!
+Cyrus Webber The word order in Chinese in the most basic sentences is the same as English, but it changes when you say longer sentences. This post has a rough overview: info.chinlingo.com/detail/id/2731.html. The trick is to learn sentence patterns or whole sentences, rather than trying to construct sentences word by word from English. In my courses I really concentrate on teaching people how sentences are 'built' from 'blocks', so people can start to put them together correctly.
Thankyou Chris, I want to learn the first 1000 hanzi. Can you recommend a good writing book to start with please? Is the Mandarin Glossika course a good place to start for audio input? Please help, I am a total beginner, thankyou for your time I will sign up to your website as well. Thanks.
Well, I find Chinese way more easy than Japanese for example, but what really frustrates me is that many words sound so similar. Not only they sound similar, some are pronounced absolutely identically but have a different meaning, and a different character of course. This is what stresses me out a little
Right now it seems pretty bad :( I tried Japanese first as well but while learning the hiragana, set that ship on fire. It's rough learning any language so here's my little kick in the rear for you
Brilliant choice, because China is the most populated country in the world. If one is to be able master three languages, English, Chinese and Spanish. Then one can travel pretty almost everywhere and be able to communicate with others. I can comprehend 80% of what you are saying in Chinese-Mandarin. However, I cannot to speak. Kudos Chris.
i'm from Nepal .. now i'm learning chinese by nepali teacher. really i love to learn chinese language in chinese. but i didn't know how can i go there..
Hi! I wanted to ask you some important questions! How do you read chinese books？Do you search for every word you don't know, or you only search them when you don't understand the context? My level is HSK6, and have lived to China for 4 years, I just wanted to start reading a real chinese book and not always stuck in chinese textbooks, and perhaps I will start read some articles, do you have any advice to give me? I think I am fluent enough to handle a conversation with a native speaker, but my goal is to be a better at expressing myself and sounds more like a native. I am impressed about your chinese level, I hope someday I can have the same flexibility to talk some complex arguments with the fluency that you got.
In the video you make reference to your listening exercises. Can you expand on that, or do you already have a video/article detailing your listening practice?
Thanks for doing this great motivational video I really love Chinese and I just wanted to is it possible to learn Chinese by watching movies and practicing words?
I have been following your videos since maybe 8-9 years? started before you had "Fluent in Mandarin.com. I really enjoy all your videos. Thanks for sharing your experience and the the best expertise in learning Mandarin that I have ever seen. All the videos are thoughtfully done, meaningful, and very inspiring. I also admire your absolutely accurate pronunciation. Once a while I have a student like you, not very often. I would like more of them to speak with more accurate tones. I use all possible methods ever existed, I also invented some shortcuts and tricks. But students' outcome seems to really up to the students' attention, their study habit, and natural ears for the tones. (like not everyone can sing)... Do you mind to share your thoughts?
+Liu Laoshi Hi, thanks for watching my videos for such a long time! I think that some people do find it easier to make and reproduce sounds, including the tones, but it also depends on how much effort and emphasis you put on the tones. Some people I think prefer to ignore them, and they only start using them when it it's too late, so it's important to start emphasising them from day 1, and correcting your students when they say them wrongly so they can get into the habit of speaking a tonal language, it is something quite different to get used to for a lot of people.
Chris, thanks so much for the reply! A lot of learners and teachers don't put enough work into it. It takes tremendous time and effort at the beginning for both teachers and students, but it is also very rewarding. Thanks for reminding me that a correct start is the most important. I couldn't agree more.
Hi! I just found your channel, you are very inspirational! I'm going to start learning Chinese because I met the love of my life, she speaks English well enough but I want to learn her language. I've done it before, I speak Japanese and English, even though my native language is Swedish. Do you have any tips on where to start out?
+Yattayatta glad to hear you are taking on the challenge of Chinese! If you go to my website fluentinmandarin.com and click on Start Here at the top, you'll see my detailed advice for how to get started :-)
Have you learned short characters or the traditional ones first? At my university we learn traditional characters and a lot of people complain about it, saying it won't serve them at all. I actually enjoy it because it is such a big part of chinese culture. Opinions?
I learnt both. But if you are interested in both, then it does make sense to learn the traditional ones first and find out how they are simplified rather than work the other way round.
I hate when people say Chinese. I'm studying Mandarin but plan to move to Hong Kong where they speak Cantonese. Just saying Chinese is not enough. Having said that this is a good video. Very motivational
The reason he couldn't speak the language after 4 years is because he learned it in school. let's be honest here. Learning a language in school will not help you learn the language.
For LEVEL A or LEVEL B1, school it's ok. I don't want to miss English in School. But you are right ... everybody has to improve a foreign language outside the school.
@@Lyrik-Klinge I can agree to that. I feel like Language learning in school works as a supplementary resource. Isolated it only leads to stagnation, loss, disappointment, and frustration.
@@mamushi72sai Thank you for your spontaneous reply. You are right, learning a foreign language is a good basis, a foundation on which the other stones must be built. The same applies after school: use it or lose it. Thanks for your comment.
chinese language is not easy and believe me im good at learning languages! when i was about 2 months in china i have already started speaking/making little conversation and now that i have been staying for 5 years i can not still speak fluently! i understand more but speaking not so much!(been learning for 4 years) :/
I am fluent in 4 languages, and the 5th one I'm "almost" fluent. I'm also learning a 6th language, which is Korean, simply by watching and listening since I love K-Drama and K-POP and can read and write in 7 different languages. However, I've always been so interested in Chinese and am striving to learn Mandarin in my spare time. I hate being just "average" in a language and want to be fluent as fast as possible.
what are your thoughts on learning two languages at once? I'm starting Spanish now, and at university 2016 sept i will be studying mandarin and spanish
+Steven Alley I think it's fine if you are motivated enough to keep both of them up (a university course would probably give you enough accountability), but for the sake of focus I would probably say concentrate most of your efforts on one key language at once, and keep the other one going along more slowly
Mate, I would like to ask u a question pls. I have been learning English for English and my level now is C2. Is it possible to learn Chinese now without put my English at risk? Btw I have already enrolled in a Chinese class.
