I’ve been learning Mandarin Chinese for nearly two years now.
I’ll admit that during these last two years, my studying has not been continuous or very concentrated. Just ask my wife and she’ll probably tell you that my Mandarin level is still at the elementary school level.
Nevertheless, for a Black guy from Texas who had zero knowledge of the language before 2018, I’d say I’ve made respectable progress.
One of the reasons my own progress has surprised me more than any other language that I’ve learned in the past, is that the learning process hasn’t felt like work at all.
I watch Chinese dramas regularly with my wife almost daily and I read elementary Chinese readers.
These two things have accounted for the majority of my Chinese language education for the past several months, and I’m still making progress with it.
This is not to say that I haven’t had other experiences with the language. I used a few other apps and tools to enhance my learning, especially in the beginning when pronunciation of the tones was a big problem and I knew very few characters. But, as I’ve gotten older I’ve found that in general simpler is better for all things, and language learning is no exception.
If you are currently learning Mandarin Chinese, I hope to share my experiences with certain tools and resources in my Mandarin learning in future articles.
But for now, if you’re looking for more general advice on language learning, check out my book The Tower of Babbling on my website.
In it, I share many of the techniques that I used to become fluent in Spanish and Japanese, and to eventually work as a self-taught Spanish medical interpreter.
Until next time, happy language learning!
