Category: Interview

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Interview With a Chinese Learner: Ray Hecht

Hey everyone, how's it going? Today I'm coming at you with another interview. Today's victim is Chinese learner Ray Hecht.  He''s been living in Mainland China for years, and has a lot of interesting things to say on his blog about China, dating in China and learning Chinese. Plus he shares some pretty sweet art and poetry as well, so hop on over to his site and check out his writing! Being a fellow comic geek, I can relate to a lot of what he has to say!

Now on to the interview. 

\"螢幕快照Q: What Made you decide to learn Chinese?

I was first interested in Asian culture by way of Japanese manga and anime, being a long-time comic geek in my youthful days (and still a geek in my older days). As I got older I became more interested in film, and after watching many classic Kurosawa I came upon Cantonese films of Wong Kar-wai in my teenage years. Eventually this led to watching the film Farewell my Concubine, directed by Chen Kaige, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. In addition to watching the 90s films of Chinese 5th generation filmmaker Zhang Yimou, I became fascinated by China. However, I studied Japanese in college. Learning kanji did give me me a head start in learning hanzi, although the languages are quite different. I never did end up moving to Japan, just visiting a few times (learning some of the language did help). I later got an opporutnity to move to Shenzhen and I fully embraced it. Currently, Mandarin is the only other language besides English I speak with any fluency, though I always have more to learn. 

 

Q:How long have you been a student of Chinese, and how long did it take you to become conversational?

I've been studying for six years, and in the first year I learned 'survival Chinese.' I've been getting better at being more conversational in the last 3 years I suppose, but on having deep conversations I know I still have ways to go. The problem is that most conversations are the same: "Where are you from?", "Are you married?" "How many years have you been in China?" etc.

 

Q:What was your biggest challenge learning Chinese? And what came easiest to you?

My biggest challenge at first was definitely the tones. Then, the characters although I am always making progress even though it takes years. When it comes to characters, just be patient but make a little progress all the time. In speaking, the grammar of Chinese is easier and I was able to formulate simple sentences quite fast (even if not pronouncing it correctly). "I like…" "I'm from…" and that sort of thing. 

 

Q:What advice would you give to our readers who are just embarking on their journey with Chinese?

I suppose the best advice is to be fully immersive, go to China — or Taiwan, or Singapore — and start speaking. If you are in a big city in China, be careful not to be in the bubble that is the expat scene in which you rarely even speak Mandarin. Push yourself to practice those phrases you studied in real-life, it's the only way!

 

Q:Do you have a favorite Chinese phrase? If so, what is it and why?

Well, 多少錢 duoshaoqian ("How much money?") would be the phrase I say the most often, in going out shopping everyday. Some vocabulary words are fun, when Chinese can be so literal. Technological words such as 電腦 diannao (electric brain: computer) and 電影 dianying (electric shadow: movie) and many more. 

 

Q:What's your one biggest "hack" for learning Chinese?

One trick is to not stress about tones too much, and just try wait you're best until one day it becomes effortless. You can still communicate, don't be afraid to make mistakes. With pronunciation, one can imitate another more advanced learner of Mandarin instead of imitating native speakers. After all, any fluent learner was once a beginner and can offer great advice. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to share with us Ray! I hope everyone will learn from Ray's experiences, and move forward in their own studies. I especially agree with his point on getting out there and SPEAKING. So what are you still doing here? Get out there and practice your Chinese!

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Interview With a Chinese Learner: Daniel Scott

I hope everyone enjoyed last week's post:Interview with a Chinese Learner. Check it out HERE if you haven't already. Today, we are continuing with this segment!
Last week, my interviewee, Oll Linge, lives in Taiwan and has studied Chinese extensively there. However, as a contrast, this week I am interviewing Daniel Scott, from Discovering Chinese Life. His experience differs in that he lives on the mainland, and as such has experienced a different breed of Chinese language and culture. I know what you're thinking, "but Chinese is Chinese, right?". Wrong. Thing about the differences between American English and that spoken in the UK, and you will be on the right track. In fact, this topic deserves an article of its own, but I digress.
Daniel is a teacher in a private Chinese school, and has shared a lot of experiences similar to my own, though I myself have never been to Mainland China. So let's see what he has to say about his time in China, and more importantly for our purposes, his insights into learning Chinese!
 

\"螢幕快照Q: What Made you decide to learn Chinese?

I saw learning Chinese as a necessity and opportunity when moving to China. I work at a private Chinese school so I need to know how to read and communicate with the nationals I work with whether they know English or not. It’s also quite humbling knowing I daily interact with my students who know 2-4 languages. When going public, as soon as I step out my apartment’s front door, I’m immersed in a culture where English is becoming more popular but where locals are highly appreciative of foreigners knowing their native tongue. It’s amazing the relationships you can build.

 

Q:How long have you been a student of Chinese, and how long did it take you to become conversational?

I have studied Chinese for over three years now. The first six months was spent on tones and simple phrases alone. As far as becoming conversational, it would depend on the context. My wife and I both went out quite often the first two years of living here and were able to communicate. It’s not an impossible language. We still go out a lot to practice and pick up new words. Of course, there’s always the internet to help learn what words or phrases are “hot."

 

Q:What was your biggest challenge learning Chinese? And what came easiest to you?

A challenge that still happens is when I’m with locals and they discuss an issue that I haven’t come across or studied yet. I get a gist of what they’re taking about, but certain vocabulary has me turning to my Pleco occasionally. It’s no biggie since I can turn those words into cards that I’ll study for the future. The easiest thing about Chinese is possibly the grammar. Being an adult, apart from my elementary students, I can pick up the rules and apply them. Now it takes practice obviously to have it become more natural, but it definitely can happen over time. Failure would probably be the top thing though, but it’s one of the most important factors when it comes to learning another language. My students would second that notion.

 

Q:What advice would you give to our readers who are just embarking on their journey with Chinese?

Practice, fail and apply as much as you can in real life. You can listen to mp3’s all you want, which isn’t at all worthless, but at least here in China you can hear the same phrase or word said in numerous ways. The more exposure you have, the most understanding you will have in the long run. When it comes to writing, in my case, there was a point where I had written and studied so many Chinese characters that when learning a new character, I could look at it 1-2 times and already know how to write it without practice.

 

Q:Do you have a favorite Chinese phrase? If so, what is it and why?

 There was a point at school last year where I really wanted to say to my students, “Get over it.” They weren’t trying to be spoiled. I think just a bunch of little things were adding up in my head so I wanted to say something off-the-cuff. So I asked a co-worker who recommended “拉倒吧” to me. He then said that it probably wasn’t the most polite since “算了” could do just fine. It created a good joke that had me remember the phrase, and I use it with that particular Chinese, culture-bridge friend whenever something petty comes along that we should get over. 拉倒吧！

 

Q:What's your one biggest "hack" for learning Chinese?

I use two dictionaries, Pleco and Youdao. Pleco is used mainly by foreigners, and it gives a good breakdown of words, meanings, pinyin, etc. Youdao is used by Chinese-speakers for English study, but Youdao has better translating for longer sections of words. If a word doesn’t sound right in Youdao, I simply insert it in Pleco. Both dictionaries have vocabulary card systems that make it easy for practicing so the words can quickly become a part of one's arsenal. They’re what I use when I read posts from my students, co-workers and friends on QQ, WeChat and Weibo. These people don’t know it, but they teach me every time they make a post.
 
Thank you for your time Daniel! Daniel's attitude towards learning is very proactive, and one that we can all learn from, even long-time Chinese learners like myself. Make sure to practice his tips, because there is pure gold in this article. His advice to use Pleco is spot-on, I myself feel that it has been one of my most powerful learning tools, though I've never heard of Youdao until now…you can rest assured that I will be checking it out ASAP! Until next time, keep learning!

 

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Interview With a Chinese Learner

Thought I was going to say  with a Vampire, right? Alright, that's admittedly a bad joke, even if you get the reference. Moving on…

Hey everyone, today I am bringing you the first article in a series of articles that I will be posting. I'll be interviewing other Chinese learners over the next few weeks, and getting to know a little more about what makes them "tick" as students of Chinese, so to speak. I am a firm believer, that no matter how deep you go into studying a subject, be it martial arts, language, engineering…(you get the point!), there is always something to be learned and some insight to be gained. This is especially true when we share with others, as everyone has a different thought process, and perhaps listening to them for a bit will help you to further your own understanding.

On that note, I have recently interviewed the talented and intelligent Swedish-born Olle Linge, who currently resides in Taipei, Taiwan and like myself, is a Chinese fanatic! I also thought it was really cool that we share another interest besides Chinese language: I myself started my martial arts journey with the study of Taijiquan. Granted, I had already been living in Taiwan for over a year, and had already learned Mandarin to a decent level, but taking Taichi lessons, taught in Chinese no-less, really pushed me off the deep-end with  respects to my fascination for Chinese culture. Keep reading below for the full interview. Also, be sure to check out Olle's website Hackingchinese.com for more excelent articles. Enjoy!

\"螢幕快照Q: What Made you decide to learn Chinese?

It wasn't a decision really, it was more like a gradual change from thinking that Chinese looked interesting to being immersed in a master's program taught entirely in Chinese. The reason I became interested in the first place is also something of a mystery, but it's definitely related to practising Taijiquan and through that becoming interested in Chinese philosophy.

Q:How long have you been a student of Chinese, and how long did it take you to become conversational?

I've studied for about seven years, but language learning should probably be counted in hours. I would say around four of those years were really full-time, the rest of the time I was busy with other things as well. The answer to the second question depends on what you mean by “conversational”, but I didn't speak much Chinese before I moved to Taiwan. That was about one year after I started, so becoming conversational took perhaps a year and a few months.

Q:What was your biggest challenge learning Chinese? And what came easiest to you?

The biggest challenge was (and still is) the seemingly infinite variety of the Chinese language (and I don't specifically mean other dialects than Mandarin or classical Chinese here). There are words for everything, usually several of them, and trying to figure out the differences and understanding them when spoken without clear context is really challenging.

I don't think anything came particularly easy for me, but I suppose I got basic pronunciation down pretty quickly. However, perfecting pronunciation in a foreign language is a lifelong process and I'm still working on it. You can listen to an interview with me on Language is Culture where I speak more about pronunciation.

Q:What advice would you give to our readers who are just embarking on their journey with Chinese?

I have written many, many articles aimed at beginners, so that's not something I can easily summarise here. If you want a summary, I have selected seven pieces of advice that I find absolutely crucial for beginners here. If forced to choose, I would say that avoiding perfectionism is the most important advice, simply because it applies to so many different areas and is overlooked by many ambitious learners. If you study Chinese in your home country, you should also start looking for extra-curricular ways of learning from day one.

Q:Do you have a favorite Chinese phrase? If so, what is it and why?

I have a penchant for adding fragments of English while still retaining Chinese syntax and/or morphology, so I like phrases like “O不OK” and so on. I also like sentences where Chinese people habitually include incorrectly inflected English words, such as “她很fashion”. Note that if you're learning Chinese, don't take this as a call to pepper your sentences with English, listen to what people actually say and go with that. Don't invent your own hybrid sentences.

Q:What's your one biggest "hack" for learning Chinese?

I've written more than two hundred articles about how to hack Chinese, so it's really hard to pick just one hack. However, if I could choose one particular hack that I could travel back in time and teach myself, it would probably be using phonetic components to hack the pronunciation and writing of Chinese characters. I think most attentive and serious students find this out sooner or later, but way too many students think that meaning in Chinese characters comes from combining pictures of objects with each other, which of course isn't true for a huge majority of characters.