Learning Mandarin

dragonerwolf wrote: [
Yeah, depends on the person if they can pick up a new language. I think usually gets harder as you get older. My ex is a language major, she was learning Japanese, Korean, and some Mandarin a few years ago. We went to Japanese meet-ups and she spoke a bit of Korean at Korean restaurants. I was teaching her a bit of Mandarin. Mandarin would-be been her 8th language, I think. And she told me there's some tricks to do accents she learned from school. I forget now.

Did she date you because you knew how to speak Mandarin? Just kidding XD
Either she's super smart or she knows how to learn languages efficiently. Did your ex spend alot of time in Korea or Japan or did she at least have people who are fluent and talk to her often?

I was told the real problem is that that some people imagine language learning the same way as learning maths. That's why so many korean people fail english with that mentality.

I strongly feel that people need to let their brain pick up the language often from constantly being around native speakers. As I think learning languages is just insanely harder without the environmental language immersion. That's why so many people can solo study it for years and struggle since it's not how your brain actually works in picking up language.

Mandarin is really a difficult language. I started with it, but thanks to corona I can't really get any further because I don't have anyone to speak to. I can learn vocabulary alone, but I cannot learn how to pronounce the different tones alone!
I'm afraid a native speaker would not understand me
I hope that at some day there will be "normal" lessons again and that I can improve my language skills …

dragonerwolf wrote: Julie is French, Kelsi is Canadian. They both watched a lot of Mandarin drama shows and of course relationships/school.

Kinda sad Julie went back to France, somewhat trapped because of COVID.

kelsi sounds like a native taiwanese. o.0

zen wrote:

dragonerwolf wrote: Julie is French, Kelsi is Canadian. They both watched a lot of Mandarin drama shows and of course relationships/school.

Kinda sad Julie went back to France, somewhat trapped because of COVID.

kelsi sounds like a native taiwanese. o.0

Kelsi is making tourist videos with her Taiwanese husband in Taiwan, while most of us around the world are trapped in quarantine/pandemic

They both did a video when they try to speak and guess Taiwanese language.

LilDragon9 wrote:

dragonerwolf wrote: [
Yeah, depends on the person if they can pick up a new language. I think usually gets harder as you get older. My ex is a language major, she was learning Japanese, Korean, and some Mandarin a few years ago. We went to Japanese meet-ups and she spoke a bit of Korean at Korean restaurants. I was teaching her a bit of Mandarin. Mandarin would-be been her 8th language, I think. And she told me there's some tricks to do accents she learned from school. I forget now.

Did she date you because you knew how to speak Mandarin? Just kidding XD
Either she's super smart or she knows how to learn languages efficiently. Did your ex spend alot of time in Korea or Japan or did she at least have people who are fluent and talk to her often?

I was told the real problem is that that some people imagine language learning the same way as learning maths. That's why so many korean people fail english with that mentality.

I strongly feel that people need to let their brain pick up the language often from constantly being around native speakers. As I think learning languages is just insanely harder without the environmental language immersion. That's why so many people can solo study it for years and struggle since it's not how your brain actually works in picking up language.

She studied languages in college, so she can learn and speak languages efficiently. She pretty much stayed in Los Angeles. We have a Koreatown and several Japanese areas (Little Tokyo and Little Osaka - both in opposite directions).

Our public schools have immersion classes now. One time when I counseling a kid in a class, the school has half Mandarin then English on days, and they switch off on subjects like Math. My surprise was that there were like only 2 Asian kids in the class of like 20.

Yeah, being around native speakers will help. Also, there's a study in saying we learn languages better when we are drunk. Dutch courage? Effects of acute alcohol consumption on self-ratings and observer ratings of foreign language skills Being drunk makes people have courage to speak and practice.

That’s not that hard to learn. It’s easy.

dragonerwolf wrote: She studied languages in college, so she can learn and speak languages efficiently. She pretty much stayed in Los Angeles. We have a Koreatown and several Japanese areas (Little Tokyo and Little Osaka - both in opposite directions).

Our public schools have immersion classes now. One time when I counseling a kid in a class, the school has half Mandarin then English on days, and they switch off on subjects like Math. My surprise was that there were like only 2 Asian kids in the class of like 20.

Yeah, being around native speakers will help. Also, there's a study in saying we learn languages better when we are drunk. Dutch courage? Effects of acute alcohol consumption on self-ratings and observer ratings of foreign language skills Being drunk makes people have courage to speak and practice.

Technically it says it makes us not learn but to speak it better temporarily under low alcoholic influence. Nobody can speak any language fluently when truly drunk.😅

I read people who are bilingual are more able to retain their cognitive abilities after brain damage compared with monolingual people. It's because they're much better able to switch to alternative brain networks and connections when their original or dominant pathways have been destroyed.

My educated guess is maybe being drunk inhibits people's use on their dominant language pathways. Those dominant language gets in our way and alcohol helps people more easily loosen it's grip and forget it.

Because people have a dominant language. When we learn a second language, that tends to be added to the same neural network.It's the reason why ESL people tend to have strong accents because they're unable to inactivate the dominant language pathways and switch completely to a different part of the brain.

From birth, I was exposed to Singlish. And that malaysian accent is still with me. I was only able to talk in very basic english and Mandarin naturally because my dad's from Singapore. He would speak it to me in a weird mixed kind of way. It be usually lots of deliberate singlish mixed with Mandarin in the same sentence. Lol. But if you're lucky enough to grow up in a multi-lingual house then it's honestly not really as much effort to make it fluent later on.

I realise people completely new to Mandarin or english. They wil llearn things very differently from native speakers. And it really seems immensely complicated and don't at all, envy their uphill learning experiences.