Hi guys!
I've been thinking a lot about starting Chinese lately.
I've been studying Japanese for about 2.5 years give or take and I've reached a pretty good level in proficiency. My "problem" is that I'm a perfectionist, so I'm never satisfied, and probably never will be satisfied with my Japanese (just like my English).
I really, really want to learn Chinese, but every time I think about buying a textbook for Chinese or watch a Chinese TV-show or something I always go "Stop! You gotta master Japanese first!!".
I know there's a lot people on here working on both Japanese and other languages.
When do you "know" or "understand" when you can move on to a different language?
I'm not talking about discontinuing my Japanese learning, just starting up Chinese on the side.
My biggest fear is to become this 中途半端 polyglot that's pretty good in a lot of languages, but not really comfortable in any of them...

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this

i've also started looking around at other languages recently

i think, i dunno, is there any such thing as mastering a language really? If you feel like doing a bit of Chinese, just do it, it's not going to stop you getting better at Japanese too when you feel like doing something in Japanese. (which you still will, right?).

I also don't know really if being a 中途半端 polyglot would be so terrible really if 中途半端 involves reading novels and watching TV at an adult level (i've given up on ever actually speaking lol)

I guess, the important thing is not to let your Japanese level slip while concentrating on another language. At one point that would have been very difficult, but i feel like i've been coasting for quite a long time now, picking up words without needing to review, and without losing too much if i don't do anything in Japanese for a few weeks. You've always worked harder than i have, but i dunno, don't you feel the same a bit?

Yeah, i just saw your link on the "Chinese resources" thread - thank you so much for that! It looks awesome

i kind of feel the same, but the problem is that I always compare my Japanese with my English, and since I can understand and speak English without any difficulty I always feel my Japanese is so far behind. But it's true what you say about the importance of keeping up my Japanese while doing Chinese from now on.
I might just give it a go...

Btw, have you started Chinese?

i started Chinese last week, then Swahili, and now French hahahh!!

Chinese (and swahili) as languages are more appealing to me, but i think i'm gonna settle on French for now, because i want to be able to travel and possibly work in Africa, and it would open up my options a ton. (and hopefully it won't take too long to pick up).

If you're going for Chinese though, definately start with the Zhongwen deck you can find on this forum, it's soooo good, really i+1. (i started it along with the Smartfm vocab deck to hear each word in isolation).

The pronounciation is hard, but it's really nice to know Japanese because you can often work out what the sentence means just through reading the kanji, it really does make a huge difference!!! You can also sort of see how the Chinese sounds were converted into Japanese sometimes... like 先生　is xiānshēng, so they aren't completely unrelated sounds, even though they're different. Also, because of this, you can ladder Chinese - Japanese really easily, which should make it even easier to keep up with Japanese.

Yeah, yabla looks awesome, right?!? I'm so happy to have found it.

I have no idea how you all combine that many languages and are left with any free time. Typically my SrSing takes 1,5-2 hours a day for japanese alone. I try to incorporate japanese in what I do in my free time as much as possible, but I doubt I would be able to do that for 2 or 3 languages at the same time, unless you have no job and are not in some sort of schooling.

This is something I was wondering about too. Korean sounds like it would be really interesting to learn, and I've love to be able to at least be able to decipher hangul. However, my Japanese is...not great, and I certainly don't pick it up as quickly as the people on this board.
Zorlee, from some of your posts on here, your Japanese seems to be at a high level. If you want to learn Chinese, you should go for it! You seem to be proficient enough that simply reading or watching Japanese TV should be enough to keep you going, leaving you time to study Chinese.

@kuma:
lol, i'm not learning all of them!!! i just started a few different ones as a taster before settling on one.

It does depend on your lifestyle, but i really don't review Japanese anymore. The only time i use SRS for Japanese is if i approach a new subject where there's a lot of new vocab, to keep the vocab in my head for a month or so until it "settles".

Reviewing every word of a language forever is neither possible, nor desirable, i think. It's extremely helpful until you have a firm core vocab, but after that you should be able to pick up stuff as you go along, and it'll stick much better because you remember the context.

So when you get to that point, your time'll be freed up to SRS something else...

Kuma01 Wrote:I have no idea how you all combine that many languages and are left with any free time. Typically my SrSing takes 1,5-2 hours a day for japanese alone. I try to incorporate japanese in what I do in my free time as much as possible, but I doubt I would be able to do that for 2 or 3 languages at the same time, unless you have no job and are not in some sort of schooling.

what? that's way too long for srs reviews????????
you must have a lot of reviews. Aren't you better off immersing as opposd to srsing that much? well I don't know what decks you have..

Today I spent 36 minutes and that's because I added a korean deck like a month ago. but even then I feel like I should try to get it down to 20 minutes lol.

I have a hesig deck (it's in kakitori format), and 3 more decks in different formats for japanese and one korean deck. 5 decks total.

Takes me 30-40 minutes to both decks(sentence+vocabulary deck). Not including adding any new cards into the mix. I leave that for another time.

IceCream Wrote:@kuma:
lol, i'm not learning all of them!!! i just started a few different ones as a taster before settling on one.

It does depend on your lifestyle, but i really don't review Japanese anymore. The only time i use SRS for Japanese is if i approach a new subject where there's a lot of new vocab, to keep the vocab in my head for a month or so until it "settles".

Reviewing every word of a language forever is neither possible, nor desirable, i think. It's extremely helpful until you have a firm core vocab, but after that you should be able to pick up stuff as you go along, and it'll stick much better because you remember the context.

So when you get to that point, your time'll be freed up to SRS something else...

You know, that's really the right mindset someone should have if they have been learning a language for a long time. I no longer have that urge to add "Everything". I only add stuff that I want to learn/are unknown to me/don't have a good grasp on it. Saves time, it's good/effective and you aren't learning too much words at once if it's selective.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:

Kuma01 Wrote:I have no idea how you all combine that many languages and are left with any free time. Typically my SrSing takes 1,5-2 hours a day for japanese alone. I try to incorporate japanese in what I do in my free time as much as possible, but I doubt I would be able to do that for 2 or 3 languages at the same time, unless you have no job and are not in some sort of schooling.

what? that's way too long for srs reviews????????
you must have a lot of reviews. Aren't you better off immersing as opposd to srsing that much? well I don't know what decks you have..

Today I spent 36 minutes and that's because I added a korean deck like a month ago. but even then I feel like I should try to get it down to 20 minutes lol.

I have a hesig deck (it's in kakitori format), and 3 more decks in different formats for japanese and one korean deck. 5 decks total.

Well that's not just reviews but also includes learning new cards. Also I write down new facts and the ones I failed when I review. I reckon that adds the extra time. I guess I could leave out the writing , but for some reason I feel like I am unable to truely internalize a word without writing it every so often.

Zorlee, I'm sure everyone will agree with me when I say your Japanese is incredible. You've probably made more progress in less time than Khatz (and your progress is actually documented). Even though we both started around the same time, you're already at an N1 level while I'm still struggling to finally reach N2. Honestly, it just seems like you're unnecessarily anxious. If you want to start Chinese, then make it happen. Of course, you can still improve your English and Japanese at the same time. Just focus on materials that are beyond your level, so you don't plateau.

vileru Wrote:Zorlee, I'm sure everyone will agree with me when I say your Japanese is incredible...

This post grabbed my interest and I did a little of research on "Zorlee's case".

It looks that he started in April 2009 and was mainly following AJATT. I say mainly because although he did start with RtK, and followed with KO, in his studies he didn't disregard grammar (which is against AJATT's recommendations). I've also seen full immersion in native media (manga, subtitled DVDs, etc), as well as significant effort in reviews (initially 1hr, then ~2-4hrs a day). After ~1.5 year, in August 2010, he moved to Tokyo Osaka for about 10 months. Today he can claim proficiency at JLPT1 level.

I want to reflect on two things here.

Firstly, I want to congratulate Zorlee on an unquestionable achievement. Zorlee, your story can and should inspire others.

Secondly, those who would like to follow Zorlee's tracks must be aware of an effort that he put into his language studies and not factor out his extended stay in Japan.

Edit: Changed Tokyo to Osaka, after Zorlee's comment.

I'm in a similar situation, although unlike Zorlee my Japanese is far from N1 level (aiming for N2 this year). I've faced the dilemma of picking up Chinese several times now, especially after recently visiting China for the fourth time, and yet I've decided at least for now to keep postponing studying it in earnest, in favour of Japanese.

Being Chinese myself there is a natural motivation to master what for me is a fossilized language. Because I was born in Australia and grew up here, Chinese (i.e. Mandarin) is a language in which I can comfortably communicate in basic day-to-day situations, but in which I can't read a newspaper or watch a TV program without (very) heavy use of a dictionary or reliance on subtitles and no small amount of guesswork. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to read newspapers, blogs, forums and watch TV shows without any issues? Wouldn't it nice to be able to speak to other Chinese people, family and friends, and not bottom out on vocabulary or blank out on certain words?

It's a problem of time/energy management -- I don't want to divert energy and time away from the "main" goal, which is learning Japanese. It's probably a matter of personality type as well. I (and Zorlee?) dislike splitting attention and energy over multiple areas when it feels more satisfying to concentrate on just the one goal. I don't want to stop or slow down in any way Japanese acquisition, so I guess it takes priority in the end. I suppose it might help to set a concrete benchmark by which time I can force myself to start studying Chinese. For Japanese, I've only got twelve thousand words in Anki at a rate of 35 new per day, and there's probably at least another ten thousand or so to go before I'd feel comfortable easing off the pace. So let's say another year of full time effort on Japanese, and then it's switch into studying Chinese mode. The point is to draw the line somewhere or I'll always keep making excuses to myself.

I think the issue is, as Zorlee points out, being perfectionist about one's abilities. There is no concrete, black and white point at which I can comfortably make the decision to stop actively studying Japanese -- there'll always be things lacking and areas that need working on, new words that can be learned. But at the same time, if we let this desire to perfect something hold us back from learning new things, then I guess in the end we only limit ourselves.

Icecream: Hahaha! Three languages in one week!? Sounds like one of those "get fluent in 24 hours" courses!
French? Cool! I love French! I'm going for either French or Italian after I'm done with Japanese and Chinese.
I just want one language where I can sound passionate and sexy while talking! LOL!
I'll definitely check out the Zhongwen deck. There's audio right? Is it sentence based or single vocab? I don't have Anki on the computer I'm using right now, so I can't check it out right myself.

Vileru: Thank you for your kind words. Maybe I am a bit overly anxious about this…

Inny Jan: Haha! Thanks for the FBI-style background check! It's more or less correct, but you got one thing wrong - I lived in Osaka, not Tokyo

Guoguodi: I think you're right regarding personality type. I've never been good at doing two things at the same time. But I'm hoping that I might be able to change this pattern from now on...

If it's something you really want to do, why not start just 15-minutes a day? Listen to a podcast, learn a few words, read a bit about pronunciation or whatever. Treat it as a casual hobby. You probably spend more time reading the news, posting on forums, idly surfing the web etc. You might find that you can dedicate some more time to it without ruining your Japanese ambitions, and if you can't spend more time on it yet, at least you're getting somewhere. Even if you just focused on one thing like pronunciation or hanzi, think how much it'd help when you start for real. Imagine having already finished RTK before you seriously started Japanese.

I'm trying to convince myself to take this approach with French anyway. I could keep putting it off until next year because I'm 'not ready yet,' or have 100-hours of study under my belt by then that'll help kick-start any serious effort to advance - all without putting in any real effort or time commitment.

Zorlee Wrote:Icecream: Hahaha! Three languages in one week!? Sounds like one of those "get fluent in 24 hours" courses!
French? Cool! I love French! I'm going for either French or Italian after I'm done with Japanese and Chinese.
I just want one language where I can sound passionate and sexy while talking! LOL!
I'll definitely check out the Zhongwen deck. There's audio right? Is it sentence based or single vocab? I don't have Anki on the computer I'm using right now, so I can't check it out right myself.

lololol yeahhh!!! it'd be awesome to sound passionate and sexy, i hope i get there!!! Right now i just sound a bit like a slow text to speech program that was designed to read english words, not french.

I'm sure i'll have collated a bunch of great French resources by the time you're done with J+C, and you'll have done the same for Chinese, so we can swap once we're done!!!

Yeah, there's audio in the Zhongwen deck!!! And yeah, it's sentences. Even though it's more fun to pick your own sentences, that deck is just *so* nice to use, you can literally just open it up and start learning with zero prior knowledge, and still learn a bunch of sentences each day.
It's here, when you're free to download: (BROKEN LINK) http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pi...63#p167863

If you want vocab to go along with it, the smartfm decks are here:
(BROKEN LINK) http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pi...90#p167590
(there aren't so many compound words though it's helpful to hear the tones slowly in the single words anyway. it also has sentences of course, but they're less i+1)

@Zorlee: "When to start learning a new language?" → When you're bored and have lots of time. Hey, it was like that for me and Japanese. Pure coincidence and I learnt a lot things, namely, first that Japanese is a great language, that I can connect to more people and that I can enjoy learning something I like every day. It turned into a discipline as much as piano playing.
Btw, I find the more you play the piano and read difficult sheet music while you're playing the better you get a deciphering kanji lol Never mind.

I'd never venture to study a language unless I have a means to actively use it, otherwise the moment I stop studying, my hard-earned proficiency will atrophy. A language is something that requires an immense amount of upkeep over the years (one can forget even a mother tongue, under the right conditions), and thus must be maintained. This is why I picked up English - Internet (ok that was way too early for it to be a conscious decision, but the point stands), German - soon to immigrate, and Japanese - anime.

Thus, pick up a new language if you have something that will force you to use the old ones as often as possible. Even better if you have something similar for the new language too.

Language is just a tool.

One person with beginner Japanese can get more benefit from knowledge of the language than perhaps an another person with advanced Japanese level.

I think that I should learn languages up til the level at which I feel like there's almost nothing stopping me from doing what I want/need to do in that language. And definitely not study very much more than that.

Just knowing the language is useless, you have to use it for what you want to use it for. And if you can already do what you want, be satisfied and glad. That's all

No need to over-learn.

I have found that knowing good japanese websites, having a kind of a network/infrastructure of my personal loved/useful japanese websites and knowing how to learn Japanese bit by bit in different situations has become a much more valuable asset to me than If my Japanese was native level but I would know very little about what to use Japanese for.

Hey Zorlee (and everyone),

Just wanted to mention my experience with Mandarin up till now. I'm a bit similar to you I guess, in that we both studied Japanese pretty hardcore (I got to 10k in my vocab deck in like half a year, passed N2 last winter while I was studying in Japan for a year). But my level is way, way, way below yours, let's make that clear. Also I didn't do much Japanese since I got back half a year ago.
Instead I chose to pick up Mandarin, and I like it a lot. For one there are just a lot more Chinese here (in the Netherlands), some of them even live in the student apartments I live in, so ample opportunity (and usefulness for eavesdropping ) to speak it. But I didn't go hardcore with Chinese like I did with Japanese, took it easy which kept it fun

My experience so far:
- You should really study Chinese pronunciation. With Japanese you can get away pretty much by imitating (whole other world if you want to sound like a native but anyway), but with Mandarin it helped me to know how your mouth needs to be shaped when you make certain sounds, for instance to curl up your tongue with the sh, or to know what aspirated consonants are. In the first phase I definitely needed a native to correct my pronunciation, with the tones obviously but also the pronunciation in general.
- About that native speaker, I could actually find language exchange partners in my own native language Dutch! You're Norwegian right? Perhaps you already found some Japanese wanting to learn Norwegian, but if not I think chances are a lot bigger to find Chinese wanting to learn it.
- The upside is that when you finished RTK and Core 6000/10000, reading Mandarin will be a lot easier since you don't need to do any 'groundwork'. Like Ice-cream mentioned, most of the time Mandarin readings are somewhat similiar, plus there is (mostly) only one reading per character! How nice
- Right now I feel like the grammar is not as complicated as Japanese, but this could be a drawback as well because you don't have any cues when you're listening.
- Mandarin becomes easier when you know Japanese, there is quite a lot of vocabulary overlap. I haven't really thorougly investigated, but learning Mandarin from Japanese seems entirely feasible. I think Mandarin books/manga are actually easier to understand with a Japanese translation than an English translation next to it because of the overlap (had that experience a few times already), so then you do both at the same time.
- I haven't had any real problems 'mixing' Japanese and Chinese thusfar, but I haven't spoken much Chinese yet (there were a lot of あの's though when I first tried speaking Chinese ). Since I lived in Japan for a year, Japanese feels pretty well ingrained in my system (my poor level anyway), so I expect no real problems there.
- All in all Mandarin has different linguistic challenges from Japanese which I think make it very interesting (and perhaps more fun than a more similar language like Korean).

My study plan:
- Anki Zhongwen Red deck (will finish this in a week)
Like Ice-cream mentioned this is a really good deck with nice audio (although there are some heavy regional accents in there I think ) Helps to ingrain some basic sentence structures

- HSK Basic Vocabulary (availabe in Anki downloads with audio, finished this few weeks ago)
I like to do two decks simultaneously, because there is some overlap both will get easier and easier. Also vocab decks are still faster.

- Chinese listening deck
I created this deck with the amazing Chinese core sentence deck: (BROKEN LINK) http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pi...77#p161077
Since listening is my weakest skill, but also the one I want to improve the most, I have just sound on the front of the card, and transcription+translation on the back.

Conclusion: You should definitely go for it if you think it's fun.