How I Learned Chinese
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- As with all the languages I’ve learned, my passion for the language, and all that surrounds it, was key to success in learning Mandarin. But lots of reading and listening helped me achieve my goals.
0:00 - Why Steve started learning Chinese.
1:25 - Learning Chinese while living in a non-Chinese speaking environment.
3:15 - Steve's motivation to reach fluency in Mandarin Chinese.
4:53 - Fascinating history of China.
6:46 - The books Steve used to learn Chinese.
8:57 - How Steve learned the Chinese characters.
9:14 - How Steve learned the Chinese tones.
11:24 - Learning Chinese today is a lot easier!
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#chinese #learnchinese #languagelearning
I learned Mandarin Chinese 50 years ago in Hong Kong, not a Mandarin speaking place at that time. How did I do it? Watch my video.
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I have a question: how many hours (per day) do you focus on a language when you start learning it?
this varies. But right now I would say an hour or so a day mostly listening. Some days I'll put more effort into reading.
How long would it take you to learn all the almost 300 Chinese languages.
Do you speak German? You have the German familyname "Kaufmann", Kauf means buy.
Ich habe in der Schweiz an der Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich Theoretische Physik studiert.
I can speak High German and Swiss German as well as my motherlanguage Chinese.
Ich kann mit anderen auf Deutsch über Quanten Feld Theorie, über Quantenmechanik diskutieren.
How do foreign people like Anming and Xiaoma get their Chinese names?
I would never have guessed you are 75! All that language learning must keep you so sharp!
Ikr, certainly the language learning process have a great participation in his mental health. I know people from his age that didn't study and are really old, Steve doesn't seem old, it's incredible.
Same
Thought he was 50
@@annilanta4583 what reality do you live in?
@@Gerald69420 what do you mean
Most CZcamsrs are so boring rambling on....This 13 minute video FLEW by.
You are an inspiration and a friend that every language would love to have, just to talk with.
You are a way cool dude. 👍🏻
Wow, thank you!
I agree with the part learning a language needs motivation，that‘s how I learned English@@Thelinguist
Learning Chinese is such a useful skill and it's also super rewarding! It's a great brain workout too! I encourage everyone to give it a try!
i want to learn english🙂
Omg as a Chinese girl who now live in Toronto, it’s so impressive and appreciated to see someone who knows so much Chinese history even more than me.🥺 Bringing me back to those days I was dying and trying so hard to remember the stuff in history textbook. (BTW i recently discovered interests in Japanese but still stuck on hiragana and katakana lol, you’re such an amazing man!)
Hiragana isn't too difficult. Katakana on the other hand...
那学习日文汉字应该难不倒你 •̀.̫•́✧
I love your background, BOOKS!
KNOWLEDGE
and not just for display, he seems to have actually read all of them 👏
I’m Chinese and I dunno why I’m watching this lol 😂大家加油啦！💪🏼
谢谢哥们儿😁
@@r0conscious 哈哈没问题哥们儿 没事来我频道看看！
@@phoenixhou4486 好，我关注你，视频看起来不错！
@@r0conscious 谢谢！
@@phoenixhou4486
I understand 6 foreign languages : English, German, French, Arabic, Russian, and Mandarin with different levels of abilities.
I speak German pretty well, and been to Munich to learn German.
It was long time ago that I reached B2 level, nearly C1.
But it seems that my German deteriorates.
I also learned French and Russian, but I don't speak those languages very well like my German, and of course, my fluent English.
Now I'm learning Mandarin, and I believe my Mandarin reached A2 or B1 level, because I got Hsk-3 in October 2019.
The problem is maintaining the ability.
Once you get the B level, you start to be fed up with the language you have learned, unless you have a very high motivation and specific purpose to learn the language.
And after that the next question is whether you can maintain the level that has been attained.
I reached B2 or even almost C1 in German long time ago, but now it seems that I can only answer relatively correct the B1 level.
My German deteriorates.
Language is a matter of habits and habitation....
You still speak it today. That reminds me of my Spanish. I took Spanish classes for 3 years on high school (1962-65), but never became conversational. Recently you had a video with Pablo, whose Dreaming Spanish is intermediate content. I was amazed to find I could understand his videos, 55 years later.
Spanish as rather close language to English can be sticked easily in one's mind, if it is well studied and retained during the initial learning. I would say probably due to the simplicity and the obviousness of its phonology + the resemblances.
Congrats to you on your progress 💜💜
I am an Urdu speaker and here we have an idiom that says (when someone don't understands you , you ask them) "Did I say this in Persian?" and yesterday I watched a video on poly-glot-a-lot's channel and I was surprised to see that I could understand the 90% of the conversation .
I am 23 now and i just started learning chinese 💚 thank you
加油！
Fantastic, so extremely interesting and inspiring. I use LingQ with 173 days and 6000 words learned in the beautiful german language; my mother tongue is spanish. Today, after my 6000 words learned in Deutsch, I just began to speak… to express for my first time since the 173 days in Alemán. I just love it, thank you Sir.
Interesting about the comedy sketches to help you with tones, I found in some Chinese dubbed anime and historical dramas when they speak all dramatic a lot of the tones are overstressed which helped me I feel so far. Still have a long way to go though
nice ! keep it up !
@Its RX want to know too!
So inspiring to hear about how it was decades ago, especially when you think of all the tools we have today right on our smart devices to immerse anywhere on the globe and it's still a challenge!
Really insightful video, thanks for sharing Steve
Like the slight change in the background setup! Very nice
Good video! You're an inspiration to us all Steve! Thank you for all you do. Happy New Year! 🥳
Love your content and background. Thank you for sharing this valuable information 🙏
I love learning languages and ur passion in this video makes me more excited. Thank u!
Steve ! thank you so much ! for this video is amazing !
Wow! Gives me a lot of hope!!
Finding a passion in each language's culture is so helpful! It's very intuitive but your explanation is so poignant! Thank you.
Amazing work! Congratulation with big knowledge!
Your verbal delivery is so good!
So pleased to hear you talk about the importance of Chinese characters. The visual association actually helps people remember the words. This part of Chinese language is often overlooked. Thank you for sharing Steve. 👍💜
That's so encouraging! I am learning mandarin Chinese now and I want to improve so much! I love Chinese language ... thank you thank you!
i remember when I read your book, I really like this story because it shows someone in a completely different environment, and how this is the best way of learning a language, and also because living in China in the 50s, 60s, 70s sounds so cool
Thak you so much for your story. It helps me understand how to imporove my English.
Enjoy all of your videos.
And as a Chinese here, thank you for posting this video.祝大家好运🍀✊🏾
"The music of the dialogue" is exactly what got me through the hardest part of learning to understand Japanese. So important! Also very enjoyable to me as you slowly pick up more and more
Thanks Steve, this is so motivating!
Hey Steve
Im Persian and I really enjoyed your video specially the flash cards and CDs!
You're my inspiration of learning languages
I speak English, French and "of course" Persian and it's been about 6 month that I'm learning Chinese
And BTW I'll be really happy to help you with Persian
xiexie! merci pour cette vidéo! C'était super❤️
Such good advice Steve, I began my Chinese journey with an early version of Lingq over 10 years ago- and it was the thing that helped me believe I could do it. These days I am a paid subscriber and I tell everyone I can about it. Thank you for creating such an excellent system.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you very much for these videos Steve. You are a huge inspiration for me. I’m reading your book on LingQ in Spanish, and was so excited when I heard you on Jim and May’s Spanish and go podcast, as I’m I huge fan of theirs and of yours. Happy 2021 from Indiana sir!
Best of luck!
Thanks for your advises ❤ 😊
Thanks you so much. I feel like u gave me more motivation when i watch this video. I love u 😁
Woow. I respect your effort. I am learning Chinese now. ❤❤❤. Very interesting language and my eyes are open now.
This kind of videos about how you could learn all of thoses languages that you know, are very motivated!
You should say " very motivating" I think
Steve you're a inspiration to all generations
Always you have a good feelings about learning English. Have a good posture. God bless you dear.
Excellent video, Steve! 这很好！
Great story! Your fellow countryman Dashan 大山 goes one step further : he performs Xiangsheng 相声！
It is so inspirational. I referred to your video where you held discussions in Chinese. The tones are perfect. Wish you all the best from China.
Thank you so much!
First like,
Than watch!🙂
Thank you Steve, you helped me a lot on my language learning jurney!
Good Luck to everyone with your languages!
From Serbia 🇷🇸❤️🌍
thank you
it'svery useful！ Thank you
Thank you for this Steve!
I have been learning (slowly) for the past 18 months now, spending about 5-15 minutes a day training my Mandarin. Your videos have been a source of motivation for me to keep going over this period of time! Just recently, I landed a fully funded scholarship to Taiwan for 2 years and am planned to move overseas to study at university and at a language school in Taipei, paid by the Australian government. Thanks again for providing content for Mandarin learners such as myself, it means a lot!
i know this sounds weird coming from a stranger but congrats!
@@wanda5548 Thank you! It means a lot, very exciting adventure to come!
@@maitlandbezzina2842 good luck!!! tbh i'm really happy for you and you motivated me to keep going!
Wow. congratulations and thank you for letting me know.
Congratulations! I’ve lived in Taiwan for almost 15 years. It’s THE best country! You’re gonna love it here.
Very interesting video Steve. I´m learning chinese at the moment, so it helps a lot.
I think it's important to focus on the rhythm and stress. Because Chinese is syllable-timed
Впервые наткнулась на ваши видео года 4 назад. Никогда так еще не мотивировали ваши слова! Очень люблю китайский язык. Еще будучи в средней школе этот он давался куда проще, чем английский. Настолько простой и логичный язык, но никогда не перестаешь открывать что-то новое. А вот английский остался, наверно, тем языком, который приходиться учить через силу. Без интереса и мотивации - это будто карабкаться на Эверест - либо ты сдашься на начале пути, либо сквозь пот и кровь дойдешь до вершины.
Благодарю Вас за столь интересные видео! Думаю, в скором времени смогу освоиться еще в нескольких языках!)
Great video!
So great, Steve. 你真厉害👍
I have started to learn Dutch for two weeks! It's really a nice time to see this recommended video.
En?
That was interesting! I like that funny images popping up. Keep them in future videos.
I always wanted to hear your language journeys of your earliest languages you learnt. I like the way the new folders in your videos by the way.
Happy to hear that!
You should read his book, it's pretty awesome
Thanks for the video (and all other videos, podcasts, interivews), Steve! I'm a Chinese Canadian living in Toronto. I'm learning Spanish right now. I've recently discovered Pablo's Dreaming Spanish, and I truly believe in his (or Stephen Krashen's) theory of "comprehensible input". Are you aware of any good "comprehensible input" in Chinese?
Steve, you're very inspirational man.
In the midst of learning German I've become interested in Chinese too. I'm also 23 so the same age as you started Chinese. :) Thanks for the video.
Hello! Thank you so much for the inspiration! Learning Korean right now haha
韓字배워야지
Gracias Maestro!
Ahh steve you're so inspiring. You can learn anything at any age. I'm learning Japanese and have for three months. This reminds me of my motivation. My goal is to learn Chinese too. Both Mandarin and Cantonese .
hi bro i can speak chinese i am learning engliah if you donot mind we can add social media accounts and study together😃
@@user-ik7tm4hd3eHi. Im a native english speaker and im learning chinese. Are you still looking for someone to practice with
非常厉害非常亲切的老先生，感谢您提供的这些很有趣的学习方法，当然，个人认为最重要的是持之以恒，以及充沛的兴趣
I teach Trilingual on my channel and tbh, you're great. I applaud you. 👍
Lingq and Pleco has done wonders for me!
A year after I started learning, I got Pleco, and since then my tones have always been colours. For some reason, this has helped me massively with tones. - it's easier for me that way rather than the marks
Same, I started using it a few months ago and it's awesome
let's interchange. TBWEIXIN2017
What's pleco?
@@dimitrikavanaugh7868 A Chinese-English dictionary app -- extremely useful
I’m so attracted to Steve. :) Thanks for being an inspiration.
Steve,你很厉害！ 谢谢 你
Thank you for the tips. I started to learn Japanese and this info is very useful, btw I’m Greek so ευχαριστώ για το ενδιαφέρων σας να μάθετε ελληνικά
Hi Steve, you are amazing! Would you mind tell us which langue is the most challenge to learn? Thank you
A deep interest, admiration and respect for the culture will be a great motivation.
So admirable! Keep it up :) 加油
It must be nice to talk to you, and listening to your life stories over a cup of afternoon tea.
I remember using a Chinese dictionary when I was sitting for my Chinese exam. It was quite time consuming to count all the strokes (and hopefully count them right the first time), then go to the corresponding stroke section, find the radical, and then find the characters.
Thankfully it was a digital exam, so I could just quickly install the Chinese keyboard and use pinyin
:D
超励志，超感动。谢谢你
A very nice story!
Steve, I would love to see you talk with Christopher Rea one day about early modern Chinese literature. He has a wealth of knowledge on the generation of writers you had a fascination with and you would probably have a great time talking to him! He's pretty active on CZcams on his channel "Modern Chinese Cultural Studies".
خیلی خوشحال شدم وقتی شنیدم فارسی هم بلدید! ممنون بابت ویدیوتون، امیدوارم من هم بتونم یک روزی انقدر خوب توی زبان های خارجی صحبت کنم.
You’re my goal! Thanks for sharing this video.
God bless You dear Steve i would like to get Chinese level like You.
For those who want to learn Chinese, but not the characters, because you maybe want to speak and listen. I highly recommend Baisc Chinese and Intermediate chinese by don rimmington and yip po ching. Two professors from oxford who underrstand how to teach!
Amazing work sir. Ignore some of these internet trolls , you're doing great:)
Listening XiangSheng is quite usefull LOL. I listened to Trever Noah to learn English and that was a lot help understanding the flow of the speech.
I agree. 1911-1949 is the most fascinating period in Chinese history. Great video, and you look great, Steve!
The Tang dynasty period is pretty great for contrast too.
Thank you.
Hello! Thanks!
I've been trying to decide whether to learn Chinese or Japanese. Both would help with my personal business goals. Both have aspects of them culturally that I like as well as can relate to. Both are huge on the internet. It's a hard choice because I know it will take a lot of time and I will have to start reaping results as soon as I complete reaching an intermediate level.
Just choose which one you're more familiar with
Great I wish for everyone to learn any language 👌👌👌👌
*interesante maestro*
I would be interested in the other books you have for chinese or books you enjoy. Could you post a picture on CZcams?
New subscriber here 🇯🇵👏🏻 i want to learn like you do🙏🏻
You're really Sharp for your age seriously... learning languages must be the reason !
as a fellow chinese learner who has spent the past 2 years falling in love with and full time studying the language at chinese uni - i love your videos speaking on your language learning motivation and process, it really resonates. especially the awe at china as a world unto itself, finding out hints of the incredible depth and breadth of the great civilizational legacy of china and its central role in world history for much of that time - a topic i knew nearly nothing of despite going to a top 10 uni in the US with one of my undergrad degree in "global culture" - wild! BUT must say your one comment @ 4:12 is incorrect or at least misleading-- the imperialist western nations, imperial era russia etc invaded and humiliated the chinese because they had the advantage of recent and rapid industrialization which propelled them to expand for economic reasons, for trade and growth and enrichment of their own much younger nations, able to colonize china as a weaker non- industrialized nation in a state of turmoil at the time. but i would hardly say it was the advantage of GUNPOWDER that allowed this to happen, when the chinese themselves had invented gunpowder as incendiary device or mechanisms it while europe was still firmly in the dark ages, looong before the west was even marginally developed to the global hegemon it latwr became! gunpowder was one of the four great inventions of chinese antiquity! of course it was not used as such from the start, but they certainly were using as incendiary for use in various forms of weaponry (far beyond arrow projectiles) as documented in 武经总要 at the least and elsewhere prior to that text, though i dont have references on hand for what or where. i do believe the chinese had invented grenades well before the end of the first millennium AD, though again if anyone is interested i encourage looking into the finer details of the so called "gunpowder age" as it pertains to china (as some western historiographies falsely situate this period as starting with its use by europeans more or less in re: the genesis of modern warfare techniques in a western-centric history, unfortunately. )
What the West had was the advantage of more advanced and greater-ranged gunpowder weapons and more experience in gunpowder warfare.
Why did the East fell so behind the West in terms of firearms & innovation?
Answer: An extended period of relative peace & stability with no external foes.
When the Manchu Qing took over, they disarmed the Chinese.
This is due to revolt of the 3 ex-Ming Lord Generals (三藩之亂) and the fear of the Han Chinese that they now ruled.
They demoted and degraded the 神机营 (Divine Weapon Bureau) to measly undertrained palace guards.
They controlled the recipe for gunpowder (as well altering it to set certain officials/generals up for failure).
With no external enemies, progress stagnated and the govt disarmed the population to prevent insurrections.
There wasn't a reason to innovate or the inspiration to innovate in terms of firearms.
There was also a clear dividing line and a racial caste system that didn't exist before, further crippling technological advancement,
pushing China into the Dark ages.
Soldiery as a profession suffered and military family paid beggars & the dregs of society to take their place as enlistees.
These dregs/beggars were often the old/underaged/homeless/malnourished/desperate/degenerate drug addicts who were hardly battle-ready
(And they were chained to their posts during battles to stop them from fleeing).
When the West came, European gunships and guns heavily outranged and outgunned the Qing Dynasty's heavily outdated firearm arsenal
(That dated back to the Late Ming Dynasty) & inexperienced troops (who were not even drilled in the proper handling and production of gunpowder as the Manchus feared a Han rebellion and endemic corruption).
At first, there was peace and the trade was going swimmingly for both sides, which drew the Qing to greater complacency.
Then, the Qing Dynasty got unsurprisingly destroyed in the 1st Opium War, its open wounds attracted every shark in the ocean.
In the battles that followed, European gunships were able to easily hammer Chinese coastal fortifcations, bait out retaliatory fire
by staying out of their cannon range and silence each emplacement with cannon fire without taking any casualties.
The Chinese coast guard which consisted of underarmoured requisitioned merchant vessels and armed with obsolete firearms & underranged torpedoes were easily destroyed.
This marked the start of the century of Humiliation.
yall are over complicating this, what he said was right. China was at a disadvantage in the tech department. Dont be pedantic about this black powder vs that gun powder etc. The west had guns, lots of guns, and the ability to make lots of guns. Guns are better than not guns. Guns are better than fireworks and fireworks on arrows. Guns
@@possumsam2189 唯一的原因就是需求，三十年战争后促进了西方燧发枪的诞生，对于清朝来说周边没有敌人，在与俄罗斯于尼布楚作战的时候双方并没有科技上的差别，但是在一百年后清朝极度衰弱，这是中国王朝共性，中国最大的弱点就是庞大的地理和人口决定了统治非常困难，统治者稍不注意就会快速腐朽
Very good! I from Brazil
Hi Steve,
I am a user of LingQ and love your videos, but still have some comments and questions:
- In earlier videos you were commenting that falshcards are not the way to go and we should focus on LingQ types of training. However you said quite number of times that you used Flashcards yourself.
- Your progress in learning Chinese (after one yera you were translating articles etc.), it is a very enviable !
However I am not sure that average Chinese learners can achieve this level in one year , or even 3 for that matter.
Your talent is exceptional, and I think the community can benefit from guidance for those of us who are not as gifted, and slowly and very laboriously making our way throough the lenguage learning process, as to how to improve ourselves.
It's not about talent. If there was a talent for language learning, he could easily maintain all his languages at a decent level even after being away from them for years which they must be quite rusty. Also he would be able to learn a decent amount in a short period of time which I've never seen or heard of before. If he had talent, he could probably be fluent in Finnish within a year which I'd like to see when someone else lived in Finland and reached fluency after 2 years. It's all about motivation and resources
@@michaelrespicio5683 Maybe you are right about the use of the word. However, it is not common to get to a level that Steve describes in only one year of learning Chiense, I think. And needless to say to have command of the number of lenguages he has. So I would not argue about the word I used, just stating that average learner who put a lot of time and effort into learning, does not get to that level stellar achievements, and more advice for these kind of learners, that assume slower progress (despite investment of time and effort) can be useful
Steve Kaufman, i really am motivated by your video. I am a Nigerian who speaks Fulani, Hausa, English, Arabic and currently learning Hindi. I would like to know how long, on average, it would take to learn Chinese to a fluency level. Thank you
At least one year, but probably closer to three years depending on how much time you have to spend and how much opportunity to connect with native speakers. Good luck.
For me. I learn elementary Chinese within the month. I took one book for my basic and a my countries student who was learnt before Chinese in China. So we followed that book. Very very easy to learn and she helped me and directed me so well. I studied with her online by zoom. 2 times in a week. One class was 2 hours. Totally eight times during that month. I should say to people who afraid of learning Chinese this is not difficult at all. Instead of that it is very interesting really. Maybe i was motivated myself strong.
The book was HSK1, HSK2-4.
Hey Steve very interesting, your journey learning Chinese, just a small regarding the history of Gun powder; was invented in China as Chinese monks in the 9th century looked for a life-extending elixir thank you kind regards Worrell
Hey Steve, awesome video. I have a question if you dont mind. I see a lot of talks about how you can deconstruct a character and know the reading and the meaning by knowing the particals in most cases. is that something that you did? rn im studying Japanese and i remamber the kanji as a whole, is that a good thing to do with chinese? iv'e been following for a while, you are one of the few youtube linguists i trust. thank you!!
I didn't rely on the radicals too much at first but after a while I noticed them more and more but still really felt I had to learn each character. I found the phonetic side of the characters more helpful.
You can in many cases guess the meaning of a character by the radicals and the context. By sheer exposure it allows you to acquire familiarity with new characters and a vague sense of what they mean. This is how you treat unfamiliar characters when reading. It is just disruptive to the experience to look them all up. Maybe just once in a while, look up a character you are dying to know. As for pronunciation, the radicals are helpful only sometimes and half the time or more your guess will be wrong. But you don't need to know how to pronounce a character to get a sense of its meaning.
That's a unique feature of the Chinese language. Written Chinese has been around for millennia, and sure it has evolved over time, but even modern usage is strongly influenced by and borrows greatly from older forms of Chinese, especially when using idioms or being more poetic. Yet in all this time the characters have been pronounced in many different ways across regions and across eras. The characters themselves change less than the pronunciations assigned to them.
Amazing. No internet at that time. Immersion must not have been easy at that time
Hello Steve, it is possible to find Xiang Shang comedians on lingQ? I could not find them. I would like to try, maybe it will also work for me and thank you for your effort, your tips have helped me with Russian a big time, I am sure I can also do it with Chinese. :)
I would like to know how you managed to learn Chinese characters, which, for me, are the most difficult aspect of learning Chinese ?!
He did lots of flashcards and reading
Fighting dementia one language at a time.
What is dementia
@@SkincarewithAliKhalidI forgot
@@rickynoodles2816 what
@@SkincarewithAliKhalidhe forgot
@@SkincarewithAliKhalid
Maybe you already have learned what it is but if you haven't
It's a disease when you always forget literally everything even your friends, family, your life and so on
do you also make videos on history topics?
his passion started when he was 23 and it never died, you can still visibly see it in his eyes now
You can also see the hundreds of thousands of dollars these videos have made him over the years
I'm glad he kept it up.