My journey learning one of the hardest languages in the world -- Chinese

Attending an international school I had always wanted to speak a language other than English. Half my peers were speaking multiple languages around me and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Imagine having a mechanism to communicate with others without a select few others not knowing what you were saying? As someone who only spoke English, this was impossible for me!

My first attempt at learning a language was Italian when I was 18. I did so because my girlfriend at the time spoke Italian within her family, and also because Italian sounds, well, pretty damn cool. I did Duolingo for 3 weeks or so but got nowhere. I also got pretty bored of it. That same year I went with her to Taiwan and helped her settle in as she was doing a study abroad there to learn Chinese. That was my first exposure to a proper language learning environment, and again I thought it was the coolest thing ever watching these people learn such a mysterious, foreign language like Chinese full-time. How unique is it to see someone foreign speak an Asian language?

This prompted me, when I started university the following year, to take Chinese as elective courses. I did one Chinese class a semester for the entirety of my bachelors degree (6 semesters total). Doing so was a solid, forced way start learning Chinese in a committed way. However, I wasn't actually learning much. The extent of it was memorising how to write characters. Useful? No... not at all. Maybe as a party trick. How often have I written a character character at a party though? Zero.

I only really made some progress when after 2 years of university, that summer break I spent 5 weeks in China learning Chinese full-time at the Chinese Language Institute (CLI) in Guilin, China. Before I went I was super excited as I was like "after this trip, I'm gonna be so fluent". I spent a considerable chunk of my savings to be at CLI as it's expensive, but it's something I wanted to do because I wanted to be fluent! In reality, I barely scratched the surface of Chinese, but I actually started being able to be conversational. Basics. But still actually able to hold a conversation now.

To actually learn a language you need to be able to understand it. There's 4 pillars of language: writing, reading, speaking, and listening. The hardest part is listening. You can take your time reading. You can take your time writing. You can say words as slowly and as broken as you want. You can't have a conversation with someone unless you understand what they said -- and understanding a native speaker at native speed when they have thousands of words to choose from, is hard.

See here's the thing about language classes at university. The only skill you develop is writing, and maybe reading ability. And probably a terrible accent. Studying grammar (and 'theory') is not how you learn a language. To learn how to swim would you read about the various strokes, or would you jump in and see how you go? The latter is inevitable.

Anyway, those 5 weeks away involved being in the middle of nowhere in China having 4 hours a day of personal 1-on-1 Chinese teaching. It's all in a dormitory where you meet many others learning Chinese. Pretty cool. It's American-owned, so there's a load of American students there to make friends with.

I returned for my third year of uni feeling pretty smug when I started my now fifth class of Chinese. And to be fair I was noticeably better than my Australian peers. Whipping out 如果 instead of 要是, and tacking on 啊 on the end of every sentence felt like I was actually good. That all came crashing down when I realised half the class were native Chinese speakers who were taking the class for easy credit, who were all way, way, way better than me. I wanted to be fluent!

Fast forward 9 months and I've just graduated with my Bachelor's degree. I was feeling pretty burnt out and decided to take a gap year... but I had to do something productive. What could I do? Further my Chinese! Long story short, I went back to CLI for 4 weeks, but because it's expensive I had to move on after that. I had a contact who put me in touch with a lovely lady called Suzie -- Suzie was the founder of a wholesale fabric trading firm in Taiwan. She kindly let me do an internship there. No one there spoke English. Perfect.

I spent 9 months in Taipei studying Chinese for 3 hours every morning at the Mandarin Training Center (MLC) at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). As an aside, the gold standard of Chinese language learning institutes in the world is ICLP at NTU in Taipei, which is where my girlfriend at the time mentioned above went. A truly incredible institute. That's where nations send their diplomats to learn Chinese. True quality and I can attest to that interacting with students there. But it's insanely expensive. MLC is a great alternative -- waaaay cheaper, but still really fun! I actually got a scholarship for my first semester there, which only involves writing up a cover letter for your application.

So I did 3 hours of class in the morning (10 students to 1 teacher), and then would have lunch at 1pm, and then go to work from 2-6pm. Every weekday. It was a super cool balance of formal study, and then everyday speaking practice later at work. I started transitioning to 繁體字 (traditional characters) -- if you're going to Taiwan I would highly recommend doing so.

Around that time I started studying language theory and came across Matt vs Japan. Anyone who is deep with studying Japanese will know who this is. Matt was one of the pioneers of sharing how to reach true proficiency in a language on YouTube. He had one core principle: input is the most important thing. And it's true. If you want to get fluent in a language, you need a huge amount of exposure to native material. Specifically, comprehensible input is your best friend.

That means listening a TON, and reading a TON. I was already doing that by proxy at work, but I further incorperated his principles into my daily routine by watching a ton of Chinese TV shows. I coincidentally had a Taiwanese girlfriend at the time, and we spoke Chinese. This was by side-effect more listening practice, but also really good speaking practice and a great way to learn local slang.

Another thing I learnt from Matt was the benefit of Anki -- a flashcard software system. It gets a bit advanced at this point, but the premise is that based on your input (TV shows, books etc) you make flashcards and 'rep' these flashcards daily. The consequence is your vocabulary grows quickly and effectively.

And this was my system in Taiwan for 9 months. By the end I was reading Chinese novels (of course using a dictionary where neccessary) and I had a good understanding of Chinese material (TV shows etc.). I would say I was roughly at B2, maybe C1 level at my very peak. After my trip I returned to Australia and was way more comfortable interacting in Chinese than when I had left a year prior. I remember reading Chinese books on the tram and getting side eye from Chinese students around me. I started actually having the listening ability to hear people talk about me in Chinese at Chinese restaurants, boba tea shops etc. when they thought I couldn't understand them. I felt a bit like @xiaomanyc.

I continued engaging with Chinese when I could, but it was no longer the focus of my life. Over the next year I slowly stopped reading Chinese books, watching TV etc., and fast forward a couple years is where I'm at now. I'm not fluent like I was back then, but here and then I find myself in situations needing to speak Chinese and I've surprisingly still got a lot retained. Having that many in-person conversations sticks. If the conversation switches to something complex like politics or science, I'm cooked, but everyday stuff is still something I can engage in, which to be honest suits my needs right now. Back then I was obsessed with becoming fluent in Chinese -- I thought I would use it at work and just had to achieve fluency to achieve my goal of 'being able to converse in a code language'.

Present day my priorities have changed. I don't use it for work and I'm comfortable with the level I'm at now. I will tell you one thing, achieving native-like Chinese is near impossible. It takes YEARS of proper immersion to ACTUALLY get really fluent (C1/C2) -- it's so different to English. But it makes a good challenge.

2 months ago I started learning Spanish, which is WAY easier! I promised myself I would never put myself through something like Chinese again (Japanese, Arabic, Korean -- I'm looking at you guys). Maybe I'll do a blog post on Spanish soon :)

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! It was quite the journey. If you're learning Chinese and you have any questions feel free to reach out to me. I'll finish off by listing a couple of my recommended books and TV shows:

• 小王子 (The Little Prince -- novel)
• 活着 (Living -- novel)
• 我們與惡的距離 (The World Between Us -- TV show)
• 小資女孩向前衝 (Office Girl -- TV show)