I think it really depends on if the word as Latin or Germanic roots.
Cause English had a lot of French influence. Gall bladder is easy cause itās Gallen Blase in German. But i also had to look up eaves. I find it super interesting what kind of words are new to different people.
I also had to look up all the sound example people cause i just didnāt know a lot of them which still trips me up cause i donāt have a solid image of them in my head.
The list of shame cause apparently i live behind pop culture shielding rock or something:
Chucky
Charlie Brown
Walter White
George Costanza
Casper
Quasimodo
Cupid.
I mostly still have no idea who they are and so i canāt really remember any funny mnemonics with them in it : (
I have the same issue with quite a few personage. I often search images for them, when Iām not that familiar with, so I have it fresh in my mind to make a strong visualisation.
Itās exactly the same thing for me. My work is creative (Iām a writer/narrative designer) so Iām usually suffering about coming up with stuff that are good enough, so Iām starving for tasks that I can do more mechanically and give me a sense of accomplishment. Doing HH (or WK before) does exactly that, so I also usually work on my reviews right after breakfast
Update time ^^
I had a two week break from my routine in July cause of traveling and illness but I have found my way back in fairly fast for my routine hating brain.
I am almost at a thousand learned characters and am finally starting to read books without having to look up every second character
For now I am only reading books that I have read before in English, but still.
Iāve also started watching way more comprehensible input videos on youube and started using the traditional Chinese version of āremembering the kanjiā, to get some handwriting practice in.
I am still unsure on how I should study grammar cause I feel I can not use the grammar points I studied. I can only use the ones someone explained and practiced with me in a conversation. Or grammar that I have encountered hundreds of times in reading or listening. Does anyone have tips on acquiring grammar more efficiently or do I just keep going with the comprehensible input?
Take every I say with a grain of salt, but I personally find that just hearing/reading something in the wild, even if I understand it, doesnāt let me start using it very quickly (true for both words and grammar structures etc). Trying to deduce grammar from ONLY input isnāt impossible, but for me itās significantly harder than just reading the rules directly (I know some people swear by input only, but doing that to me sounds like trying to learn poker by watching people play when you could just spend 5 minutes and read the rules saving so much time).
So Iāve been going through the Chinese Grammar wiki slowly. Once or twice a week Iāll read the page and just understand it it, no memorization. Sometimes Iāll pick a topic at random, other times Iāll look up a specific structure Iāve seen somewhere (e.g. āhow do ę sentences work?ā). Any of the example sentences I like/think Iād use I then add to an Anki deck that I study. I donāt try to memorize the rules themselves, just the implementation of the rule if that makes sense.
(Oh and I also make sure I study both hearing the sentence (yay text to speech) as well as producing it - only doing input cards doesnāt work for me, need the production cards as well!)
You shouldnāt be worrying about output at all and just input. This is generally common practice with immersion learning, to not really output until you can understand a good amount of NATIVE content and at least feel confident while doing it. You described your own issue, you simply cant really learn how to use any grammar just by studying it. You can understand all the theory behind how to swim, but youāll never be able to swim until you actually do it. You need first hand experience with the language, whether that is hundreds of hours of listening or reading, or acquiring it via conversation. But generally, it is way more efficient (and fun) to focus solely on input, as you both will improve your vocab as well as contextual awareness. Once you get to a high level of understanding input, you will find that output just becomes very natural as by that point your brain is already likely able to think in Mandarin, and your passive vocabulary will start converting to active vocabulary with rather little effort.
If you are really struggling with certain grammar points, then donāt be afraid to review them on the Chinese grammar wiki every once in a while. Sometimes these things maybe will just take tens or hundreds of hours of immersion to acquire anyways, and studying wonāt speed that up!
As a last resort, if you really canāt afford to spend so much time on immersion (generally as a baseline, should try to do at least 2-4 hours a day of a ratio of 3:1 listening to reading), make a custom Anki deck early, and mine sentence cards based off of sentences from your immersion. Once you get to the level of being able to understand quite a few sentences in Mandarin or if you are at that level, Iād say to switch to production cards then with both sides in Mandarin. It trains to think in the language as well. NEVER just use Anki to study grammar points individually, however, because youāll never be able to rotely memorize a grammar point, theres simply too much nuance.
The science on this is very much disputed from everything Iāve read. Input is awesome and you do need a lot, not denying that at all, but the idea to delay output until youāre able to understand almost everything isnāt really supported as far as I can tell (lots of anecdotes for/against it, but there isnāt decades of solid research to back either side up and the few papers out there are inconclusive as a whole).
It depends on your goals of course, if you only want to read then practicing output probably isnāt important for you - but as someone who only wants to have conversations (Iām just learning to chat with my in-laws) practicing output early has been critical to my success and I personally highly recommend the āspeak from day 1ā approach*. Youāre quote about ānot being able to swim until you jump inā is very apt - to me you canāt learn to talk (IMHO) without talking.
For what itās worth I think input only can absolutely work for some people - I just donāt think itās true for everyone or some universally ābestā way to learn a language (definitely wasnāt for me).
(*Speaking early should be coupled with appropriate feedback of course - you donāt want to build bad habits, but as long as you have teacher, tutor, native language partner etc that shouldnāt be a problem.)
I have been doing exactly that but i can find no benefit from it, i retain almost nothing. I usually would go through all the examples reading them out loud, writing some down. And then come back to it a few days later to do it again. Grammar flashcards also donāt seem to be working for me.
I have already acquired fluency in English and to a lesser degree in Japanese that way.
I hoped maybe someone has tried specific output exercises or has better grammar resources or ideas on how to study grammar.
Other then immersion and flashcards, cause the first one takes forever if you donāt live in a Mandarin speaking country and the second one just doesnāt work for me specifically.
My biggest problem with the āspeak from day 1ā thing is that i just canāt. I am too scared.
It took me 7 months of living in a Japanese host family to start speaking in Japanese. And even now with my Chinese speaking friends I canāt bring myself to speak even if I know how to say something.
There is a possibility that there is no other ways of acquiring grammar for me then just waiting until i haven the break through to speaking but i am exploring all my options.
If someone knows if there are any good grammar workbooks in traditional Chinese let me know i might be able to go through a workbook with one of my Taiwanese friends.
I feel like speaking becomes easier if itās not about being understood in real conversation, cause it takes the frustration of wanting to communicate something ārealā or important, out of the equation.
This made me think of a new question. Can anyone recommend exercises or games for one on one language exchange?
Aforementioned Taiwanese friend is learning German (my native tongue) and I am learning Mandarin. At the moment we always want to practice together but end up switching back to English pretty quickly.
Generally nothing here is disagreeable, and as I said it is the general practice to just focus on input for a whileā¦ But it isnāt an exact science, different things work for everyone, and output maybe will help with your remembering a lot. And in your case of course you have different goals, and so outputting early makes sense. However, my point wasnāt really that doing only input is beneficial, more that doing input and output at an early stage you kind of learn nothing more than just input. Output at an early stage is basically in the best case scenario, still just comprehensible input but less efficient. It doesnāt really help with the learning and acquisition of language that much, which should be everyoneās top priority regardless of their goals.
The reasoning and science behind this thinking is pretty simple, your input is essentially a hard ceiling. The level of proficiency you will be able to reach via output, is hard dependent on the level of proficiency you have in understanding and listening. You wonāt be able to acquire new words or grammar while writing for example, that can only really be done via immersion. Thus, you will ALWAYS be limited by this ceiling, and it wont ever really advance your understanding of the language.
So, you wonāt be harmed by doing immersion early, but you wonāt benefit much either and it does take away from time which could be spent in immersion. So generally, you can do it (hell, I wont pretend like I didnāt do it in Japanese for fun talking to people) but itās not efficient for learning, and may even be frustrating compared to immersing. It gets more efficient however as you get better at understanding the language, as once you begin to get pretty good at understanding a languageās vocabulary, generally then the issue most people have is that they still donāt have an automatic understanding of the language. Training output at this later stage then, is not only alot easier because your ceiling is so high but it then forces your brain to essentially train itās āpredictionā skills for the language which also directly translate to a skill in listening/reading as well.
I do believe the above is supported, but again I think it is different for everyone so this is just what I think is true on it.
This is a little bit of a strange statement. Immersion isnāt dependent on where you live (this is a common misconception, your progress in immersion has nothing to do with where you live, because wherever you live youāll still be consuming the same media for immersion regardless. if you want good sources for native media to immerse with check Notion ā The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. ). And as I said, you canāt learn through flashcards anyways. At best, if you donāt want to do immersion at all you can just try to speak constantly in mandarin but immersion is still a ceiling that will hold you backā¦ So yeah, even if it takes hundreds of hours. Also thereās not really any particular output exercises I could recommend besides talking, writing something, or making production cards, so itās up to you.
When it comes to conversation when you have a language partner, something I have heard is effective is ācross talkā, essentially you talk in your native language, and they talk in their native language. And then later on, or if you get bored or something, you can switch the roles and both talk in your target languages instead. Itās a useful exercise as you both get practice and its more comfortable, though obviously youāll struggle depending on your listening/reading skills.
