an order of magnitude (HSK)

I ordered the following 3 books from amazon.co.jp yesterday. They will be arriving tomorrow.

   

These are for the HSK test levels 1 & 2. Those are the lowest two levels. I bought one text for level 1 and one text for level 2. The third book is a collection of 5 previous tests of level 2. Both of the the textbooks have a mock test at the end of the book.

In case you are unable to tell, the books are written in Japanese.  Each book has a CD as well.

The level 1 test requires knowledge of only 150 words.  The level 2 test adds another 150 words for a grand total of 300 words!

too few learners of Chinese

Even though many more people have taken up the study of Chinese, there are still not enough doing so, according to this article. It says there are 40 million foreigners learning Chinese. But how many will actually become speakers of Chinese? I think the drop out rate is very high. And what percentage of learners reach a decent level of reading skill in Chinese?

For reading, it really helps to know what word to expect next. If you know what words are likely to come next then you can read much faster with only a glance at the words or characters. Just like a cloze test, if you can't fill in the blanks then you are not familiar enough with the language so while reading you have to do a lot more work. In Chinese and Japanese as well, it becomes much more critical because there is often no clue to the pronunciation of the words. A strong knowledge of the language will make reading much easier which is why I would recommend learners to put off learning to read Chinese or Japanese until they have a good command of the language.

To me, it does not matter how many learners there are of Chinese if the success rate is low. If, for example, you have 100 million learners of Chinese but only 10 million of them are successful, that is worse than having 40 million learners where 20 million succeed. What we must consider is the final outcome and not just the number "in progress."

My formula for success is listening, then speaking, then reading, and finally writing. Each one reinforces the next. If all aspects of language learning are undertaken at once, then where is the reinforcement?

Japanese makes Mandarin Chinese look easy

People tend to think that Japanese and Chinese are at about the same difficulty when it comes to English speakers learning them. I disagree. English and Chinese word order are more similar to each other than Japanese word order. Chinese grammar is much easier than either English or Japanese. Chinese words, such as verbs, never change shape. Japanese verbs are like transformers! Japanese characteristics are more round about, but Chinese are more straight forward like English. Since Japanese borrowed the Chinese characters, they also borrowed Chinese words. So there are many duplicate words in Japanese and the writing system is a mess. The only thing that is easier in Japanese is pronunciation. For everything else, you will need tons upon tons of exposure to get used to Japanese.

I am not yet an expert in Chinese, so I like to cite this article which clearly shows a difference. Keep in mind that the author learned both languages at DLI. That is the Defense Language Institute. He studied Mandarin before Japanese, so he was an experienced language learner when he studied Japanese. He was put through an intensive course and he didn't find that to be particularly difficult. Then he spent over 7 years in Japan and still didn't feel comfortable with the language. And he was not the only one who felt that way.

Japanese is hard to get used to. People keep changing their speech so you don't get enough exposure to it. The writing system can write things in different ways, so again you are robbed of exposure. You always stop to think about the verb form even though the meaning doesn't change. Well, you don't always stop to think, and then you end up not saying it the way that you know is better.

Anway, I'm going to paste that article in here because I'm afraid that one day it will no longer be available through the link. Please read the whole article. It is quite interesting. So, here it is:

Chinese Mandarin is Easy

Comparing Its Difficulty with Japanese, German, and Spanish

by Mike Wright

"The biggest impediment to learning Mandarin seems to be fear--sometimes caused by the teachers. I've studied quite a few languages, and none of them were as easy for me as Mandarin."

What I came to believe is that Mandarin is pretty easy for native English speakers, while Japanese is one of the most difficult. Mandarin syntax is easy to teach using pattern drills. Furthermore, Mandarin sentence order is similar to English--but simpler, having no inflections (thus no irregularities) and with gender, number, tense, etc. being optional, whereas they are obligatory for most of the world's languages. The only difficult part of spoken Mandarin is the tone system. Even that isn't a big problem for practical use. I know that my tones have always been weak, but when I was using the language regularly, I had no problem communicating. What turned out to be more important was to adapt to the basic pronunciation and vocabulary used by the average Hokkien speaker when speaking Mandarin. Of course, I never got to go to China. I do remember how wonderful it was to run across a native of Beijing or Tianjin in Taiwan--it was so clear.

The biggest impediment to learning Mandarin seems to be fear--sometimes caused by the teachers. I've studied quite a few languages, and none of them were as easy for me as Mandarin.

Mandarin was my first serious language, after some Spanish and German in high school and college, and it was the easiest by far.

Comparison with Japanese

I didn't find Japanese too difficult while studying it at Defense Language Institute, but when I arrived in Japan, I found that I had a lot of trouble communicating. This was very different from my experience with Mandarin. When I arrived in Taiwan, I could pretty much discuss any topic. On the other hand, I spent a total of 7.5 years in Japan, much of it associating with people who spoke little or no English, yet I never felt confident in the language. It's not so much the syntax--the conjugation of verbs and adjectives is quite regular--but the way the language is used. In many respects, it seems to be as much a problem of culture as of language per se.

Japanese syntax, as usually taught in schools, covers about 25 percent of the syntax. Even Defense Language Institute probably wasn't able to cover more than about 60 percent. It's not that it's so difficult--there's just so much of it. Compared with conversational Mandarin, there seem to be many more common ways of expressing any particular idea. The Japanese seem to be more fond of synonyms, too, leading to the need for more vocabulary items. Japanese culture adds to the burden. The Japanese don't like to just come right out and make blunt statements. They talk around the subject. By comparison, Chinese speakers and English speakers are very much alike. They tend to be direct and precise. Although this is a matter of culture, it has a big impact on the ease or difficulty of learning the language of a particular culture.

So, I'd say that what made Japanese difficult for me (and for all of my fellow Defense Language Institute graduates) is that there seems to be so much of it, and that it's spoken by people who are living in the Japanese culture.

Many of my friends had similar experiences, including one who graduated from the Japanese course with a 98 average--the highest on record. He was quite angry when he arrived in Japan and found that he couldn't get around in the language as he had been able to do with Mandarin in Taiwan.

Comparison with German and Spanish

In comparison, German and Spanish are difficult because of inflection and gender. Although many people consider these languages easy because of the large number of English cognates, my personal experience is that vocabulary is nothing. You will pick up as much as you need--as you need it. The really tricky part is the syntax. If you don't have that down, no amount of vocabulary will save you.

Why I am studying Chinese

Here are some reasons why I finally restarted learning Chinese even though I am not yet fluent in Japanese.

I started last year, after passing the 3 year mark in Japan. I felt that I still had a ways to go in Japanese, and since I will be here forever, I have plenty of time to get there. And when I do get there, it won't be any astonishing feat. If I could have learned Japanese in less than 3 years, then that would have been great. But since it's going to take me 10 years, I might as well get started on something else.

I didn't know any good materials or methods for learning Japanese. All I can find are some textbooks. So I could see the end was nowhere in sight. I felt I might as well move on because Chinese is going to take a lot of time too.

I found a good learning Chinese podcast. And then there was FSI Chinese online. So I thought I could get started with some free materials.

Actually, I had planned to do Korean before Chinese. But since all the Chinese materials appeared, I just launched into Chinese.

I bought Assimil Chinese with Ease and started on it in December (2006) after the JLPT. I have now worked with my Assimil course for 157 hours. I cut the spaces and pauses out of the audio and I just listen to the dialogue. My objective is to listen to every dialogue 1,000 times. I estimate about 500 more hours to do that. I am currently through lesson 64.

I guess I'm in no rush. It's not like I'm going to China or anything. So I'm going to overlearn the Assimil lessons and use that as my foundation to build upon. By the time the Chinese language really does become globally important, I'll be one of the people who can understand it.

My Chinese studies

I am currently studying Mandarin via Assimil Chinese with Ease. First of all, I have removed the pauses and created audio files with just one dialog each. This allows me to repeatedly go over the material 5 to 10 times instead of just once, in the same time span as the original files. I want to chorus with the audio of each lesson hundreds of times. I had intended to do each lesson for one hour each day and then move on to the next lesson the next day.

Well, it turns out that so much speaking is really strenuous on my vocal chords. I have discovered that I can only do this kind of intense activity for 5 minutes at a time. Then I need a couple of hours of rest. So, instead of an hour, I have only been doing about 10 minutes a night. I still want to spend an hour on each lesson, so it is taking 5 or 6 days per lesson now. At this rate, it will take me another 16 months to finish the course. I really do not want to go so slowly.

I think I could get 4~5 sessions done in a day. One before going to work. One during lunch. One as soon as I get home after work. Another one a couple of hours later. And a final one before I go to bed. That would make 20 to 25 minutes a day. But maybe that would still be too much for my throat and mouth. Muscles usually need a day to fully recover. It's like typing. Even though I use a computer all the time, everyday, I don't constantly type every minute. I type a bit and then think for awhile. I don't have any problem from this normal amount of use. But if I do data entry, then I will notice I can only do so much typing.

JLPT in China

It looks like the Japanese Language Proficiency Test is really popular in China. There's this news article about it which I'll paste here. It says that 200,000 people in China took the Japanese language test this year. That is an increase of 46% over last year.

＜日本語試験＞中国で２０万人超が挑戦　前年比４６％増

　【上海・大谷麻由美】日本語を母語としない人が対象の日本語能力試験が３日、日本を含む世界４８カ国で実施され、約５３万人が受験した。若者の日本語ブームを背景に受験者が年々増加している中国は今年、前年比４６％増の２１万１５９１人が受験し、過去最高だった。
　日本国内では日本国際教育支援協会、海外は国際交流基金が年１回、試験を実施する。外国人が日本の大学に留学する際の選考にも活用される。
　急速な経済発展に伴い、日系企業の進出が増加している中国では、日本語ができる人材の需要が高まった。若者の就職難も続いており、「日本語ができると就職に有利」として、日本語学習がブームとなっている。
　日本語能力試験では中国の受験者数が世界最多。今年の受験応募者数は、海外では韓国（９万３７５０人）が中国に次ぐが、米国が２８１６人、フランス１１８７人、英国７８１人と、中国の多さが際立っている。
　中国では０４年、受験申し込みの受け付け開始から１時間もたたずに定員（約１０万人）に達した。受験できず留学を先送りせざるを得ない学生が続出し批判が高まった。このため０５年に中国国内の受験会場を１４都市から２４都市に増やし、今年はさらに２９都市に拡大した。

Speaking of China, now that my supposed study for the JLPT is over, I've resumed my Chinese studies. I'm now using Assimil With Ease. I edited out the exercises so that I just have the dialogue and I removed all the spaces. So I've got the first lesson down to 15 seconds. I loop the audio and start speaking along with the dialogue. I worked on it for one hour in which it looped 250 times. I only spoke the part of one person at a time. Doing both parts was too tiring.

I started on lesson 2 today but my throat quickly became sore. I'll have to build up those muscles for speaking.

Vox25.mp3

Mandarin time capsule

Here is my first time capsule! It is me reading some FSI Chinese sentences. I've been listening to Mandarin for 4 months, but only listening, no speaking. So this is my first attempt to say these sentences out loud. There are 64 sentences and it takes approximately 5 minutes. I listened to them a lot at the end of May, and I may have listened to the FSI lessons and drills a couple of more times after that. I have not listened to any of them for over a month now. In this time capsule, I am just reading the sentences in pinyin with no tone marks at all. I do not think about the tones at all when I say the sentences, except there are a couple of sentences I repeated once or twice because I knew they sounded way off when they first came out of my mouth.

I do not think I am "good" at Chinese. I just wanted to make this time capsule. This is how I sound now speaking Mandarin without any speaking practice, just listening practice. Though, my listening of these sentences is not really fresh. I am just reading the sentences and this is how they come out of my mouth. My study now consists of only listening, not speaking, so my voice is not used to saying any of these words.

If you have any honest comments that you would like to leave, you may certainly do so. I am not looking for any praise. I do not think I deserve any. I am not looking for any encouragement either. I do not need any. But if you want to leave a comment, then go ahead. If you think my Mandarin is really bad, which is probably the case, you may say so if you feel the need to. I will be fine if nobody leaves any comments. That's ok too. So I only ask that if you do leave a comment, please be honest.

Mandarin_Time_Capsule_01.mp3