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It's interesting that almost all of the reasons apply to the written language. I took Mandarin in college and found the tricks I was taught to learn the charact

It's interesting that almost all of the reasons apply to the written language. I took Mandarin in college and found the tricks I was taught to learn the characters were mostly useless. You simply had to memorize everything by brute force. The spoken language has a simple grammar and aside from the tones you can probably get to a passable level within a year if you live in Beijing and actually interact with people in Chinese.

tokenadult 16y ago
Setting aside literacy is costly, and I have seen a lot of learners of Chinese who go over to Chinese-speaking places do that. But I agree with the statement that Chinese people will probably be well able to intercommunicate with a dedicated Westerner who immerses himself in the standard language of China for a year--but largely because the speakers of the standard language in China are well used to nonstandard speech from the lips of their own compatriots who grew up in other regions. I can pass for a native of China over the telephone--not because my Chinese is so wonderful, but because China is so full of citizens who speak Mandarin poorly as a second language.
- starkfist 16y ago
  It depends what you consider costly. I switched to Japanese after college and moved to Japan for a year. Rather than learning anything about the writing system, I took a 6 week conversation crash course before leaving. When I got there I just mastered the accent and some of the cultural communication idosyncrasies like "active listening" rather than spending time reading and writing anything. I ended up going on far more dates with women than I ever have in my life prior (or after) and had two really cool girlfriends. In contrast my friend who was obsessed with mastering Japanese had no friends at all for about 3 years. Nobody wanted to talk to him because his accent was so grating. I feel like his approach was far more "costly" if you consider "social cost" a real factor. In terms of real economic value I have come to the conclusion that a native english speaker mastering another language rarely pays off, in a financial sense. The main benefit is establishing relationships with people you wouldn't be able to meet, otherwise.
  - chipsy 16y ago
    Accent seems to be way more important than vocabulary or grammar for social situations. It's easier to "fix" an imperfect sentence construction in your head and infer missing meanings from gestures and pictures than it is to decipher an extremely thick accent.
rsheridan6 16y ago
I used the Heisig method to learn about 2100 characters in 9 months (about an hour a day). I'm sure I would not have been able to do that by brute force.
- dkarl 16y ago
  I am on hiatus from learning Japanese while I do Heisig. I intend to start learning Japanese again after finishing book one of RTK. Do you think that's a good idea? I found that kanji frustration was a huge drag on my learning, to the point of making it really boring, so I figure once I've got Heisig down cold, I'll be able to pick up kanji quickly and learn Japanese at a more natural (and more fun) pace. I'd be very interested to hear what you think about that idea since you went through the entire Heisig program.
  - rsheridan6 16y ago
    I can vouch for Heisig as an effective way to learn Kanji. It requires a lot of patience because it takes months (some people have done it in one month, but they must be totally obsessed) and at the end of it you still can't read a thing, and, let's face it, learning 2000+ kanji is a beast of a job regardless of what technique you use. But if you can handle delayed gratification, it'll do the job. I can't say how it compares to brute force, but I don't think I would have finished 2000 kanji the brute force way. I don't think kanji are really a big problem after Heisig book 1, especially if you're reading online with Rikaichan or something like that, but you'll still see quite a few unfamiliar ones. If you do it, check out http://kanji.koohii.com/ http://kanji.koohii.com/ and read the stories that other people have posted, if you haven't already. Heisig leaves it up to you to write the last 1500 or so stories, which can be difficult. Even for the first 500 kanji, some of the stories at that website fix mistakes in Heisig or point out primitives that aren't introduced till later (there are quite a few primitives introduced in book 3 that are used without noting that they are primitives in book 1). And definitely use an SRS like Anki.

tokenadult 16y ago

Setting aside literacy is costly, and I have seen a lot of learners of Chinese who go over to Chinese-speaking places do that. But I agree with the statement that Chinese people will probably be well able to intercommunicate with a dedicated Westerner who immerses himself in the standard language of China for a year--but largely because the speakers of the standard language in China are well used to nonstandard speech from the lips of their own compatriots who grew up in other regions. I can pass for a native of China over the telephone--not because my Chinese is so wonderful, but because China is so full of citizens who speak Mandarin poorly as a second language.

starkfist 16y ago
It depends what you consider costly. I switched to Japanese after college and moved to Japan for a year. Rather than learning anything about the writing system, I took a 6 week conversation crash course before leaving. When I got there I just mastered the accent and some of the cultural communication idosyncrasies like "active listening" rather than spending time reading and writing anything. I ended up going on far more dates with women than I ever have in my life prior (or after) and had two really cool girlfriends. In contrast my friend who was obsessed with mastering Japanese had no friends at all for about 3 years. Nobody wanted to talk to him because his accent was so grating. I feel like his approach was far more "costly" if you consider "social cost" a real factor. In terms of real economic value I have come to the conclusion that a native english speaker mastering another language rarely pays off, in a financial sense. The main benefit is establishing relationships with people you wouldn't be able to meet, otherwise.
- chipsy 16y ago
  Accent seems to be way more important than vocabulary or grammar for social situations. It's easier to "fix" an imperfect sentence construction in your head and infer missing meanings from gestures and pictures than it is to decipher an extremely thick accent.

rsheridan6 16y ago

I used the Heisig method to learn about 2100 characters in 9 months (about an hour a day). I'm sure I would not have been able to do that by brute force.

dkarl 16y ago
I am on hiatus from learning Japanese while I do Heisig. I intend to start learning Japanese again after finishing book one of RTK. Do you think that's a good idea? I found that kanji frustration was a huge drag on my learning, to the point of making it really boring, so I figure once I've got Heisig down cold, I'll be able to pick up kanji quickly and learn Japanese at a more natural (and more fun) pace. I'd be very interested to hear what you think about that idea since you went through the entire Heisig program.
- rsheridan6 16y ago
  I can vouch for Heisig as an effective way to learn Kanji. It requires a lot of patience because it takes months (some people have done it in one month, but they must be totally obsessed) and at the end of it you still can't read a thing, and, let's face it, learning 2000+ kanji is a beast of a job regardless of what technique you use. But if you can handle delayed gratification, it'll do the job. I can't say how it compares to brute force, but I don't think I would have finished 2000 kanji the brute force way. I don't think kanji are really a big problem after Heisig book 1, especially if you're reading online with Rikaichan or something like that, but you'll still see quite a few unfamiliar ones. If you do it, check out http://kanji.koohii.com/ http://kanji.koohii.com/ and read the stories that other people have posted, if you haven't already. Heisig leaves it up to you to write the last 1500 or so stories, which can be difficult. Even for the first 500 kanji, some of the stories at that website fix mistakes in Heisig or point out primitives that aren't introduced till later (there are quite a few primitives introduced in book 3 that are used without noting that they are primitives in book 1). And definitely use an SRS like Anki.