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You don't necessarily need 10x effort (depending on your definition of "effort"). I'm a Hongkonger. I had lived in Montreal since I was 10 until I finished my
by k_sze 9y ago
You don't necessarily need 10x effort (depending on your definition of "effort").
I'm a Hongkonger. I had lived in Montreal since I was 10 until I finished my bachelor's degree.
I didn't really do Saturday schools. I tried that for one or two years but those really had no effect on my proficiency in Chinese.
Yet, I can confidently say that I'm fluent in four languages, if you count Mandarin and Cantonese as separate languages.
What you really need is motivation and environment.
For me, I was motivated to become good in English and French because I found Québécoises girls really attractive, so I naturally paid attention in English and French classes. I also had the environment because I was introduced, by my cousin, to play with Québécois kids early on in elementary school. I simply did not stick with other Hongkonger kids.
I also liked Chinese literature like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Jinyong's wuxia novels. So I just grabbed a Chinese dictionary and continued to learn Chinese on my own. I liked watching imperial court drama produced in Mainland China, so I watched a lot and learned my Mandarin accent that way. I don't regard that as "spending effort".
I still spoke Cantonese with my family so I got my mother tongue covered. Again, that's not effort.
- njloof 9y agoMontreal has been a revelation to me since I moved here from the US. My daughter came as an infant and enjoys conversing with her friends in French and with us in English. Working in tech, English is inescapable in programming contexts so I can understand the subject of conversation in French once I tune in to the accent.
- wenc 9y agoI mean this in the nicest possible way (as a former Montrealer who also belongs to a minority ethnic group), but it would seem that the way you write English is discernibly non-native and therefore there was a trade-off in fluency that was incurred in your language acquisition. Unfortunately in North America, there is a subtle social price that is paid for lack of complete fluency in English (French in Quebec). Imperfect fluency is often perceived differently in different ethnic groups. If a Western European person (say a French or Italian person) makes mistakes in their English, it is exotic, but if an East Asian person makes mistakes, they are foreign. Things being what they are, it actually makes sense for certain minority groups to optimize for 100% fluency in English, and merely satisfactory fluency in other languages. I grappled with the same issues the OP did, and ultimately came to the same conclusion. It doesn't have to be 10x effort however, I agree with you there, but any effort needs to not be at the expense of proficiency in English. p.s. some Asian children tend to overoptimize and aim for better-than-the-average-native-speaker's fluency in English. Their investment generally pays off. Arthur Chu of Jeopardy fame talks about this.