With Chinese, I felt like sunk a lot of time into memorizing characters for the illusion of progress without actually learning how to engage with the language.

With Chinese, I felt like sunk a lot of time into memorizing characters for the illusion of progress without actually learning how to engage with the language. On the other hand, with Korean, I spent some time up front learning to type, and that paid dividends as I was able to text with people and read maps before long. Maybe if I had learned characters in Chinese not with the goal of being a master calligrapher, but with the goal of communicating with other people using today's tools, they would have had similar benefits.