Chinese, prejudice and hyperfocus

你好!

If you follow me on twitter (which you most likely do), you probably noticed that I’ve been… quite excited about Chinese. And I will keep gushing about it in there, but why not try to gather some of the more occurring thoughts in one place and make a blog post out of it?

It’s actually hilarious. At the beginning of the month I was writing a post about what makes a language difficult (for me) and I did write about the ones I thought were the hardest. Chinese and German, Chinese being first.

I’ve seen Chinese Dramas. The pronunciation is so fast, and it's hard to distinguish the words (it was to me when I was 16, not my fault!). Also, the writing system. I thought the alphabet worked pretty much like Kanji does – multiple readings for multiple contexts. Chinese, however, relied solely on the difficult characters. And without the support of other alphabets like katakana and hiragana, how the heck would I learn it?

The answer is simple: I wouldn’t.

Nope, I’d stay on my lane and never mess with Chinese.

Until… I’ll spare you from the “it was Miraculous Ladybug’s influence!” because you must be tired of me saying it so often (even though it’s true!). I wanted nothing to do with Chinese until my plan to study Korean this month failed and I decided to take a peek at the Chinese course on LingQ because… why not?

I listened to the audio of one lesson. Nice pronunciation, cool. Closed LingQ. Life went on. Until I had to go back to the course because I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

You’ve probably heard it before. “Let me just see how this language works”, and an “out of curiosity” moment turns out to be life changing.

That’s why you don’t have to be scared to explore this amazing world of languages, and words and cultures. YSure, be careful not to push yourself too hard or to mess with the languages you’re already learning, but be curious. Try other languages that intrigue you, languages that you cannot stop thinking about. Play with them, try cramming for two days just to see how it goes. Learn a bunch of random sentences. Learn the same random sentence in 20 different languages. Find what entertains you and have fun.

Well, that’s how this whole thing started.

Then I fell for Chinese. I fell hard.

I wasn’t expecting it. At all. As I mentioned before, I had this preconception about Chinese, and even without it, the plan was just to dabble with it in between studying French and Japanese. Vacation is over? So is Chinese. Time to move on.

... nope. No, no, no.

I don’t know how exactly it happened, or rather…

Cue to the dramatic music.

“[…] I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”(I’m quoting The Fault In Our Stars because I am feeling the cheesiness of someone who just met their soulmate)

And look! As I typed the last paragraph, I felt bad because it did sound like I’m putting French and Japanese aside by speaking so highly of Chinese. That is not my intention at all!

In all honesty, I do think that working on my Chinese is going to help me with my Japanese. Other people have said it before, that the similarities between the writing systems kinda help, but I want to share what it means to me specifically.

I’ve said it at the beginning of this post, but I went for Chinese totally expecting a handful of different readings for the same character, intense memorization and having to improve my guessing game. So imagine my shock when I was going through a LingQ lesson and I realized that the characters did not change?! Yes, I am aware that some of them do have multiple readings but the ones I’ve seen so far don’t. And it did make me really excited.

Chinese is logical. It does make sense!

I have a theory – that the logic behind the characters, the patterns, they are just THE SHIT for my autistic brain. Therefore I get all excited to explore the patterns and combinations (Yeah, I am sorry for the vocabulary over there).

Whether that’s the case or not, hanzi (is that correct?) is logical and I just have to familiarize myself with it! I’ve been having a lot of fun writing (and then staring at my writing for solids five minutes) and piecing together the readings.

And it all made me want to study kanji! The urge to sit down and unravel this world of pronunciations, combinations and calligraphy is growing in me at an unbelievable pace. Can you believe me? I said I want to study kanji!

It seems that I am overcoming yet another prejudice. I was terrified of, constantly complaining about kanji, and although that still happens, well… It is changing, it seems? Don’t you think that it’s funny that the more I get into languages, the more prejudices I overcome?

Language learning is an eye opening experience in so many ways!

I also got to experience some personal development. Overcoming prejudice number 3: for Chinese, I’m using word lists and color coding.

I won’t get into too much detail about my study methods (would you want a post of me breaking down how I’m doing it?), but when I first joined the language learning community, I saw the good old “word lists don’t work” and the reasoning for it did make sense so… I never tried it myself?

I am more or less comfortable with my methods for Japanese and French. But Chinese is an entirely different language and in this context I found that word lists do work?! And it’s been fun!

I’m working with things I never thought would work. Sure, there are methods that are “outdated” and others with better scientific explanation to support them. It is awesome that we are finding new ways to learn, but don’t be scared to try out different, less popular methods – even if those methods are the outrageous traditional methods. Trust me, discovering what works for you makes a huge difference – and is also motivating!

We have all those interesting reasons as to why I am in love with Chinese but another theory is that Chinese is a hyperfocus… we will have to see if that holds up. It's a mix of all those things, most likely, but I really hope this excitement does not fade away.

I am really happy with Chinese.

To wrap it up, one big question.

I fell in love with Chinese. What happens next?

Good question! (insert panicked noises)

I am on vacation. But soon classes will be back and I’ll have to manage that on top of my language learning. And for me, someone who has attention/time management/executive issues… well, that’s a lot. Not impossible, but a lot.

My idea is to create a routine. I will do my research on it and try to create a strict plan to orientate my language learning. I want it to be as detailed as possible – even though I have no idea of how I am going to do it.

Since I’m enjoying LingQ, I haven’t looked that much into other resources. I will stick to the website until my subscription ends. If I can renew it, then I’ll try to finish the three courses I started (80 lessons in total) by the end of the year.

I will also find helpful apps so I can study on my phone (I’m not the best at making use of my dead time but who knows) and just… be prepared. Even that tiny review before bed is something, right?

And then, a textbook. God, I can’t wait to have a job so I can afford my polyglot dream! I want a Chinese textbook so I have another orientated resource in hands (although… a simple characters workbook would keep me occupied for ages). Still looking into it, but it’s a goal of mine to get a textbook and just… work hard on it?

I am excited. I want more and more of Chinese and I wish I could spend the whole day working on it. Really. It makes a lot of sense to me and I am excited to explore this new territory – which seems so great and fun and interesting!

Maybe I should immerse myself on it so I don’t lose touch with the language. That would be nice.

That would be very nice.