Languages
Languages aren't really my forte, but along with English I speak a little bit of Russian (Русский), and my 2023/24 new year's resolution was to learn a bit of Chinese (中文).
There are a few reasons that I chose to try to learn Chinese, rather than any other language.
- Having already learnt two alphabets, I thought it would be cool to learn another new writing system, so I ruled out languages that use the latin or cyrillic alpabets.
- My father's father's mother's father emigrated to Australia from China in the 1850's, and I thought it would be great to honour that connection.
- About 900 million people speak Mandarin and millions more speak other Chinese dialects, so speaking some form of Chinese opens up the possibility of being able to communicate with a vast number of new people.
- There is a sizable Chinese community in Melbourne, and a good number of Chinese speakers at my work that I can practice my Mandarin on.
I've heard it said that learning a third language is easier than learning a second language. I hope that's true, and given how many more free online language learning resources there are now compared to when I started learning Russian I think it probably will be. (Well that's what I'm telling myself anyway.)
My Goals
A common language learning tip is to set yourself some goals, so that's what I've done, and here they are:
- Get my Mandarin speaking skills to the point where I can have a simple conversation with someone who doesn't speak any English by the end of 2027.
- Read the Chinese version of Startide Rising (one of my favourite English language novels) cover to cover and understand it pretty well before the end of 2028.
- Create a Youtube about my Chinese learning journey that gets at least 200 views and 5 comments by the end of 2026.
To a lot of people goal (1) probably sounds a lot easier than goal (2), but I'm not so sure.
When it comes to Russian, I can definitely understand written Russian better than I can understand spoken Russian, and I'm pretty sure that will turn out to be the case with Mandarin too. I read the Russian version of the Startide Rising a few years ago, and while I'm not saying I understood it pefectly I was able to understand most of what was going on.
The other reason I think that goal (2) might be easier for me than goal (1) is because at the time of writing I have exactly one copy of the Chinese version of Startide Rising and exactly zero Mandarin speaking friends that don't speak English.
So I guess that begs the question of how I'm going to find a Chinese language learning buddy? I feel the best sort of language learning buddy is someone who benefits as much or more from talking to me than I do from talking to them, so my plan is to make myself an attractive option for someone to talk to, and have them contact me. But how? What sets me apart from other language learners? As it happens I do a bit of web-page and app building for fun, and I've already built a few rudimentary Chinese learning apps to help me learn, and I was thinking I could modify and improve them to help Chinese speakers learn English. I've also set up a fairly successful wiki in the past with over a 1000 members, and I'm thinking I could try to build a language learning community around a wiki and web-pages and apps.
Having said that, at the time of writing I am nearly 8 months into my Chinese learning journey, and while there are websites that have been useful, it is some of the Youtube Channels set up for Chinese language learners that have been super helpful to me, and so I've been thinking recently that I might have to incorporate some videos into my grand plan as well.
Now, I'm not great at public speaking, and as they say I have a great face for radio, but what the hell - I'm going to give it at go, which explains goal (3).
Wish me luck!!
Wayne's Language Learning Apps
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