New Mission: Fluent Mandarin in 3 months!

哇，Benny,沒想到新年你學的第一種語言就是中文！讓我太驚訝啦！所以我決定用中文來留言一次，哈哈。
去年的年底偶然遇見你的博客，給了我許多啓發和動力，也讓我新的一年有了一個充滿朝氣的開始，真誠的說聲謝謝！
每次看到你身上的熱誠，都會讓我覺得生活中充滿精彩與驚喜。
祝你好運！當然，我絕對相信你的實力哦

Ahhh yes.  I’ve been waiting for the day you’d finally try this.  I won’t be back to Taiwan for a few months, so that should give you all the time you need to catch up.  I had no trouble getting people to speak Chinese to me but I am curious where you are staying in Taipei that is devoid of foreigners.  Might even make a point to camp out there when I get back!

Thanks!

this is funny

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe this does work for everyone….
I mean, it may have worked for you but I’m sure not everyone can pick up another language that easily and I say this from experience. I speak 3 languages currently; Portuguese, Spanish and American English. I was born in Portugal but raised here in America. The only reason that I do speak Portuguese is because of my family and the years they’ve spent speaking to me in Portuguese so I’d learn it as well as English. Spanish came easy because it’s not too different from Portuguese, and again I spent years learning how to properly speak it with friends. I’ve spent about 3 years now  trying to learn Finnish and I can’t do it. I’ve tried learning German as well in the past year and I can’t learn it either.  Some people have the knack for it while others do not. And just because you say the phrase you think you’re saying in a different language doesn’t mean you’re really speaking the language. I say this because of the years I’ve spent trying to learn Finnish. It’s all in the way things are pronounce, many Europeans can pronounce just about any European language because it just about comes from the same thing. But Americans can’t do that….well they can if they start at 5 years old but not when they’re older. They will always have that thick American accent that a lot of Europeans will not understand and they have a really hard time pronouncing certain works that come out so messed up that a Native won’t understand. But…this is just my opinion.

My daughter started in a Chinese / English bilingual school in
August 2008, aged 6 nearly 7 (with barely any knowledge of Chinese), where Chinese was
the medium of instruction for 70% of the day (about 27 hours per week).
By December (despite an autumn vacation of a week inbetween with no chinese) she pretty much understood
everything said to her (granted, strong contextual understanding) and
could read simple children’s books (think Dr. Seuss) in traditional chinese characters and write simple
sentences with aid of online dictionaries. She only had a tutor out of
school for an hour a week.
She was highly motivated and determined, and is naturally very
talented in Chinese, and has the ability to remember a character after
just one exposure to it. By May 2011 aged 9, she wrote the HSK level 4 exam,
which is intermediate level for adults with about 2-3 hours preparation
in total and aced it. She may be an exception in how far she got in
such a short period, but there were enough other kids in the school who
also achieve a near native level in remarkably short periods of time.
I’m assuming you will be spending far more time than my
daughter in his endeavour, plus you’re already talented in languages and
have a “meta cognition patterns” for putting it all together. I think
the hardest bit would be reading at any kind of speed. But if you wants to just read menus rather than the newspaper, you’ll probably be
OK.Good luck

Yes. It basically means good luck

The reasons the Chinese language is difficult are that it has tones and a different way of writing. Its grammar is pretty straightforward without conjugations like European languages. I think these difficulties should not be exaggerated. If we know the techniques of how to pronounce words with their right tones and of how to write Chinese characters, it will be very interesting especially because Chinese characters are evolutionised pictures of things and their combinations. Break a leg, Benny

I’ll be watching with baited breath. Good luck!

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Well, I don’t know if you can do it or not, but I certainly respect what you said at the end of your video.  Aim for something really high.  I think that’s a great idea.  I’m definitely rooting for you.  You’ll certainly get a lot further aiming for a high goal than you would settling for a low one.

I did want to mention one small point about the reading.  You mention that without learning how to read,  you’d be illiterate, which is obviously true.  I read and write Japanese, and it’s my opinion that, with Asian languages, the main utility you get from the writing system is not the ability to read.  It’s the ability to speak.  Because the characters from one word also appear in other words,  the more characters you know, the greater your vocabulary will be, which ultimately helps you to speak better.  I wrote a whole article about it on my site, so check there if you want to know a bit more.  But the bottom line is, you should invest as much time in the writing system as possible.

Good luck with this project.  I’ll be following you.