The Unusual System I used to Learn Chinese and Stay Fluent (even after 3 years of not practicing!)

Рет қаралды 18,198

Jacky Ye

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 70

@NicGil Жыл бұрын

Oohh love the journaling idea!! Thanks for this video! :)

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Awesome to hear you found it helpful 😊

@amko09 Жыл бұрын

Yes! Journaling is such a great way to practice Chinese. I kept a journal for a little bit and looked through old passages a year since I started it and cringed at how I was expressing myself! It was barely coherent but now I've gotten a little better at naturally expressing myself. It's a great way to track your progress learning a language.

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

I love that! It’s always a good sign of progress when you cringe at your old self’s work. I find myself also feeling nostalgic reading back some of those memories - it’s almost like having a conversation with a past you.

@junior230 Жыл бұрын

I'm not learning Chinese, but this video taught me how to improve my English. I've been learning English for about 18 months, and I'm at the plateau right now. It's very hard to get it over because, where I live, it's difficult to find resources to improve my English, but I use the internet as my best friend. I really need to practice my speaking more, I use Tandem App which is a Chinese app to communicate with foreigners in whatever part of the world. I'm so happy because I got everything on this video without subtitles.

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

That's awesome! Really heartwarming to hear you found this helpful :)

@awaiskhan9329 3 ай бұрын

You should join us to learn Chinese, it's fun.

@麦克-n8l 6 ай бұрын

crazy that this got reccomended to me, as I am currently studying at nthu for chinese right now! Only for three months though, so I am really trying to improve while I am here. Nice video!

@Jackyye 6 ай бұрын

KZbin algo knew what’s up haha. But in seriousness best of luck with there! Taiwan’s such a beautiful place, and I hope you have a great time there

@iwas892 4 ай бұрын

As a Cantonese also born in America, its inspiring to see someone else with a similar background learn Mandarin so fluently. Thanks for sharing your experience and all the takeaways. (Might start also journaling and watching anime in Chinese now..)

@Jackyye 4 ай бұрын

@@iwas892 I really love seeing comments like this. It’s heartwarming. Really rooting for you! Learning mandarin has helped me to connect more deeply with culture and communicate with my parents. So many conversations now I’ll say something in mandarin then ask my mom how to say it in cantonese.

@copperrainbow9 Жыл бұрын

Love the journaling idea! I currently write just a sentence a day and have been trying to narrate my daily routine etc, but I love the idea of writing my to do list in Mandarin. I found language partners in Taiwan and mainland China through iTalki, texting them on Wechat has helped my character recognition SO much. Podcasts have been amazing for passive immersion. Definitely need to get comfortable with speaking more, recording myself, sending myself voice messages helps too. New subscriber here for sure, hi from Ireland! Also, love that you link Dan here from Thedanyopang, he's fab! He's given me some coaching and is always super helpful. Thanks for the great content :D

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Oo I love the idea of narrating your daily routine! That was a huge motivation for why I even did YT in Taiwan was just to challenge myself (via making videos) to use mandarin more. It sounds like you’re absolutely crushing it and already on the path to fluency. Keep it up!!

@alicedong4343 Жыл бұрын

i always describe my mandarin as having the vocabulary of a first grader... loved the video! i have an empty notebook i'm not regularly using - it will be a toooooon of google translate but i'm going to give this journaling/tasking in chinese a try! pls keep me accountable ty :))))))

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Yesss let’s go Alice! Once you get into the habit of it it’ll feel natural

@Valentina-mx2tf Жыл бұрын

Hii! I just went to Guangzhou, will be back on the mainland today to study Mandarin for 6 months! I highly recommend visiting Guangzhou if you are interested in reconnecting with the culture, they have an old town that I don't think will be there for long, and there are still some neighborhoods from the 80s, super charming. They also have the super modern side, which is mind-blowing, and of course the food, Cantonese cuisine at its best. I think it would be super interesting for you to visit and test your Mandarin skills in the mainland!

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Ughh I would love to visit Guangzhou again 😩. I haven’t been since I was a kid and didn’t even know any mandarin at the time. Would love to be able to spend a few months there at some point. Hope you have a blast!

@smoothbanana Жыл бұрын

Great summary of tricks that work. Basically stay engaged. Apart from writing, there is no need to drill. I studied in Taiwan about 10 years ago. If I were to do it again, I'd journal and get feedback from natives, make learning relevant to me.

@justme6496 3 ай бұрын

This is exactly what I needed. Thanks.

@Jackyye 3 ай бұрын

Love to hear that! 😄

@questioningthestatusquo 8 ай бұрын

I love all your suggestions, I am interested in taking Mandarin as a life long learning program. Help !!! I seriously need the support community you spoke about to facilitate my output of Mandarin.

@Jackyye 8 ай бұрын

Really glad you found the video helpful! It's definitely a life long journey. One place worth checking out if you haven't before is the chinese learning reddit - super active. www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/

@alexuqt 9 ай бұрын

i loved listening to your insightful story!

@Jackyye 9 ай бұрын

Thank you!

@QuizmasterLaw Жыл бұрын

I subscribed even though I found not much or even nothing here I didn't already know Most effective learning method is sample sentences. Carly and Mandarin Corner both do that so does Everyday Chinese, albeit to a lesser extent. Also effective: examples acted out. Few do that, Mandarin Corner has only a couple videos like that, but long 30min. ea. Chinesepod and Chineseclass101 are also good, so is Harbin Mandarin with Yi Shuang.

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

This is great feedback, when you say examples acted out do you mean like visuals or actual people acting out the sentence so that people can visualize it?

@QuizmasterLaw Жыл бұрын

@@Jackyye actual people acting out the verbs using the nouns. i have a playlist about that for chinese e.g.

@kylekung Жыл бұрын

Great video Jacky! 識聽無識講 can so relate to this haha - I've been trying to get back into Mandarin so this was helpful!

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Thanks Kyle 😊 honestly cantonese and mandarin are not easy to learn so kudos for getting back into it

@Adjacent_2 Жыл бұрын

another excellent video man, great work!

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

感謝感謝 🙏🏼

@szatout877 4 ай бұрын

This is a very usefull routine tho. Thank's a lot

@Jackyye 4 ай бұрын

@@szatout877 thank you!

@LianaBuzea 11 ай бұрын

Yaaaauch! You text like an old man? I'm super beginner at Mandarin, but if a guy ever told me I texted like an old woman... Pfuuuyi! Thank you for the video! Much appreciated! :)

@Jackyye 11 ай бұрын

😂 it caught me off guard too!

@edwardsilva6297 Жыл бұрын

Great and special helpful tips

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Happy to hear this was helpful!

@ollieanntan4478 Жыл бұрын

In videos like this, I'd love if you did the whole thing in Chinese with English subtitles. I need Chinese listening practice. Plus it immediately proves how fluent you are even if someone has never seen your channel before.

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve thought about doing more videos in Mandarin before but haven’t found the time for it. Maybe this is a sign 🤔

@xiaogeju2011 Жыл бұрын

对于我学过的所有语言，我都没有使用过抽认卡。

@sbozalicious 3 ай бұрын

So gonna try this in Pinyin though🙈

@kaydreamies Жыл бұрын

Hi Jacky! This is a very helpful video and I enjoyed it~ I do have a question tho, with talking to yourself, how do you think someone should go about with getting corrections? Esp as a beginner, when we're speaking to ourselves, we don't know if what we're saying is incorrect or correct..

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Hey Karen, that's a really good question. I'd say that when you're speaking by yourself the focus is less about getting things right and more about getting comfortable. I think one thing that can hold back language speakers is fear of embarrassing themselves by saying something wrong in front of others (I still struggle with this!). I've found that practicing even by myself helps me to be more confidently wrong and learn more quickly during the moments where I do have access to feedback.

@Henry-teach-Chinese-in-jokes Жыл бұрын

Sorry to interrupt. I don’t know how to promote my videos to those who want to learn Chinese. I’ve spent about 100,000 hours studying English humor and Western culture, and many years studying Chinese culture and jokes. My native language is Chinese. I teach Chinese in humorous way and with cute pictures. I believe they are valuable.

@DavisMUGABE 18 күн бұрын

here to learn chinese

@Jackyye 14 күн бұрын

@@DavisMUGABE that’s what we’re here for!

@russah24 4 ай бұрын

New subscriber enjoyed your video

@Jackyye 4 ай бұрын

@@russah24 thank you!

@iwas892 4 ай бұрын

What was your motivation to learn and improve mandarin?

@Jackyye 4 ай бұрын

@@iwas892 at the start, I really needed to fulfill a language requirement to graduate college and mandarin seemed like the easiest thing. But I fell in love with it because of my teachers and my classmates; learning genuinely felt fun and was a bonding experience. There’s so much silliness in learning a language in a cohort and struggle bussing it together. That was the first year of learning. Then after that as I got more invested I started wondering if I could take it further and start using it outside of class. I wanted to be able to travel to somewhere that spoke Chinese and be able to navigate. I wanted to be able to order at restaurants. Then I wanted to be fluent enough that I’d always be able to have some baseline with me forever. I heard this quote from Ku (of Ku’s Dream) where he said people learn a language because they either need it or they like it. For me I liked it. I liked it so much I put myself in a situation where I’d need it (by living abroad in Taiwan) so that I could learn even faster.

@mastermandarin Жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing your experience. Just for the record, Mandarin and Cantonese are not different languages, they are both Chinese language group based languages, which are based in the Chinese writing system, even if they aren't technically written. All proper Chinese is written in the same format as Mandarin. Even Cantonese speakers read writing that follows Mandarin, except in colloquial writing such as comic books etc. Mandarin and Cantonese are two dialects of the Chinese language family. Shanghainese, Taiwanese--all Chinese dialects are Chinese language group langages. You have a good proper Taiwanese Mandarin 國語 accent. 加油！👍

@Jackyye Жыл бұрын

Really interesting to learn more about the context - thanks for sharing! I also always find it fun to hear about what accent I have in mandarin. Sometimes I get Taiwan and other times I get Hong Kong 😅

@HelderGriff Жыл бұрын

They call them dialects because of political reasons, linguistically speaking a dialect is a variation of a language that is understood by other dialects; when a dialect can't understand another dialect is when they are not dialects but distinct languages, and that is the case with Chinese languages. Yes, surely they can understand most texts from each other because of characters but the grammar is different. It's similar to Romance languages as to how we can understand each other to a certain extent (I speak Spanish), but they are Romance languages and not Romance dialects.

@jasondicioccio880 Жыл бұрын

If a Cantonese speaker writes colloquially, as you mentioned, the result would be mostly unintelligible to someone who only knows Mandarin. For their more formal writing, they effectively translate to Mandarin. So, the "is it a language?" question is kind of arbitrary and there's been a lot of debate about it over the years. This video does and *excellent* job going into the differences and the history. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYbPhImsga1klZo

@lornam3637 Жыл бұрын

@@HelderGriff By that definition the South of England speak a dialect of English to us Scots but in reverse Scots is a different language to English Southerners 😂

@6Uncles 8 ай бұрын

OP is quite inconsistent here with their terminology. If they are "Chinese (sinitic) language group based languages", that implies that a language group is a group of languages. If they're language group based languages, then they're languages. They're different languages, as other have commented. The main reasons why Chinese often call then dialects is because of poor translation of 方言 without knowledge of any better term (topolect), as well as political nationalism. If we're talking actual linguistics (science), then no linguist would ever consider them the same language because of mutual unintelligability If you want any indication of whether an answer is political or not, take OP commenter's example of stating what "proper Chinese writing" is and that it follows Mandarin. As if stating that another languages natives write their language totally wrong.