It has been said, perhaps by Mark Twain, that confusing sinology and Zionism would be a little bit like confusing astrology and astronomy. Anyway, about three weeks ago I finally gave in to the craving and starting studying Chinese.
As I’ve written before, Chinese was among the alternatives when I decided to start studying Japanese. But Japanese seemed even more weird and hard, and the selection of courses at my university was better, so I chose Japanese instead. But I promised myself years ago that once I passed JLPT 1, I could start studying Chinese. And I did pass JLPT 1.
So I went to the huge Kinokuniya book store in south Shinjuku – you know the one located next to the NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building, the tallest clock tower in the world. The supply of language-learning books in Japan is just overwhelming! Especially, of course, for English, but the supply of books on other popular languages is tremendous as well. I can only surmise that this is because foreign things are superficially fashionable in Japan, combined with a school system that teaches kids that foreign language acquisition is impossible. So everyone buys the same kind of miracle cure beginner-level language books every year, and every year the miracle breakthrough doesn’t happen, so the cycle repeats itself.
Anyhow, my philosophy on language learning is the antithesis of that kind of books so I bought the most boring-sounding ones I could find: one called 文法から学べる中国語 (“Chinese that can be learnt from grammar”) and one called 中国語の教科書 (“Chinese textbook”). Still quite fancy books, but the content seemed serious, and they follow different approaches: the grammar one obviously focuses on grammar, and the textbook one is more focused on listening, pronounciation, and conversation, so they should complement each other, I think.
As you notice, the Chinese language study books I bought are in Japanese. This is an important point, since that allows me to keep learning Japanese while enjoying studying Chinese (it is rather enjoyable as a change from years of Japanese studies). In fact, out of the first approximatly 100 words I harvested from the “textbook” book, 5 were new to me in Japanese as well. Double-win! Once you pass JLPT 1, there aren’t really any language study books available for your level, so this I think is a good method to ensure there aren’t any holes in my basic Japanese vocabulary.
I believe in setting goals, just as I did both when I decided to pass JLPT 1 in 2008 and JLPT 2 in 2006. So I have set my overall goal of my Chinese language studies: to be able to read a book in Chinese by the time I turn 30 (i.e. in about 2.5 years from now).
That seems challenging, yet doable. I don’t have any specific type of book in mind, but I imagine it would be some normal top-selling book. Actually come to think of it, the only book I’ve read in both English and Japanese is Haruki Murakami’s after the quake (神の子どもたちはみな踊る) so maybe that would be a good one to use as a reference standard.
I really appreciate your blog and I read it whenever there is an update. Congrats on starting with Chinese now. I like your approach to learning languages. I also want to learn Chinese once I have acquired skill in Japanese, but that could be years down the road.
Hi Sarah, thanks a lot for your comment! It's encouraging to know someone is reading…
I think there's a lot of synergy in learning Japanese and Chinese, so it's definitely a good idea for anyone who enjoys learning languages. I'll write some more about how my first month studying Chinese has been – I was actually going to do that in this post but it got long enough as it is…
Hi,
I can also speak both Chinese and Japanese to some level although I'm still far away from getting the 1 Kyuu. I'm also learning my Mandarin through Japanese although slowly it's overtaking the former.
Japanese is so for me. I wrote a blog post about the difficulties I had learning the language. TheShanghaiExpat. Please feel free to visit and let me know if you are interested with link exchange.
Nikou
Hi Nikou, thanks for your comment! I left a comment on your blog as well. I'll keep an eye on your blog from now on.
I would like to recommend My First Chinese Reader. It is a good chinese learning textbook for kids. Really Helpful
Thanks, Ray! I will check it out.
in addition to ray's recommendations.
New Practical Chinese Reader is also another material that really helps children write and recognize chinese character from memory. This might be helpful to your readers.
i was looking for something about learning japanese through chinese, stumbled onto your blog. i’ve studies chinese for about 4 years now, would consider myself fluent. chinese grammer is a cake walk compared to that of japenese from what i understand, it is pretty much the same as english, so it shouldn’t be that hard. and with knowledge of the chinese characters you should make quick progress! i have been studying japanese for a few weeks now, it’s a lot of fun, and i feel that my chinese background (and knowledge of english) has put me way ahead of the game. many expressions in jpns have interestingly different-yet-related meanings in chinese, like the word 勉强, for instance. i recommend that you listen to the china real on bbc podcasts and watch chinese tv. good luck!
brian, seems like we’re doing the same thing from opposite directions… interesting. Having knowledge of the characters as a starting point is certainly a great asset, even if there are differences and lots of additional learning necessary. For me, written Chinese doesn’t look very intimidating, but comprehending spoken Chinese is tough. Thanks for the tip on the BBC podcast, that certainly looks useful. Good luck and have fun learning Japanese!
Hey! I could have sworn I’ve been to this blog before but after reading through some of the post I realized it’s new to me. Nonetheless, I’m definitely delighted I found it and I’ll be bookmarking and checking back often!