How I learn Chinese

I belatedly realised a nice ‘hack’ when it comes to typing Chinese. It seems most predictive text software allows really speedy shortcuts in typing. For example, to type ‘ 你好 ’, you can get away with just typing ‘nh’. I find this pretty incredible - in this example with just two characters you can get to characters composed of many strokes.   This extends out to longer compound ‘words’ too. ‘zmy’ leads to ‘ 怎么样 ‘ for instance. Just experimenting a bit, ‘wyjzl’ (trying to type ‘ 我已经做了 ’) leads to a menu with ‘ 我已经走了 ‘ as first choice, but of course the software remembers mappings from commonly used stroke combinations so that next time, ‘ 做了 ’ comes up first.   Thought I’d add this as a short entry, as this behaviour was not obvious to me at all after some months of entering Chinese through my phone and computer. Not sure if there are similar innovative methods for inputting English, but for now I would say that combined with the general compactness of Chinese...

I will write a few posts on apps I've tried using, and general approach, to learning characters. For now I'll start a stub about the memrise app. It provides a spaced repetition system "flashcard" type system for memorising characters. I've not compared memrise with other similar popular apps eg Anki. It provides a few nice "modes" like a time based multiple choice game where you only have a diminishing amount of time to choose the right character, a "learn new words" mode which does what you'd expect, etc. I think the most important thing though is the quality of the content. In the case of memrise, this means the curated decks or courses.

After messing around with a few ways to easily input both English and Chinese characters (via pinyin), the best I've found at least on Android is  Google Pinyin Input . You just press either the "中" or "En" button s along the top of the virtual keyboard to switch between input methods. One thing that confused me at first was, when predictive text suggestions pop up, they replaced the choice of languages. After you've finished a word, you can just backspace and the choices show up again. Switching between inputs is very quick. One other thing, I also have Gboard installed, for predictive text in another (European) language. Switching to this alternative setup is also really easy, just by tapping the "globe" icon. 

I've been using the HelloTalk app for the last few months. The app allows you to find language exchange partners, and has inbuilt translation and correction tools. You can both translate and (for Chinese) see the Pinyin transliteration too. I've found this invaluable for seeing how people actually speak to each other, about everyday topics. If I had more time, I would keep up with conversations with individuals. It can be a bit tough though, as conversations often peter out after the standard 'where are you from' type exchanges (even these are great at the beginning). If you put in a bit of effort though, these one-on-ones are really great. I've mostly just typed, though it's possible to also send audio messages (my level is generally not yet good enough to understand all of a voice message, there are no handy translations!). Lately I've found myself just using the 'Moments' feature (kind of like a Facebook wall). In particular, choosing ...

I've set up this blog to log interesting and useful resources I've come across while learning Chinese (standard Mandarin). Mostly for myself, but hopefully can be of interest to others too. I'm learning for a combination of reasons - I think Chinese is becoming increasingly important on the world stage, and think it's a good idea to be able to communicate at least a little for work purposes (currently I work in quantitative finance, it's interesting to see Chinese markets and investors opening up). But I'm also finding the language and culture fascinating, and plan to visit the country soon. At this point, I've been learning for around a year and a half. I've found various apps useful, regularly see a tutor, have a language exchange partner, and more recently have been watching subtitled videos on YouTube etc. I'd like to write about each of these different components. Just a note, I've decided (at least for now) to not learn to write Chinese...