🇨🇳Learning Mandarin: what I wish I knew starting from zero 🇨🇳
At the time of writing this, I only have 186 hours of Mandarin learning time, so I’m just scratching the surface of this beautiful language. I started in April 2023, studying an average of 1.4 hours per day. While an expert at Mandarin will have more comprehensive tips, a struggling learner such as myself will have a unique perspective. I find that the further you advance in a language, you forget what it was like to struggle as an absolute beginner. So it’s better to highlight these tips as soon as possible before I come across new and harder challenges. Here are the things I wish I knew about Mandarin sooner.
I took a unique approach and started with full-immersion from day 1
I get a lot of criticism in the online language community for this, but immersion does work. I learned Finnish to A2 level mostly through immersion, and now it is working for Mandarin. Someone else posted on Reddit that they learned Korean accidentally by watching hundreds of K-dramas. When I went to Russia, several Russians I met who spoke perfect English told me they learned exclusively by watching American TV shows. So there is a huge precedent to full-immersion.
The key to immersion is studying very intensively at the beginning and gradually shifting to…
