How long to learn Mandarin to a conversational level?

May I ask why you chose Taiwan and not the mainland?

If you can do more than 2 hours without going nuts, do as many as possible. Four, or six, or eight or more. Go PSYCHO!!!

Seriously, consider arranging things so that you speak only Chinese, all the time. Like taking classes at community centers around Taipei (choose things that you can still learn from even if you don’t speak much Chinese yet, like calligraphy, art, martial arts, dance, or whatever). Move in with a local family or local roommates who don’t speak much English. Spend an hour or two a day just walking and shopping, exploring different parts of the city. Chat with anyone you see. In Chinese only, of course.

Don’t live in Taibei. If you already have fairly rudimentary conversational skills, you’d do a lot better living in a rural dump and by chatting up night market vendors and restaurant owners every day. A lot of foreigners in Taibei moan about how no one lets them practice their Chinese, but after more than a year here I’ve yet to encounter someone (at least outside the school I work at) who wants to speak English with me.

I’ve never done 1-on-1, but two hours of 1-on-1 per day seems a bit excessive. If you initially put too much your schedule, you’re more likely to get so frustrated/exhausted that you’d outright give up. Rather, you should do as t.ukyo said and have 2 hours/day in a small class. If you’re still working on the fundamentals like perfecting your tones, see if you can pay your teacher on the side for extra tutoring. If not, go the casual language (bodily fluid) exchange route.

I have to second the “don’t live in Taibei”, especially if you are whitish looking. Having said that, I hope you don’t mind upir Mandarin having a very noticabpe Taiwanese accent (well this might happen in Taibei as well). About the LE thingie, forget that. It would be silly of you to come all this way just to have a language exchange where you’d waste an hour or more speaking non-mandarin. You can stay home and do that. Searc hard enough and there will be few who would be willing to help you with your Mandarin. A second option, is to teach english – get paid lots – and get Mandarin time for cheap.

Don’t live with other English-speaking foreigners- the #1 consideration!

I am a fan of polls-- hope no one minds. I was wondering how long it took you to learn enough Chinese to get by. This is with only the basic amount of studying along with a regular course. I know some people picked it up very quickly because they very hard studied everyday, but with teachign I don’t have the extra time. So what if you just take the course and do a little studying on the side? Can you still learn effectively?

Thanks
Dream

After a semester course in the US (4 months) I knew enough to be able to get around and ask simple questions. It took another 5 months living in Taiwan to get to a level where I could hold simple but meaningful conversations. By that time I was well prepared for the 3rd year University level Chinese course I took.

I’ve been here 2 years and my Chinese sucks. :frowning:

I did six months at Uni here, that gave me the confidence to ask directions, buy food and get around. I continue to study now but just as a hobby, and an enjoyable one at that. If you can fit one hour a week of languague exchange it is worth it. Mine is, especially as my language partner is my colleague, and a damn fine teacher!

L. :smiley:

6 years here, with 3 months at Shida in the beginning, and my Chinese sucks. :frowning:

I can tell the taxi driver where to go, order breakfast, purchase whatever I need, and construct very basic sentences in response to just about anything a local might say to me, but I wouldn’t say I can carry on a “meaningful conversation.”

But I believe the poll is flawed (for that reason I didn’t respond to it). I don’t believe one needs to speak the language at all to get by. I spent a year in SE Asia, didn’t speak more than a few sentences in any of those languages, and I got by just fine. Same here. One doesn’t need to know more than hello and thank you to get by. Of course it would be nice to have meaningful conversations in Chinese and, damn it, some day I’ll have that ability, I swear!

A long-haired dictionary and frequent pillow talk tends to speed up the process rather markedly.

HG

Chinese is hard. Most English speakers can’t just pick it up like they can European languages.
Most people can learn enough to ask for more or less what they want within 6 months or so. Beyond that, if you want to speak well, you’re in for years and years of hard work.
I’ve been learning Chinese for 5 years on and off, and am in ‘advanced’ classes at a university-run language school here. I also have a degree in Asian Studies. There is no way that I could go to uni here. I figure that on a good day I’m communicating like a 10 year old (mind you, some days my English is not much better!).

That’s pretty good! On a good day I can talk like a 5 year old.

Whilst I, too, am not averse to polls as such :wink:, I haven’t voted on this one either, for the same reason as Mother Theresa: some people have lived here for years with virtually no Chinese. They have a place to live, work, eat, have fun… who would say that’s not ‘getting by’?

Besides, even if you really had to know some Chinese to get by here, I think the concept of ‘enough to get by’ is impossible to pin down. Learning a language is a complex process and any attempt to analyze it in terms of discrete stages or points is subjective and quite arbitrary.

Sorry - I’ m being difficult :slight_smile:

Obviously the answer to your question depends on what your ‘getting by’ involves doing. What is your definition?

As others have written, I would imagine that with a reasonable amount of part-time study over a few months someone could learn enough to order their favourite eats and drinks, buy tickets, ‘get by’ in very familiar situations. But then no doubt communication breakdowns (aka WTF? moments) would occur quite frequently, and the extent to which you could interact with people would be very limited.

Good luck anyway. I’ve always liked to see learning Chinese as being a bit like having a geeky, obessive collection - it’s rewarding to watch it grow, and there’s always more out there to get. In fact, it’s endless fun: you’ll never collect em’ all! :cry:

That’s a pretty open-ended question. Learn what, masturbation…? Almost a year before I got the backstroke down… :slight_smile:

Nice idea, but this poll would be improved by

  1. being far more specific about “getting by”, e.g.,

“to be able, in Mandarin, to ask and understand prices, ask for something of a different color or size, ask for and understand basic street directions, thank and apologize, give a limited self-introduction (name, country, occupation, age), and comment in limited fashion on the weather, the attractiveness or size or taste or agreeability of something”.

and

  1. increasing the range of choices, e.g., 3 mos., 6 mos, 9 mos, 1 yr., 1.5 yrs, 2+ yrs.

Damn Straight. that’s why I teach kids. I can understand what they say. :smiley:

That’s been said often. Unfortunately, it’s not always true. While I love my wife, god bless her sweet little heart, not only does she refuse to help me learn Chinese, but she actively discourages my efforts. When I ask what’s the word for X or what tone is used with Y, at best she’ll ignore me, but more likely she’ll screw up her face in intense exasperation and tell me she hates dealing with my lousy Chinese and I’ve got everything wrong. It’s not because my Chinese skills are so lousy either; it’s because some people have no patience whatsoever and are totally not cut out for teaching. So, I’m struggling to learn Chinese in spite of my wife, not with the aid of my wife. :frowning: I wonder if anyone else faces a similar struggle?

I’ve studied Chinese with a private teacher for the past three years (3 different teachers), and basically put about an hour a day into it, on average.

Some days I feel chuffed that I pulled off a difficult telephone conversation, and other days I feel like a complete and utter moron who has wasted three years on a language he’ll never figure out.

Fatigue plays a big part of that, I find. If I’m tired, I’m useless.

Fortunately I’m blessed with a helpful young lass, but I do know folks in your situation. The solution is to find one or more LE partners on the side. Good luck!