How the hell did anyone learn Chinese 20 or 30 years ago?

Gubo and Palanka and lots of drink. Seriously though, it must be hard to learn Chinese in a non-academic environment. The speaking bit is easy, go to the pub, get drunk, talk to people. But the characters… well I never found anything other than endlessly writing them out to help. Studying a bit of calligraphy at uni in Taiwan really helped. We had NJ Star and Zhongwen zhi Xing in 1991, I think, when there was no Chinese Windows. I think. There was Japanese Windows though, I remember the Japanese guys tapping away. No Chinese email. Even the guys at Zhengda back then were using Pine in English.

Lately, I’ve been watching a bunch of Taiwanese dramas. Never watched them while I was there, :idunno: why, but I’m sure it would have helped. I’ve been understanding sentence pattern/grammar much better and I’ve seen an increase in my listening skills. Characters were never an issue, but it would have helped if subtitles showed up when people spoke to me.
:laughing:

[quote=“jacktorrence”]I use the following to learn Chinese:

DR eye
NJ Star Communicator
NJ Star Word Processor
Plecodict
Supermemo


Chinesepod

I use these EVERYDAY. [/quote]

I use Dr. Eye every day (yes, it’s two words when it means “daily” rather than “ordinary”… sorry, pet peeve of mine) too, but for translation work. I saves me time looking things up.

Back in the day, we learned Chinese using the following old-school tools:

Books.
Teachers.
Dictionaries.
Flashcards.
Interaction with native speakers.
Language lab tapes.

[quote=“Chris”][quote=“jacktorrence”]I use the following to learn Chinese:

DR eye
NJ Star Communicator
NJ Star Word Processor
Plecodict
Supermemo


Chinesepod

I use these EVERYDAY. [/quote]

I use Dr. Eye every day (yes, it’s two words when it means “daily” rather than “ordinary”… sorry, pet peeve of mine) too, but for translation work. I saves me time looking things up.

Back in the day, we learned Chinese using the following old-school tools:

Books.
Teachers.
Dictionaries.
Flashcards.
Interaction with native speakers.
Language lab tapes.[/quote]

Surely you mean “It saves me time”, NOT “I saves me time”…sorry, pet peeve of mine… :laughing:

My god, wouldn’t we be fun to hang around with at a party?

“Get me a drink!”

[quote=“jacktorrence”][quote=“Chris”]
I use Dr. Eye every day (yes, it’s two words when it means “daily” rather than “ordinary”… sorry, pet peeve of mine) too, but for translation work. I saves me time looking things up.

[/quote]

Surely you mean “It saves me time”, NOT “I saves me time”…sorry, pet peeve of mine… :laughing:

My god, wouldn’t we be fun to hang around with at a party?

“Get me a drink!”[/quote]

:slight_smile:

Skitt’s Law: “Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself”.

Slightly inaccurate typing is your pet peeve? My pet peeve is when the cat shits in the bathtub because it is too senile/lazy to walk downstairs.

I’m very low-tech with my Chinese learning. But then again, I’m not much good at it, given that I’ve been learning for seven years… Maybe I’d be better if I had Plecodict?

Agree with LL that writing characters out is the only way I can remember how to write them. Reading, just look and remember. Listening by watching films, eavesdropping on the ladeez in my office, speaking by hanging out with friends.