Want to master either Chinese or Spanish after 30, is it possible?
11-02-2017, 02:16 PM
Totally possible with Chinese, as long as you are motivated to do it and put in the time and deal with the cultural hiccups. Of course, when you are older your ability to retain information and rewire your brain drops. On the other hand, you know yourself and your own learning style better, and have a greater context for the material you are learning, so I think both the positive and negative cancel each other out and it's definitely possible to learn.
Whether or not it's worth the time investment is a whole different issue. China is becoming more hostile and xenophobic towards foreigners (as well as discriminatory towards foreign owned businesses), Chinese people are learning English, and artificial intelligence translation software programs are becoming more and more sophisticated, helping smoothen out everyday conversations between different language speakers. On the other hand, as I've argued about in other threads, with all the bullshit going on in the West right now, China keeps growing in economic, political, and military power with nearly zero pushback from the U.S. and is poised to become the first Asian world superpower in centuries. This will fundamentally reshape human civilization, so being able to communicate with them and understand their culture will be an asset no matter where you end up or in what industry.
If you still decide to do it, some tips:
-Figure out what your learning style is and what your goals are. There are TONS of ways to learn a language - Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, memorizing vocab and sentence patterns, complete immersion, getting a local gf that doesn't speak English, taking a large group class, small group classes, one on one classes, watching movies with/without English/Chinese subtitles, podcasts, pimsleur, studying dialogues from a textbook, and much more. You should experiment around and think about what you want to be able to do in Chinese and what method can get you there. Personally, I think that large group classes that make you write are a complete waste of time if you want to learn how to speak and communicate in Chinese.
-I've studied language with different people, and for those that were studying in a way that was a mismatch with their learning style, all their classroom time was a complete waste (this applies to any subject not just languages - I hate listening to teachers drone on and being stuck in a chair). So, figure out what the best way for YOU to learn is, and use that method, supplemented by others. This may involve trying out different teachers and schools. See to what degree you can use different teachers or software programs on a trial basis before throwing down a chunk of cash for the whole thing.
-PLECO app - best app for using and studying a language that I've ever used.
-Decide how you want to approach writing and reading. For some people, they need to know how to write a character in order to read it. Not the case for me and many other students I know - we didn't bother learning to write and can read most characters needed on a daily basis. Either way, writing is a HUGE time sink, and if you're willing to let it go, you can focus on more important areas like pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc. With modern written communications mainly taking place over phone/pc, there are very few occasions in real life where you will actually have to write Chinese characters. Before you spend a lot of time on writing, see if you can learn to recognize characters without writing, and take it from there. Regarding reading, up to the beginner + level you can get by with just using pinyin, but after that you should be able to read characters directly.
On a completely different topic, I think Spanish is of course worth learning as well. Many jobs in the southwest now require fluency in Spanish just because of the growth in the Spanish speaking population. And of course gaming opportunities. A gringo speaking Spanish makes you far less unique than a gringo speaking Chinese. You will still get praise and kudos from Hispanics, though not the shock that Chinese people express when encountering a foreigner that speaks legit Chinese. China is going to be far more consequential in terms of impacting the world's economy than Latin America will, so you really have to think about your priorities and the cost/benefit. Assuming you have an equal talent for learning either language, achieving the same fluency in speaking/listening Chinese vs. Spanish will take about 2-3x more with Chinese. For reading, I'd say it's at least 4x more time to get to the equivalent level in Chinese compared to Spanish. Spanish also opens the door to French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian.