🇨🇳 I started learning a difficult language, here's how

My method to build momentum

Dear readers,

Last Wednesday was a national holiday in France. I took the time to take my quarterly Sejong University online test. I was happy to see I had an amazing score.

Completing the test with over 80% correct overall was my biggest win last week.

I still feel fantastic. My happiness turned into confidence and into ambition, and… I finally started learning Chinese. In the last 3 days, I spent a bit over 5 hours studying. I wanted to share how I got the momentum to kickstart my learning.

🔍 Before learning: Inform yourself

Especially for languages that are very different from your native language, doing some research first is fundamental. Look up teachers and high-level learners online to make sure you start with the basics.

Chinese is an excellent example of this: if you try learning the characters right away, it might seem extremely difficult. However, if you know about radicals (the smaller symbols composing the characters), it becomes a game of Lego. I also learnt that writing is essential to understand and memorise the patterns better.

I learnt that in just 30 minutes on YouTube. After watching this video from Zoe.languages, I knew where to start, and how to start.

🌱 Start small, and have fun

Learning the radicals and how they make up Chinese characters was a blast. I remember having a similar feeling when learning the Korean alphabet for the first time.

In my previous research, I also learnt that learning about 50 radicals was enough, so I didn’t waste time learning more than 200. I based my learning on a list of most used radicals, and used Pleco to find which characters they composed and how they were used in words.

Components are what make up the target character, and compounds are other characters made up of it!

This way, I naturally went from the individual lines, to small components, to full characters, to short sentences.

🪴 Take care of your knowledge

You probably know about my love for Anki. If not… Well, I already wrote a bunch about it, and I’ll certainly write more. It’s a spaced-repetition system, which allows you to create your own flashcards. The algorithm will make you review cards when you’re just about to forget them, according to science.

🎴 In defense of Anki, a response to Luca Lampariello

🃏 Yet another reason to choose Anki over fancy apps

I only use full sentences in my decks, instead of isolated characters. To save a bit of time, I asked AI to generate relevant sentences for beginners using HSK1 vocabulary. I added a few keywords like “natural” or “commonly used” to make sure it was on point. Here’s the prompt I used:

Generate notes for my beginner Chinese sentences Anki deck in CSV format with the following format: English, 汉语, Pīnyīn
I learnt the most used radicals in isolation, and I would like to practice recognising them in basic natural daily use sentences with commonly used characters from HSK1 or HSK2. The sentences should be ordered from easiest to hardest.
Here is the list of characters to include:

[Some characters I had noted down]

“CSV format” is a funky acronym for “comma-separated values”, which is the simplest format to import to Anki. Honestly, this was so convenient, I hurried and did the same for my more advanced Korean deck. Here’s the prompt for intermediate to advanced sentence generation:

Generate notes for my Korean sentences Anki deck in CSV format with the following format: English, 한국어
The sentences should be natural and commonly used, like the sample sentences from Naver dictionary and other native Korean sources.
Here is the list of words to include:
[Words and expressions I had noted down]

💬 Learn what matters first

My goal is to understand and speak conversationally. I probably won’t ever need any fancy or poetic term. This is why I’m focusing on simple sentences I might need in daily use, like when I visit my local Taiwanese restaurant. I also follow the very standardised HSK course, which introduces words and grammar points progressively.

This might seem obvious, but I’ll be honest. Anytime I find a beautiful character, I want to learn it. This happened a lot while looking up words in the dictionary. I also want to dig into Chinese TV, it looks so fun. But I’ll focus on understanding the basics first. I will keep it fun, for sure, but this is a reminder to myself to stick to useful words.

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Honestly, I’m so impatient to learn Chinese. I know my flashcard deck is going to pile up, and that won’t be the most fun part. But I can’t wait to climb this first (and relatively small) hill and understand more about the language. Any tips for me to get started smoothly?

Hopefully I could share some of my enthusiasm with you. Have a lovely week.

Best,

Lou

PS: I went crazy with the Pomodoro timers. My time tracking for this afternoon looks funny.

I usually study for 30 minutes a day and spend the rest immersing. This was wild for me!

✍️ Dear language learner

Learn your target language with useful phrases! Here are a few to translate to test yourself. If they’re relevant to you, you can add them to your notes or spaced-repetition system.

🌱 Beginner

I started learning Chinese.

🌿 Intermediate

It was even more fun that I expected.

🌳 Advanced

I’ve been meaning to start learning it for a long time.

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📚 Learn more

How I’m doing more without burning out.

🍅 Timers never worked for me... until now

AI on voice mode has been a life saver lately.

🚲 AI is making me productive in unexpected ways

Advice for beginners and people who feel stuck in language learning.

💭 The 3 Schools of Thoughts of Language Learning

Thank you for reading “I heard from Lou”. It can be hard to find people who share your passion for learning. If you have friends who might like this letter, let them know.

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