On a random day around late March 2023, I decided that I wanted to learn a language.
I'd taken two years of French in high school in the 90s and remembered none of it. Dabbled in language learning apps over the years, but never stuck to them.
So I decided to see if I could actually learn a language if I focused and stuck to it.
I'd already figured out how to choose my hyperfocus topics.
That took a few years of experimentation and loads of self-observation.
I'd practiced Learning Things That Are Really Hard At First by learning several fiddly types of lace-making the year before that, for example.
I decided, knowing that I thrive on challenge, that I was going to go for a "hard" language. So I looked up a list of languages that are hard to learn for English speakers, and settled on Chinese because it would also be really cool to be able to read Chinese spirituality and philosophy texts in Chinese - one of the many reasons I want to learn languages in the first place is to read texts in those languages because there's always something lost in translation, both because translation is tricky and translators have biases.
Rather than pay for some expensive language learning course that I might not stick to and couldn't really afford anyway, I turned to ChatGPT and had it draft me self-study curriculum for learning the language - I'd already used ChatGPT to draft a pseudo-university style self-study curriculum as a refresher in several topics at the beginning of 2023, months before I even discovered I could actually go back to college...
I have it draft a standard sort of curriculum, but also what I call a "keyword curriculum" where it basically creates a progressive curriculum on a topic where it gives you keywords and questions to look up rather than directly giving you information that it might have hallucinated. It's also great for pointing you in the direction of resources you might not know exist because you don't know what you don't know.
Over the following months, I developed a study methodology for myself that I've also started applying to learning Korean and Spanish.
Because it worked with Chinese.
I'm not fluent. I can barely introduce myself in the language because my focus has not been on speaking, but on reading and listening to the language. I tend to lean towards the theory that you should focus on input and comprehension for a LONG time before you focus on output, but I also don't have an urgent need to speak to people in other languages - I'm a hermit. I barely talk to people in my native English language. I'm a words-on-the-screen girlie.
But I can read the language, and I'm understanding more and more and more of what I hear - even after a four month break from intensive studies because I was recovering from a broken leg.
It starts with using ChatGPT to make lists of words. 100 most common nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Then themed lists. Numbers, colors, household objects.
All the lists go into Obsidian, and then I spend a bit of time each day working through them. I find a good online dictionary in the language - I use PurpleCulture.net which is actually an online bookstore for Chinese texts, but they have a LOT of great language learning tools, and a $3/mth membership that includes the ability to download audio clips of the pronunciation of words.
For each word, I create a definition note. I add the info from the dictionary entries, add an audio embed of the pronunciation, add some example sentences, and then create an Anki flashcard for the word.
Do 10-20 words a day, and it adds up.
While I'm doing that, I also start watching YouTube videos for beginners in the language, and picking shows and movies on Netflix to watch.
At first, I understood nothing that I was hearing. I use a tool called Migaku (migaku.com) that works with Netflix and a few other streaming services. It gives you dual subtitles, in the target language and your native language, and you can mark words known or studying, and create flash cards you can use in the Migaku app or export to Anki.
But listening early and often gets your ears used to hearing the language so your brain can start to pick up and notice patterns which it will build on as you go deeper and deeper.
Eventually, you start to recognize more and more words in what you're reading and hearing, and that gets really cool.
But truly, my technique isn't really all that important.
It's pretty standard stuff.
Learn a lot of words, listen to a lot of stuff, find some grammar lessons, if you want to learn to speak it, get a language buddy or hire a tutor.
What makes the difference is that I kept at it.
Daily, for hours a day.
Because I'd arranged my life so that I could.
For the first several months of studying Chinese, I went at it like it was a full-time job.
20 vocab words a day.
Intensive watching of shows with dual subtitles, pausing to mark every single word I didn't know (which was so tedious at the beginning)
Watching half a dozen lesson videos on YouTube a day
Listening to music and studying song lyrics as another way to mine vocabulary
Listening to podcasts for beginners in the language
Daily review of MULTIPLE Anki decks
I got to where I can read a book in Chinese. I still have to do a LOT of lookups, but more and more, I can pick up new characters in context because I know enough of the radicals that make up the characters. I can pick up the meaning of words I've never encountered before because they're often made of characters I have encountered and I have the context of surrounding words. If I still can't pick up on the meaning, lookups are super easy now with Pleco dictionary on my phone - I can either try to write the character on screen or scan it.
I started diving back in yesterday after maintaining a bare minimum streak on Duolingo while recovering this summer from that broken leg. I was working through lessons in LingQ.com, another tool I use, and picked up 面试 in context - it literally translates as "face test" and means "interview."
That thing of picking up words in context, BTW, happens at around 3000 words known in Chinese, maybe a bit more in English.
About 80% of the words we use in everyday language fit into that chunk of the language. All the rest of the words are more specialized. Learn your most common 3000 words, and you start to pick up new ones in context much easier - it becomes a fill-in-the-blank game reading stuff once you hit that point.
And all of that - the daily vocab drills, the listening to stuff that makes no sense to your brain, looking up words you don't know in a passage - all of that requires discipline. Devotion.
Which is why I decided to learn Chinese - as a low-pressure way to practice those things.
Practice sticking to the hard thing.
Practice focusing on something for more than just a day or two.
And that's valuable practice that I can apply to other areas of my life.
Because learning something is never just about learning the thing.
The lessons always apply elsewhere in our lives, too.
