Comment by dluan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dluan | Hacker News Reader

I've been studying again for the past 6 months after going probably 10 years without putting in any effort. I quickly picked it back up, breezing through HSK 2 and 3, and now just about to be at HSK 5 soon. At times it feels daunting just going off the recommended number of hours needed to get to HSK 6 (5,760 hours), but it's actually been flying way faster than I expected.

It's actually pretty great language for self-study once you get to a good enough foundation. It's really endless and there's so many rabbit holes to get stuck in - ancient literary language especially. I'm excited to try and get deeper in to that. My ultimate goal is to be able to read the Big 4 novels confidently.

It's also one of the weird things where motivation has a real snowball effect. The more you know, the more it feels like you can do, the more doors it opens for exploring entirely new areas. It helps that with Chinese there's so much that feels locked up or hidden from normal western view. Want to learn about tea production, culture, and history? Need to learn Chinese. Want to better understand Japanese kanji and history? Need to learn Chinese. Trying to grasp all the distinct geographic dialects and idiosyncrasies is tricky. Also the fact that a quarter of the planet kind of lives and operates on a separate internet, and the FOMO I felt by not being able to understand that.

Anyways, 10/10 definitely recommend. My plan is to keep chugging through and get to HSK 6 studying after my newborn infant arrives in 2 months, though I don't know if I can keep up the 10 hours a week I'm currently managing. I'm also doing elementary Japanese at a way more casual pace with local classes, and my Spanish has disintegrated to barely being usable.

There are so many more helpful tools and communities that exist now than 10-20 years ago, like chrome extensions and better repetition tools, though I still enjoy just handwriting in a notebook a bunch.

> My plan is to keep chugging through and get to HSK 6 studying after my newborn infant arrives in 2 months, though I don't know if I can keep up the 10 hours a week I'm currently managing.

I have a 5-month old baby and I can tell you it’s possible to keep your language learning going, but you’ll have to be more intentional or even forceful about it.

Before my son was born I studied/immersed almost all day except when I was working or hanging out with my wife (and often the latter still counted as immersion since she’s Chinese :) and we’d watch Chinese TV shows together).

After he was born time became si significantly more limited, but I was (am) determined to keep learning the language.

Here’s some of what I do:

- I could drive 15 minutes to work, but instead I take public transit. That helps me accomplish two things: daily exercise walking to and from the station, and time to listen to podcasts or audiobooks (in Chinese, of course). Once I’m on the bus/train, I’ll either do Anki or a Hello Chinese lesson.

- I try to go to the office as early as possible on any given day, and use the extra time before work to study. I could do this at home, but it’s quieter in the office.

- Most days I’ll spend my whole lunch break on language learning.

- I stick to all of this even on days when the baby kept us up all night long.

Some important things to bring up:

- This all comes at the expense of not having time for any other interests. I have a whole backlog of sci-fi books and other material I’d love to read, but I choose to prioritize learning Mandarin.

- I’m paying a price when it comes to making connections at work. Spending my whole lunch hour on learning means I stopped joining coworkers for lunch. Although right now I also don’t join them to minimize potential exposure to sickness that I could bring home and pass to the baby.

- This can also be detrimental to job performance. I could be putting in more time on learning job-related stuff or simply getting more done, but again, I consider learning Mandarin a priority.

- Other than Anki, I don’t do any learning on weekends. There’s just no time or opportunity to do so.

Not sure if any of this will apply or be doable to you. A lot of it will also come down to your family situation and your relationship with your partner. In my case, I’m lucky that she’s very supportive of my interest in her language.

Good luck! The baby will be a ton of work but also a ton of fun and love :D

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