How do I go about learning a language

Language Learning
22

The Chinese, Korean and Japanese alphabets

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23

So when you say “alphabet” you mean just Kana and Hangul or also Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja…?

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24

Yes

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25

Korean

Japanese

Chinese

  • no such thing

Hangul has 24 letters (40 in the end) and is pretty easy to learn. Hiragana and Katakana have 46 each but they are both the same except for the way they are written. Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet as such. The only useful alphabet here really is just the Korean Hangul as you’ll need another couple of thousand Kanji to be able to read Japanese , which uses 3 different scripts at the same time.

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26

In Taiwan they use the bopomofo or 注音符號 phonetic alphabet.
ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎㄏㄐㄑㄒㄓㄔetc, etc.
It was invented in China at the beginning of the 20th century but abandoned there in favour of Hanyu Pinyin, that uses the Latin alphabet instead . Now it is only used in Taiwan.

It is the first thing I learned years ago when I began this long term adventure into Chinese.

27

This Chinese alphabet is the most widely used typing method in Taiwan. It works only for Mandarin and not other Chinese languages.

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Learning Chinese
28

Might as well add some of my notes.

  1. I use this as a baseline reference for a solid way to learn. There’s not really any shortcuts in terms of TIME:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=illApgaLgGA
  • no grammar
  • no reading at the beginning

  1. A way to get the above without messing around as much is iTalki.

  2. Duolingo: Many better things out there but this one has the pretty unique advantage of being able to use a spare 5 mins here and there

  3. For Chinese and Japanese characters, “Remembering the Hanzi”/Kanji has a mnemonic compatible approach for reading. This is the fun, huh? But learning to read before A2/B1 level is often not a good idea.

  4. Romanisation is bad. Pronunciation comes first via listening. Get your fingers into a native speaker’s mouth if you have to. Minimal pairs training.

I’ve found mnemonics pretty poor for learning Chinese because the sounds of the language give me nothing to associate with and using romanised letters distorts pronunciation.

29

Yes, for me listening comes first. Mnemonics later.

30

I find as I watch anime w/ subtitles, I slowly absorb some words by osmosis even if I’m not trying. You should watch cartoons