do i have covid, confusion and creole

[amw]

The past day or two have been consumed by me worrying if i have COVID. The odds are that i don't, because most recent numbers only show a few thousand active cases in the entire country, and anyway my lifestyle is relatively safe... Or, at least, i think it is

Comments

[amw]

I do think some people are better at learning languages than others, but i also think that it is a cop out for anyone to say that they point-blank can't learn other languages. The fact we all learned at least one language as children tells us that the capacity to learn is in there somewhere, it's just a matter of committing to it.

I think the bigger problem as an adult is immersing yourself to the point that you actually get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. As a kid it takes a couple years to just be able to say stupid stuff like "mama" and "dada", and you can't have a proper conversation till you are maybe 4 or 5. But as an adult we usually want to get to something higher than a toddler's level within a few months. Since we are adults we have the tools and skills to be able to learn faster than a child, but we rarely take the time to really do it.

Most people i know try to learn a language by doing 20-30 minutes of revision each day plus a few hours of lessons each week, and i think it'll take years to get anywhere useful like that. I really believe you have to do at least several hours a day, every single day, otherwise you won't make much progress. I am doing 4 hours a day here, and i did 4 hours in China... But i have a friend here on LJ who works for the foreign office and they are sent to language school for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 3+ months ahead of each posting. You really have to put in time like that, i reckon. The Spanish school i am attending now has an option for 8 hour a day (full-time) classes that some companies send their expat execs to for a few months before bringing them into the office for real. I reckon 3 months full-time or 6 months half-time is really what's needed for reasonable fluency. If that's right and you're only doing a few hours a week then it's logical it will take years.

As for Cantonese, i can't speak Cantonese at all. I can pronounce a handful of food items (mostly dim sum) in the Cantonese way, but that's it - i definitely can't understand people when they are talking. Shenzhen is a city of Mandarin. Some smaller communities in the city speak more Cantonese, but it's probably by far the most Mandarin-speaking place in the whole of Guangdong province due to the massive amount of migrant workers.

[king_of_apathy]

I'm trying to imagine eight hours of language lessons for five days a week, I think i'd get so zoned out after a while.

I'll keep trying, but what with work, house work and my own free time to squeeze it around, it may well take some years yet.