Essay:A Statesian Marxists' Guide to Learning Mandarin

PART I: OPENING Q&A AND GENERAL MYTH-BUSTING

“Learning Mandarin is really hard. It's a category 5 language for English speakers. It's impossible!”

Learning Mandarin is not hard at all. All those various difficulty discussions are really saying is that Mandarin takes a while to learn. Per the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), an easier language like Spanish takes ≈23-24 weeks (or 575-600 hours) for basic fluency whereas Mandarin takes ≈88 weeks (or 2200 hours) for basic fluency. So about 4x longer to learn Mandarin than Spanish or say, Afrikaans. Whatever language you choose, learning a language is like eating a large elephant one bite at a time. If the Mandarin elephant is 4 times bigger, you just have to take significant, but livable bites out of the the Mandarin elephant for that many more days.

“I don't live in China. How can I possibly learn Mandarin?”

You are exactly who this guide was written for. If you are concerned about finding a speaking partner, just keep in mind that there are 1.1 billion fluent Mandarin speakers. So you will have little or no trouble finding an enthusiastic Mandarin speaker who wants to talk with you. This is the digital age. There are dozens of apps, websites and other tools to connect with native Chinese speakers.

PART III: RESOURCES

The backbone of this entire program, | How to Remember Anything Forever-ish. Read it. Then read it again. Here's a schedule for your shoeboxes or if you are like me, manila envelopes; this Repetition Schedule should help.

Sequence of reading.

https://4chanint.fandom.com/wiki/The_Official_/int/_How_to_Learn_A_Foreign_Language_Guide_Wiki

https://4chanint.fandom.com/wiki/General_Resources

https://4chanint.fandom.com/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese

https://teachyourselfmandarin.wordpress.com/

Discord Servers: /r/ChineseLanguage, 中英交流 Chinese-English Language Exchange

PART IV: LEARNING MANDARIN

Normally its OK to jump around a guide as your whims take you. DO NOT DO THAT HERE UNTIL YOU LEARN PINYIN. Do not bother with strokes and so on until you know your pinyin fairly well.

Pinyin

Use AnkiDroid + Yoyo Chinese YouTube Channel to fill out your spaced repetition cards. Click here for the Yoyo Chinese Pinyin Playlist

Strokes

Skritter App https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkren.skritter.chinese&hl=en&gl=US

Radicals

Skritter App

PART VII: THANKS

Thanks to Nicky Case for her invaluable research into pedagogy. And to 4chan for being the best proof there is that people as groups deserve trust and that individualism is cancer.