...HOW LONG it ACTUALLY Takes to Learn Chinese!?

A NORMAL Persons Guide of just how much it takes to become Fluent in Chinese
 
Year 1 - Your journey begins with you trying  a weekly class of Chinese in your home country. You quite like it and can now say your name, and introduce you family and favourite hobby. You pass HSK 1 - You are not fluent
Year 2 -   You increase your classes to twice weekly. You can now say colours, talk about your holidays, and introduce a range of hobbies. You pass HSK 2 and 3. Go you! - You still aren't fluent
Year 3 - You move to China and sign up to Uni. You have 4 classes a day, 5 days a week. Surely after a year of this you will be well on your way to being fluent? Now you can go to a coffee shop and have a conversation with a language partner for 15 mins all in Chinese. Your family back at home now say you seem completely fluent to them. You pass HSK 4. You still aren't fluent. You feel somewhat dejected. You are starting to realise just how far you have to go.
Year 4 - You return home, and continue with weekly classes. Now you can touch on a range of subjects, but you worry you are regressing in your home country.  People who you speak to say, wow a year living in China, I bet your language skills are awesome. You hesitantly shrug your shoulders and say, "yeah I guess." You work towards HSK 5 but its alot of words so you vow to take it next year. You still aren't fluent.
Year 5 - You move back to China and get a job. You teach english, but your colleagues are Chinese so you hope you will speak in Chinese alot with them. You don't. Their english is way better than your Chinese, and its tiresome to always force them to speak Mandarin. It seems selfish. Your Chinese does improve more than your year at home though. You pretty much grasp everything at a basic level. Any instruction in a shop, or topic of conversation you can make a comment on. You pass HSK 5. You feel pride at this and you should. All your family and friends back home think you are fluent. You still aren't fluent. And despite now passing the advanced level of a Chinese proficiency test, you start to worry that you never will achieve fluency. You've put 5 years into this, and 2 years living abroad,  and lets be honest. You. Are. Still. Not. Fluent.
Year 6 - Pretty much the same as last year. But slowly you use mandarin a little more. You make a Chinese friend who cant speak English, and when you socialise with them you do so in Mandarin. Cool you think, a relationship that relies on you speaking only Chinese. You start preparing for HSK 6. As always your friends and family back home think you are fluent. And you know what, you have a friend that you converse only in Mandarin with and it works, you can make them laugh and you talk about a considerable range of subjects. You are now socially fluent. Well done!
Year 7 - You take a deep dive. You get a girlfriend/boyfriend/housemate that can only speak Mandarin. Now you spend alot of social time with them outside of work. You are now using Mandarin 50% of the time. Thinks flow easy. You rarely feel anxiety thinking, i don't understand what they are saying. If the subject becomes complex or terchnical. You are lost however. You pass HSK 6. You are still socially fluent, but more so.
Year 8 - You start a job in a mandarin only environment. All of your colleagues use Chinese. You recognize that whereas before most people had better english than you so the conversation naturally reverted to english, this has now reversed. Your Chinese is better than most people. You spend lots of time learning vocab relevant to your job. You can now express everything you want to say. In reality however it is clunky, and you make many mistakes. Well done. You are now socially fluent, and work fluent. 
Year 9 - Everything is going well. You rarely meet anyone whose english is better than your mandarin. Many of your friends you now socialise with in Mandarin. You rarely feel anxiety, and even rarer still have no grasp at all of what is going on. You still make many mistakes though, and vow to iron them out. In truth though, if you listen to the radio, or watch tv. Its complex. You get this gist easily, but its not as enjoyable as watching stuff in english. Because your brain is working overtime.You are now socially fluent, and work fluent, but not entertainment content .
Year 10 - You find a tv show that you enjoy, and you watch it pretty confidently. Your mistakes start to iron out, and you don't pause it that much.  Your family, your friends, your colleagues, your boss, society at large and now, finally, yourself, consider you to be fluent. In reality, fluent is now probably an accurate description of where you are at. PHEW, Well done, it only took 10 years, and not the 30 days you had hoped for. You are now fluent. Despite this, you now have the wisdom to know. This is a life long journey, that is nowhere close to completion. You vow to become more fluent.

[BountifulYachtClub]

The best time to start learning a language? 10+ years ago.

The second best time? Now!

[stevenkovacs]

FIRST person I've seen tell the truth about the length of time required! Thank you!

[DoreenGunther]

Thank you for your video. I've been learning Chinese for 2.5 years and still feel like a beginner. Thank you for finally someone openly saying that it's normal not to master a language in 6 months. :)

[lukejm]

Tbh even in one's own native tongue there is always more to learn, more words to learn to express new concepts.

[aidanschram]

When I went to China, all the foreigners I had met that spoke great Chinese had been studying for 10-12 years. You could probably get to a high level in 3-5 years though if you really immerse yourself

[cocohoco]

I've been living in China for 7 years, and I agree 100% with your opinions. That's the case for most of the people. I've encountered all kinds of foreigners studying Chinese, and from what I've observed:

- If your mother tongue is similar to Chinese (mainly tonal languages or the ones which use characters), you can actually pass HSK6 in one year, I've seen that many times from Asian students, they pick it up real quick.
- Having a good level of English can be a drawback in the beginning; since you still can't have a conversation in Chinese, you'd tend to rely on your English.
- I've seen students who are in love with Chinese culture AND their majors are Chinese Language and Culture. They definitely don't need 10 years to be fluent not because all their classes are related to Chinese language, but because their passion IS Chinese, so they expose themselves all the time to it by consuming all they find interesting in Chinese. To this, I should add that there are people who are not Chinese Language students, but they love Chinese TV shows, TV shows, celebrities, etc.; they improve extremely fast.
- I think learning Chinese is also, in part, helped by not just confidence but your ego. You'll get a lot of praising by Chinese people: If you hang out with people whose Chinese is worse than you, Chinese people will let you and the other person know, they'll ask you out and stuff. In Chinese college, you'll also get recognition by your teachers, and you'll be invited to be part of the international activities.

The most important thing IMHO is to love the culture (Chinese language exams are full of it). If that's not your passion, I think there's a high chance you'll be falling into the description of this video, and that's absolutely fine. Everyone has its own pace (:

[izzy]

There are a ton of factors that go into how long it takes to become fluent, such as what your native language is, how efficient your methods are, etc. But one of the biggest determining factors is simply how many hours you put in and how consistent you are putting them in. Using years as markers for how much time you’ve spent learning can sometimes be a bit vague. For example, someone who put in 2000 hours in a year vs. someone who put in 200 hours in a year is going to have progressed at a vastly different speeds. However long it will take you, that time is going to pass by whether you take advantage of it or not, so if you want it, go for it.

[KiraSenna-jr]

i feel like most people who are actually really good have studied for over 10 years

[JayeSunsurn]

Thank you, I am constantly having to remind myself of this very fact, that it's going to be a 1000 mile journey, and it begins beneath ones feet. Thanks! (subbed)

[glovere]

The best video yet on the truth of language learning. What most YouTube "polyglots" do is a magic trick. Learn some basics, including everyday slang, get the accent down, and edit the crap out of your very short interactions to make it seem like you are fluent. Jack knows what he is talking about. I'm sure there are exceptions in the same way that some people are musical prodigies. But average folks like you and me take many years of very hard work to achieve an advanced level. Until we have Matrix-style language downloads into our brains, this will still be the case. Thanks, Jack for telling the truth. Great video!

[joelmann]

Well said, Jack. I'm trying to learn Tagalog (unti-unti!) and people say "Oh man you're so good!". I'm like no man, I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

[imagephobia]

Very real & informative video, much respect Jack - as always, you’re the man!

[sophieb]

I started learning Mandarin Chinese a little less than a year ago, and am barely able to scratch the surface. I joke that I'm on the 20 year plan to learn Mandarin. But for me it's about the journey, not the destination. I simply find Mandarin to be a fascinating language, and I enjoy studying it. If I never reach fluency (whatever that means), it's fine. Having fun along the way!

[rogerhare]

People admire determination and dedication. Thank you for reminding the hard work needed for this ethic.

[NiceCuppa]

"consistent but manageable amounts of effort across a long time period" is the real key to learning anything.

[bluecedar]

Well done! A good encouragement video as well as reality check.

[burpeesandbells]

I'm not learning Chinese but I do love watching your videos and I also learn languages as a hobby. This video is one of the very few which gives a realistic take on what your expectations should be in relation to learning a language. 1'000s of vids out there giving you hacks, tips etc on how you can learn in X number of hours, only serve to frustrate and disappoint people when they aren't fluent in the their chosen language after 2 months. They then give up, thinking they're stupid or the language is too all it needs is to be realistic about what you can achieve in relation to the effort you put in regarding your learning. Anyway, I've never understood why there's this rush to achieve your time, enjoy the journey and you'll absorb more of the language and the culture! Keep knocking the vids out mate 😁

[George-liyv]

Wow I can't believe this video didn't show up till now. You should definitely make more videos like this Jack

[dberry]

As a 50 + year old with Dyslexia I think it will take me another 20 years to learn 🥺but that dosn't put me off wanting to learn. I just wish I had started when my brain was younger. 🤯

[benedictcarter]

This is very accurate. I've "studied" Chinese for 16 years (beyond a certain point it's not study, you're just using it) and still, the deeper you get, the further down you realise the rabbit hole goes.