How Much Chinese Can A Polyglot Learn In 3 Years Studying Alone?

It's finally time for a Mandarin Chinese language learning progress update! I can't believe it's already been around 3 years since I began learning Mandarin Chinese, what a journey! Let's find out how much I've managed to learn in that time alongside all my work and projects and other languages!

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[xxdgjrb]

Hello from Taiwan. Your Chinese is really good enough for native speakers to understand. But I’d like to give you two suggestions to make the speech more natural.

1) When you were taking about 舒服 (comfortable), native speakers actually don’t use that word to express the feeling about languages. It would be much natural to replace it with 自在 (sounds like feel free). For example, you may say 我對說中文還是感到不自在。

2) When you were talking about 健身 （workout), we don’t use 很多 (many), we more likely use 很常 (more often). So you may say 我最近很常健身。If you really want to use many, you need to change 健身 (workout) to 運動 (sport). For example, 我最近做比較多運動.


PS. It’s like saying “see TV” instead of “watch TV” by using the words in your speech. Sure we can still understand but we just don’t use that combination.

PS 2. I’m pretty sure if you come to Taiwan right now and start speaking Chinese. Everyone would be super curious about you and you will have endless Chinese talking time. Haha

加油！

[kaileylarson]

the '"ums, " hesitations, eye movement, and body language really show the authenticity that many experience when speaking new languages which was really comforting to see :)

[Lestry]

Wow, I remember when you started learning Mandarin and I predicted that you'd pass me very quickly. I wouldn't even be able to understand this without subtitles after having started learning Mandarin over 10 years ago. Granted, I've been spending no time on it in the last three years but yeah, very soon I wanna get back into it and finally reach a satisfactorily level.

[skritterjake]

Love seeing your study progress, Robin. I can hear lots of improvement since we last spoke live on IG. Keep it up, mate!

[fstyles]

Omg you made me feel so much better about my Chinese! I felt so discouraged that I wasn't feeling fluent yet when it seems like others become so fluent in one or two years. You did really well for someone who didn't practice speaking with others in Chinese much. Lately I've been practicing more speaking for about several months but I still don't feel comfortable expressing myself like you on video for ten minutes 😂.

[yihanyu]

hey Robin 別緊張，說得不錯，真的進步很多！ I noticed you used「舒服」a few times, nothing wrong for the meaning itself, but I think「自在」is probably more suitable here. You can say「舒服」when, for example, being in bed or on sofa, and you feel comfy; or maybe after taking a shower or having a massage, and you feel relaxed. Sorry, I’m really not explaining this well, just that to my native ears, 「自在」sounds more natural than 「舒服」in the situation you were talking about. Anyway, 你太棒了，繼續加油！

[yana]

Wow! Amazing work. I love that you haven't edited out the pauses, the parts where you hesitate, where you make mistakes, etc. Some youtube polyglots do that, creating unrealistic expectations, and it's really demotivating for the audience. Kudos for that!

[darkhorseinamerica]

Congratulations on your impressive achievement in self-studying Mandarin for three years! Not only did you master the pronunciation flawlessly, but you also have a Chinese native-like accent. I wanted to write this comment in Chinese, but I wonder if you can read it. You truly have a talent for learning foreign languages! Keep it up!

[thenaturalyogi]

it still amazes me how people can learn Mandarin with only a few months or years of studying it. I went to school for 13 years and learned Mandarin academically and still lack vocabulary for day to day situations. wtf. but your accent is understandable most words are on 👉 point. Mandarin is difficult even for me who studied it since I was a child, so congratulations 🎊 👏

[JZ-kzri]

It's awesome, Robin! It's really happy to see you keeping on learning Chinese. And after watching this video, I really want to help you with some expressions that you are not very familiar with and help you to improve some phrases. Hope these will help you😊
1.You can say at the end of the video. Of course, 加油吧 is also a great ending.
2.You can say “我还不太适应讲中文的感觉”instead of“我不太舒服…”
3.Instead of saying “一般来说，我最近挺好的”，it would be better to say “总的来说，我最近挺好的”
4.Make a sentence =造句，“我想用＇健身＇造个句”
5.If you want to talk about something that happened or you did before, you can use “之前” to refer to a time point not very specific.
Eg.之前，我读过《这些人那些事》。
之前，我见过他几次。
Or you can also add it with a time limit，for example∶
两个月之前，我见过他。
半年之前，我去过香港。

[Layla_K]

i watched ur video 3 months ago i was at the begining of hsk1 back then i felt that i cant understand anything but now after 3 months of hard work i was able to understand about 80% of wqhat u saying which makes me feel so so so happy

[KateWitt]

This is inspiring, Robin! I started studying Korean about 2 years ago. I've never learned another language in my life so I had no idea what to really expect. I have gotten so discouraged at times but THIS is real and THIS is going to keep me going. Thank you!

[victorberti]

Great progress! I started learning mandarin by myself almost at the same time that you and I'm a little bit behind you in conversation/pronunciation, but i was really surprised with all you could say! I know how hard it is and it's indeed a great feeling when you can finally say a whole text and be satisfied with it. 我们加油吧！

[Frank-pc]

我是台灣人 我已經學了英文十年了 我覺得你三年就能這樣說中文已經很厲害了 請繼續加油 而且我覺得你敢真正使用語言 已經是一個超強的進步 請不用緊張 我完全聽得懂你再說甚麼

[doviende]

Amazing work! Looking forward to hearing more.
I'm personally very interested in pronunciation, and I'll first say that both your phonetics and the tones sound really really good! I can tell you've done a lot of listening. If I can humbly offer two low-hanging fruit: sometimes you've got a "pinyinism" of pronouncing "zui" as "zoo-ee" instead of a bit more like "zway". 2nd is your "shi" occasionally sounds a bit like the nearby chinese syllable "she". This is actually really interesting, because in other words that are similar like "zhidao"'s "zhi", or "shiqing"'s "shi", you have no problem at all. So i wonder if "shi" on its own is a fossilization from earlier speaking practice?

Anyway, phenomenal work, you are a model to us all. Thanks for the encouragement for us to keep going on our own projects for the long-term!

[_justhenri]

(05:00) 我想多練習= I want to practice more. 我想自己造句 = I want to make my own sentences. 我想自己多造句多練習 = I want to make more (sample) sentences to practice more. (5:09) Recently, I've been working out more = 最近我有多運動/ 最近我常運動. (5:46) I am still not confident = 我不是很有自信 .

[bin]

Wow this is amazing! Found your channel while exploring thai language learning, and I am from Singapore, and speak both mandarin and english! And your mandarin is pretty fluent already!! One thing about asking "how you feel/what you feel about it", the structure should be "jue de zen me yang" rather than "jue de shen me". Or when you're saying "I don't know what you all will think" you could say, "wo bu zhi dao ni men zen me xiang/wo bu zhi dao ni men shi zen me xiang de"
😄😄 Keep going man! 加油！

[neesiecieslak]

Robin this is wonderful! I was learning Chinese for a about a year in total, I even lived in Taiwan for a bit. It is a fantastic language, one that is difficult to learn, but so much fun! I have paused my Chinese studies to really focus on Spanish, but this video makes me want to begin my Mandarin studying again soon! Thank you so much!

[ivonajuraskova]

I love that you did the video in one take. I don't speak Chinese at all but you sounded pretty fluent to me haha. Good job!

[WendySpeaksItalian]

你很厉害！The ending made me laugh because I did the same thing when recording a video in Italian a couple of days ago. For the first time ever I was going to say something like "If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up", except that I blanked on how to say it and just stuck my thumb up in the air instead. I've been looking for Chinese-language YouTubers, so thanks for the recommendations! Moving to native content in Chinese will also be a big challenge for me, but I know I need to take the leap.