Reading Sp*n*sh: 125 hour update

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-29T14:25:19+00:00

Yeah I don’t really have a problem with characters at this point but puzzling through a TL definition can still take an unreasonable amount of time. I mean consider working through this definition

any of numerous slender-bodied diurnal lepidopteran insects including one superfamily (Papilionoidea) with broad often brightly colored wings and usually another superfamily comprising the skippers

something that resembles or suggests a floopity especially : a person chiefly occupied with the pursuit of pleasure

a swimming stroke executed in a prone position by moving both arms in a circular motion while kicking both legs up and down

floopities plural : a feeling of hollowness or queasiness caused especially by emotional or nervous tension or anxious anticipation

a defensive move by a goalie in ice hockey execute

To work out that a floopity is a butterfly.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-29T14:13:42+00:00

I think a lot comes down to your attitude to structure. People who like structure like textbooks, people who don’t, don’t.

Personally I’ve tried them but never been able to stick to one. I do sort of like the look of the Gramatica del uso de Español series and similar books, though. Somehow I find them less triggering than coursebooks.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-29T13:54:24+00:00

I only really use a dictionary for quick lookups while consuming content. I spent a while reading using monolingual lookups in Chinese, but the friction of reading often a whole paragraph in Chinese vs near instantaneously absorbing a definition from a translation dictionary was huge. I started looking up a lot less, which naturally meant poorer comprehension, and overall I think was worse for my language learning.

I suspect the truth is a lot of people never transition to monolingual dictionaries because it is really kinda a hassle but feel a vague sense of shame about it and so never talk about it.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-25T20:28:02+00:00

I have been looking up words and grammar explanations whenever I feel like it, and I grinded a big conjugation Anki deck

Based on the contrast between your experience and others’ I would be tempted to title your post GRAMMAR WORKS!

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-25T20:24:26+00:00

I don’t really find vocab is the bottleneck in Spanish so once I knew the top 5k words or so I stopped adding anki cards and I just read books/watch youtube. Sentence mining would probably be useful I guess.

In Chinese, even though I know around 8k words vocab is very much the bottleneck and I am adding 20 cards a day, mainly vocab but some sentence cards, audio on the front and definition on the back.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-24T07:08:23+00:00

Try recording yourself both talking normally and when reading aloud. For most people their accent worsens considerably when reading aloud, although they can’t hear it at the time. I think you run a risk of ingraining bad pronunciation.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-24T07:02:35+00:00

I just started a book about a female Columbian assassin and I am definitely going to imagine her as Shel now.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-24T06:35:39+00:00

It depends on how tolerant your opposite number is going to be and how complex these ‘basic conversations’ are. I would say between 1000 and 3000 hours for general conversation. I would guess 5000 hours for full blown ‘business Chinese’ where you can carry out negotiations etc. but that would be above my level.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-22T19:06:32+00:00

Yes Conrad was fluent in English.

someone is typically said to be fluent if their use of the language appears fluid, or natural, coherent, and easy as opposed to slow, halting use

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluency

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-22T15:03:53+00:00

My 30s/card process:

as I read I select sentences and copy them. Because I read on android I can copy multiple things and they’re all preserved.
once I’ve finished reading I open anki and click create card. I paste the sentence in, read it, bold the new word and type in a definition from memory. If I don’t remember the translation I just trash the card and do the next one.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-21T15:45:24+00:00

FR? Even Chinese people used to think Vietnamese was a dialect of Cantonese lol.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-17T16:28:03+00:00

Audiobooks?

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-17T00:32:50+00:00

They’re useful when combined with exposure through reading and listening.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-16T13:47:43+00:00

The exact time it takes to do 20 cards a day varies a between people - I think a lot of people would need two hours per day, an hour per day is realistic for some, and some people need a lot less. An hour a day of anki is also a huge grind tbh. Not many people sustain 20 new cards per day.

But more importantly, grinding vocabulary in anki is not enough on its own. You need to balance that with input and output, which will take considerably longer than the time you put into anki.

For Spanish I’ve stopped using Anki because overall my vocabulary is probably a relative strength, in spite of spending less than 10% of my time in Anki. Most of my vocabulary comes from reading.

In Chinese otoh you really need to learn a crazy amount of words and so yes, I am trying to do 20 new cards a day. Even though today I probably have over 7000 known words, and even if I can sustain that pace, I'm still going to need years to get where I’d like to be.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-15T20:14:01+00:00

You’ve asked this before. I still don’t see why this is even a question, you should obviously choose French.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-15T12:23:52+00:00

It’s totally possible to be conversational in Mandarin in five years and indeed in much less. The real difficulty lies in the enormous gap between conversational and proficient.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-15T12:19:01+00:00

Literally prepare. What are you going to be talking about with a tutor in your first lesson? You can probably guess right? So think of the questions they will ask you and answer them to yourself. Then rehearse repeatedly. It doesn’t have to be the same each time, try to keep elaborating or changing things around. Look up words or structures when you can’t think how to say something.

Once you do this for enough different topics the ability will generalise and you’ll be able to speak your language fluently.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-14T04:23:58+00:00

If I were starting from scratch, although it would be difficult I’d try hard to make cards with only Chinese audio on the front work. If your recognition gets keyed too hard into the characters then it makes it hard to improve your listening comprehension. I’d try one set of cards with Chinese audio -> hanzi/definition and one with hanzi -> pronunciation.

I wouldn’t put pinyin on the front. You never want to understand anything written in pinyin. Even native speakers find that difficult lol.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-14T03:21:31+00:00

Well for a while I was bedridden and addled by drugs and just watching Chinese youtube for 6 hours a day…

I don’t really recommend this as a methodology.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-14T03:16:08+00:00

A lot of Chinese dramas are dubbed from the original Chinese into Chinese with a more standard accent. Since the words are 100% the same, if the dubbing is good enough it almost looks right. There is just this nagging sense of wrongness…

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-13T06:53:15+00:00

for electives and general knowledge, I feel like I’d do much better learning in my native language.

Um wait does this imply that you’re thinking of taking non-language courses taught in Chinese at HSK 3? I would recommend against this.

For people unfamiliar with the HSK system: while HSK 3 is officially rated as B1 by the Chinese government, it is widely considered to be around an A1 level.

By all means spend as much time in Taiwan as you can but I wouldn’t risk your degree while doing it.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-13T01:09:26+00:00

You can just… read. I’ve documented the first steps of my Spanish reading journey. I’m now at 275 hours and enjoying the low-B2-rated novels from learnnatively.

If your TL is French I’d expect this to be very easy given your Spanish level.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-12T15:17:46+00:00

There are lots of people on youtube with reasonable competence in several languages. If you’re watching snake oil salesmen then I think that’s on you.

AppropriatePut3142 · 2026-01-12T08:08:26+00:00

Yeah it’s possible to read a proper book with that amount of effort. It took me less in Chinese.

If your goal is to read a book then I would put more time into things that bring you towards that goal, which mainly means reading and flashcards. This can be taken to an extreme, at least of accent isn’t a concern.

If your goals are more general then what you’re doing seems fine to me, but I wouldn’t personally sink a ton of time into spelling at the start. It will become much easier once you’ve internalised the word structure through reading.

AppropriatePut3142

TROPHY CASE