Von:00:00:00 - 00:00:29

So I've been studying Mandarin for about 5 years. It's been quite a journey full of ups and downs. But as I've gone along, I've found new and more interesting reasons to continue studying and to get to fluency. It's just been one of the most interesting kind of challenges that I've done in my life so far. It's just kind of like an endless well of information and new ideas and everything's very fulfilling and I really, really enjoy it thoroughly.

Stephanie:00:00:29 - 00:00:31

Okay. And you're based in the US right now, right?

Von:00:00:31 - 00:00:32

I'm in LA, yeah.

Stephanie:00:00:32 - 00:00:43

Let's backtrack a little bit. I'd like to get people's viewpoints of their beginning languages before we dive into their current ones, which you're currently working on Mandarin. What was your first language?

Von:00:00:43 - 00:01:26

My mother language is English. In high school, I studied Spanish for 4 years or something, and then in college I took a couple of classes for Spanish. Didn't really get anywhere with it. I know you were a teacher, but I just never found the academic system to be very good at teaching languages or really just imparting the interest or passion to learn it. While I did learn a ton of vocabulary, it really didn't go anywhere. Recently I was in a Spanish-speaking country and some of it reactivated without studying. That was really cool, but wasn't really able to use it. So there's that. Outside of that, that's, that's about it. I've dabbled in other languages here and there, but it's, it's mostly just, you know, Spanish was before.

Stephanie:00:01:26 - 00:01:39

Fair enough. Fair enough. And don't you worry, there's a certain way things are done in academia and if you buck that system, it doesn't go well. I agree. Something in the language classroom that is just not conducive to language learning.

Von:00:01:39 - 00:01:40

Yeah, unfortunately.

Stephanie:00:01:40 - 00:01:55

And I'd love to figure out how to change that or how to promote things outside, lots of self-study stuff. But let's dig into that a little bit more. Specifically, let's talk about English. Do you have any memories about learning to read or write or speak or anything like super early on?

Von:00:01:55 - 00:02:07

There are a couple times where I remember not understanding what a word meant and having to go look it up. Or not understanding what it was for years. That only really became apparent while I was studying Mandarin.

Stephanie:00:02:07 - 00:02:09

Do you remember what words some of them were?

Von:00:02:09 - 00:02:55

A friend brought this one up. We were talking about something similar, and he brought up the example of "to the left." Now, that concept is totally abstract. You can't really point to something and be like, "To the left." You can point to something and then point to the left of it, but it's still— that's an abstract concept. That's not really something that you think about in your native language, like thinking about learning a language or what kids have to go through. But it's something that you do come across when you're studying a new language. It's something similar, kind of like for Spanish, you're learning the grammar and everything. You're starting to understand specifically what the past tense does and how it's created and the different kind of forms of the past tense. And then you realize, oh wait, we have this in English too. But it only became apparent once you started studying another language.

Stephanie:00:02:55 - 00:03:26

I went to school just before they stopped explicitly teaching grammar and having do like diagramming and stuff, like in the US in the '70s and whatnot. Apparently just after me is when that explicit instruction stopped. And I hear what you're saying from so many people when especially the English teachers that go overseas and they're like, you know what, in my English training program or my first classroom, they were like frantically looking up titles of verb tenses and things. 'Cause they're like, they knew how to use the language, but they didn't grow up in the educational system labeling it and knowing how to categorize it.

Von:00:03:26 - 00:03:27

Yeah.

Stephanie:00:03:27 - 00:03:27

That's a good point.

Von:00:03:27 - 00:03:47

I did learn a little bit about, uh, different things. I, I do, I remember not understanding what an adjective was as a child. I couldn't wrap my head around it. A lot of things I remember from school that I didn't quite get at the time. And like lately I've been like starting to like understand. Yeah. I mean like stuff like that, it just, it didn't make any sense to me. But over time it improved, definitely.

Stephanie:00:03:47 - 00:03:59

When they're growing up and learning their first language or first languages, some people tend to really gravitate towards reading. Some people really like speaking, some people like writing. Where did you fall in that?

Von:00:03:59 - 00:04:36

I think I hated it all. Very, very introverted and everything. That, that was probably the easiest part for me was talking. I didn't really like reading, but that's mostly because I didn't like academics. Uh, like it's too forceful, I think, didn't really cater to my interests, which I mean, it's not supposed to, but I never felt motivated. So, you know, like reading Hardy Boys or, or Cam Jansen or something like that, I was like, ah, this is not really for me, you know? Yeah. Boring. But yeah, so definitely speaking. And then occasionally I liked writing, very kind of like expansive imagination. Yeah. Writing still was kind of boring. Mostly because it's just for school, you know.

Stephanie:00:04:36 - 00:04:41

At any point in your life, start to read a lot or start to write a lot or start to enjoy those things?

Von:00:04:41 - 00:04:53

I don't think so. I've been trying to read more, but this has more to do with like trying to get away from YouTube, try to get away from like, yeah, like the—

Stephanie:00:04:53 - 00:04:56

Blasphemy, Ron, blasphemy.

Von:00:04:56 - 00:06:01

Well, every once in a while, you know, I'll watch some YouTube. I don't like so much having to be part of like this one more click, one more, like scroll down just a little bit more just to see what comes next, you know. Been trying to like drive my own entertainment and do something that's more productive. This is kind of sparked by the idea that IQ is linked to reading and also your ability to use a language also linked to reading, which I mean they're all kind of tied together. So, you know, I started with reading Mandarin. My personal method of studying Mandarin is through just reading and it's like from the very beginning it's just Yeah, it's, it's like incredibly laborious, I guess is the word, but it gives you like a massive amount of vocabulary and understanding of the language very quickly. I'm trying to transition that over back to English so that I continue to develop there too. 'Cause I notice that you can lose functionality in one language as you learn another one, or at least temporarily. I don't know how it is like later on, but yeah, like So it's important to keep the balance, I think.

Stephanie:00:06:01 - 00:06:43

Yeah, no, it's really true. And in language teaching, we— I don't know if it's an official term, but we would just call it language erosion. Because as we were teaching especially low-level language learners, we weren't necessarily functioning in the local language. Also, we weren't really using our regular home language, what have you, to any normal degree. We were doing very simple sentences to help teach them the language and things. So we would end up not being able to form full beautiful sentences by the end of the day. We'd be like, uh, kind of thing. Wow. It's a real thing. I think That's when I started listening to a lot of podcasts and reading a lot online because they didn't have a lot of paper books where I was overseas, but I needed something to go in so I could keep the language alive while I was teaching.

Von:00:06:44 - 00:06:51

Interesting. That's got to be like kind of frightening to be like, I can't remember what that word is anymore or something.

Stephanie:00:06:51 - 00:07:03

I did grow up as a reader. I think it was just instinct. As soon as I started to notice it, I was just like, obviously I just need more content. So I just started grabbing at whatever I could to read. The more common, the better, the meatier, the the better.

Von:00:07:03 - 00:07:08

And, or like maybe more like literary kind of novels, or do you read like technical kind of stuff or—

Stephanie:00:07:08 - 00:07:48

Honestly, it depended on what the internet would let me get ahold of. I read some news stuff. There were some travel writers that had really beautiful, dense, meaty introspective sentences. So I read a lot of their stuff. I read some autobiographical stuff. I started to listen to podcasts and I tended to lean towards stuff that had presenters that had really colorful, very intense vocabulary. 'Cause I felt like I was losing some of mine. Yeah. Yeah. But it wasn't the only stuff. I was still watching ridiculous videos on YouTube and listening to songs. I mean, I don't wanna give the impression that I'm like this super intelligent person that only reads really deep stuff. That's a lie. Totally a lie.

Von:00:07:48 - 00:07:53

Definitely space to watch cat videos and whatever, you know, those are some of the best videos on the internet.

Stephanie:00:07:53 - 00:07:58

Cat videos comes up into almost every interview I do, no matter what the topic is.

Von:00:07:59 - 00:08:01

I know that. I mean, they're popular and they're cool.

Stephanie:00:08:01 - 00:08:14

It was like the beginning of YouTube with cat videos. But no, no, I do watch silly videos on YouTube, but for some reason the animal ones are not where I gravitate. Okay. Do you have a channel you recommend for silly cat videos?

Von:00:08:15 - 00:08:19

There are a couple of videos that I could recommend. I'll have to find them.

Stephanie:00:08:19 - 00:08:28

But yeah, fair enough. I will keep an open mind. I do like cats. I don't know what the deal is. So did you skip over Pinion completely then and just go to the Hansekerk?

Von:00:08:29 - 00:10:16

Oh no, no, no. First of all, I found Chris from, I forget his last name, but I think he changed his name to learnmandarin.com or something like that. That's his YouTube channel. But found him, he recommended a whole bunch of things. One of those pieces of software was DimSum, which is what I used before Pleco. I looked at all these resources and then I didn't really know where to start. So I tried to find somebody that could kind of bridge me into it. And that was Serge Melnik. He has like a whole set of, not podcast, but audio lessons with transcript thing. Like you would have some vocabulary, like you would say the word and then you'd have a native speaker say the word. Um, you know, for a lesson, a lesson you'd have like, it sounded like a Taiwanese one, mainland speaker or something like that. And so, you know, you'd listen to him say it, then you listen to, to her say it, and then you would say it. So over, over time I built up that kind of responsiveness and then I would look at the pinyin from Trans Forever, actually. I'm not really sure where I got that at first. I did that for a few months and then I started to realize that there are a lot of homophones and, uh, homonyms. There are a lot of times when you can get tripped up thinking that one word is another or characters are reversed. Yeah. It's a different word. And so I started realizing I'm not getting enough information from just reading the romanization. I'm not getting enough information from just listening, it's just a soup, muddy soup. So I started looking at the characters first simplified, and then over time I was curious. I like wonder what the traditional ones look like. Yeah, those. And I kind of like, through reading traditional characters, I saw there's more information there, and it was kind of helpful to be able to like understand the way that characters were simplified and everything. And, you know, it just started creating all these other connections.

Stephanie:00:10:16 - 00:10:19

Jimsum's like an online dictionary or an app, or?

Von:00:10:19 - 00:10:55

It's like a PC application. Oh, okay. Yeah. I was using that first. It was good, but it's so cumbersome. The whole idea for dictionaries and stuff, get as fast of a lookup as possible. The amount of times I look up a word in a reading session or something like, it's crazy. I remember the first day I started studying, the first page I read, it took me 3 hours to read maybe a 5-sentence paragraph and like my brain was on fire from that. Eventually finding Pleco, like, it's way better because you can go so much faster and then learning how to handwrite in Pleco, it's like even faster.

Stephanie:00:10:55 - 00:10:57

I love that feature so much.

Von:00:10:58 - 00:11:00

Do you ever use the, um, the photo?

Stephanie:00:11:00 - 00:11:25

I do, but I actually find it faster if I write it. Yeah. Although I have a slight gripe with them that they still consider the stroke order important because if it looks the same, I'm still on the page of it should be recognized, but I still think just, it's so easy because if you don't know how it sounds, yeah, you don't know where to start. So I just start drawing it in and poof, there it is. And I'm like, that's crazy.

Von:00:11:25 - 00:11:36

It makes me wonder, how do deaf people in China actually learn language? Like there's so many characters and everything. I can't imagine trying to understand characters without the sound.

Stephanie:00:11:36 - 00:11:55

That's a really good point. Okay, I'm gonna research that. I've seen Braille in China. Not sure if it's like an international version or a different languages version, or do they have their own version? But I have seen it. I've probably taken pictures of it, and it doesn't look like the characters. It looks just like the dots of other Brailles that I've seen.

Von:00:11:55 - 00:12:12

That's definitely something to look up, because unless I'm like very intimate with the character, like I really understand it, yeah, then I subvocalize.. And like, that's the only way that I can understand it. Like, I can, I can see it and try to like split myself from it, but like comprehension doesn't work so well.

Stephanie:00:12:12 - 00:12:20

You mentioned Taiwan and you've been studying Chinese for a while. Have you been to any place that uses it as their main language?

Von:00:12:20 - 00:12:49

I was in China in 2008, right before the Olympics. And I knew some words. I grew up around the language. I never spoke any of it. Gained like a kind of passive understanding about a few words, but I didn't really understand them and I definitely couldn't pronounce them. So, I mean, I, I had some limited words that I could say when I was there. And, and of course, like, you always pick up stuff when you go and you're in a country. So just for a couple weeks in 2008.

Stephanie:00:12:49 - 00:12:51

And you were up in Beijing for the games?

Von:00:12:51 - 00:13:09

No, I was there before. I just graduated high school and I was there for, it was like something for people that are interested in politics and it's kind of like a track to get them moving towards politics. And you know, it was just kind of an experience, but they had people from all over the US and actually all over the world come and join. So it's cool.

Stephanie:00:13:09 - 00:13:14

Now, you mentioned you grew up with the language around you. What does that mean?

Von:00:13:14 - 00:13:44

So I practiced martial arts, wushu. Yeah. And my coach was from Fujian. She would talk to other people in it. And I hear it a lot. Having characters on shirts and stuff like that, you see it. You're exposed to it. But I mean, it's complex language. It did help to kind of like sparked interest in learning it. It's just like you, you're around it, you see it and you're like, you don't know what it is. And then someday, like it just dawns on me like, oh yeah, like I could just learn that if I wanted to.

Stephanie:00:13:44 - 00:13:47

You started learning Mandarin Chinese after your schooling?

Von:00:13:47 - 00:13:48

Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie:00:13:48 - 00:13:49

Yeah. What sparked that interest?

Von:00:13:49 - 00:15:24

I used to do this thing called tricking and it's like martial arts, uh, that got turned into acrobatics that combined with gymnastics. So I was doing that for a while and I would follow people on YouTube. And like watch their videos and came across this guy, he's Danish, I think his name is Victor, but he would post videos about tricking and then occasionally he would post videos about Japanese and he would do like these, these language lessons for Japanese and English. Like, oh, that's really cool. So I would, I would like look at those, you know, from time to time and be like, oh man, this is really cool. Like it's easy and it's, it's kind of fun. And I asked him, I was like, wait a second, so you're, you're teaching Japanese in English. And English isn't your first language either. Oh, no, it's my second language, Japanese. And I was like, oh my God. Well, he was showing how he was learning Japanese. He showed that he went to Japan and how he had worked there for like 1 or 2 months as a grocery store and how he's communicating with people on TV. Spoke it really well. He spoke English really well. I was fascinated by that. It seems like he had learned Japanese the same way he had learned how to trick. Which was, you know, a lot of self-study and dedication. Oh, this is actually possible. Somebody can actually do that. Because at that point I was about 6 years into my tricking career. So like I had gone from total scratch to like had built up a certain amount of skill in that. And I'd seen something that should have been impossible or people feel like is impossible be very possible for me. So it's like, this can definitely happen for something else. So. Gave it a try.

Stephanie:00:15:24 - 00:15:25

And you're still doing that now?

Von:00:15:25 - 00:15:33

Do it off and on. I mean, I've kind of gotten my fill from it. It's been about 10 years. I've kind of done everything that I wanted to do in it.

Stephanie:00:15:33 - 00:15:33

Yeah.

Von:00:15:33 - 00:15:40

There's a lot further I could go, but muscles, not as young as I used to be. Yeah.

Stephanie:00:15:40 - 00:15:51

Let's play with the comparison between learning Spanish and learning Chinese. Are there any comparisons on how you learn them or the languages themselves, or?

Von:00:15:51 - 00:18:02

The one that I always bring up to people that like don't study languages Chinese language is the amount of effort you have to put in. Yeah. For the first pretty much 4 years I studied Mandarin, I never thought it was hard. For me, like in my opinion, it was like an exercise in diligence and patience. Not really challenging in that it's hard to understand. You just need to take your time and learn every day, you know, study some. But the comparison I give them is Spanish, you can study for 4 months to a year. You study, I don't know, somewhere between 2 hours and 8 hours a day. You'll attain some ability to speak to people, to write, to read. Meaning like you'll be actually somewhat good at the language. You can use it. Chinese though, I studied for at least 6 hours a day for a while. And I, you know, I would take breaks. Obviously I'd do like 2, 2 weeks on and you know, I would get burned. And I would take some time off and I'd do it again. I couldn't say anything, I still couldn't read anything, I could barely listen to anything, I couldn't understand anything. It was ridiculous to me because, you know, at that point I was still understanding what a word was in Chinese, but I didn't understand that character is not a word. I didn't understand how many characters formed a word, or I didn't understand what different grammar particles were and what they did. I was still trying to grasp things like "jiù" or like other, some other basic ones like "wǒ" or "lò." I'm still having trouble with those, to be honest. They have so many different meanings. They have so many different instances of their uses. And it's just all of that combined just makes it so much different from learning Spanish. I feel like now that I'm 5 years in, I'm finally getting to that point where I was with Spanish is I'm finally getting to the point where I can look at a news article where I can look at a book and I can read it without the dictionary and get a gist of it. I still need a dictionary. I still have to look up dozens of words all the time, uh, you know, or hundreds of words in a serious session. But it, it's taken this much time and effort to get to that point where I can like just kind of like absorb it more casually.

Stephanie:00:18:02 - 00:19:17

I'm actually really relieved to hear you say all of this cuz there's, A lot of people that do intensive classes and immerse themselves in the environment and claim that like 6 months to a year and they're fluent. And I hear them talking, but I can't gauge if they are or not, or if people are just being kind and responding in some way to them. So I've heard a lot of people do that stuff. And so I'm like, I don't know, a year and a half in and I'm finally able to read very graded text. Like we're talking HSK 3 texts I can read, mostly looking up some stuff. Yeah, but I don't really understand a lot of what I'm reading yet, but I can finally read without the pinyin and like entire sentence or two, an entire 6-sentence conversation. And that's only happened in the past few weeks. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, I'm excited that I can now sound like a buffoon when I'm reading out this thing that, that, that's there, but I still don't understand what it means yet. So I guess that'll come at some point in the future, but this is a stepping stone. Yeah, like when I learned Spanish, I never got very high up with Spanish, but when I learned Spanish, the reading and the comprehension seemed to come pretty hand in hand. The script was very similar, a lot of the words were very similar, the intonation and the sounds seemed very similar, so it didn't feel like a lot of meaning was lost. And that's not true for Mandarin for me.

Von:00:19:18 - 00:19:32

Ah, oh yeah, I commented on one of your videos recently. It seemed like you made a lot of progress all of a sudden. You've broken through like that plateau. And like all of a sudden got all these other things I know how to do now. Like it, stuff just all of a sudden just clicks and it makes sense.

Stephanie:00:19:32 - 00:19:32

Yeah.

Von:00:19:32 - 00:19:35

I was really happy to see that because I remember that.

Stephanie:00:19:35 - 00:20:01

It takes so much time though, because I'm not doing 6 hours a day. I'm doing like under 2 hours a day, but it's like you said, 5, 6 days a week, 7 days a week sometimes. And like really pushing and making sure that you're doing it all the time and not missing too many days in a row. And it's just it's almost a challenge because it seems so unobtainable that it's almost like I'm feeling myself pushing more than any other language that I've tried to learn before. Yeah.

Von:00:20:01 - 00:20:26

You know about, what is it? It's not, it's not a learning curve, but like it, it's supposed to be like in the, the first like 20 hours of learning a skill, put in a small amount of time and you get a large amount of benefit from it. I feel like for learning Mandarin as an English speaker, it's like you'll be in that phase for a year. Yes. Like, it's not just those 20 hours, it's not just a couple months. You'll be there for a long time.

Stephanie:00:20:26 - 00:21:13

A man from the UK who has learned to speak, read, and he's reading science fiction in Chinese within 2 years, which I think is just crazy. But he also spent a lot of time, and I think he was dating locally and things like that, that, you know, give you more exposure, those kinds of things. Not to excuse it because he seems very good at learning languages. He was saying that with some languages it's very easy at the beginning, and then it gets really hard when you get to minor grammar points. And he said that Mandarin's the opposite, where it's really hard at the beginning, and then when you reach a certain point, you start recognizing, even if you don't know the word, you can probably read parts of it. There are like sound components and things that can help you. And the grammar is still the same because that doesn't vary that much. And so it's like the hardest part is the first few years, and then it gets a lot easier. But that was his theory.

Von:00:21:13 - 00:21:21

I would agree with that, with one exception. I think that it gets harder again towards the top level.

Stephanie:00:21:21 - 00:21:22

Yeah, that makes sense.

Von:00:21:22 - 00:21:51

I haven't gotten there yet, but like, I don't know if you try to watch like a movie or something like that and like look at all the subtitles and like pause and like, but sometimes the grammar, dude, like this is not the same grammar I was just studying a minute ago, like what happened? But it's because as far as I know, like there, there's a literary language, there's like their other languages or quote-unquote languages, but it just gets crazy like that. Or then if you go into a classical, like, it just like, it's totally different.

Stephanie:00:21:51 - 00:22:19

It's funny cuz I was interviewing this gentleman from my PhD program. He grew up in China and now he's in the US doing his PhD. And he was saying in China they start with those literary references. First and second grade, they're reading like poems and literary pieces. And so they're getting those bits of language that are used later on in everything, even in newspapers, people are saying, right? So he's getting— they're getting them like in first and second grade and then the whole way through, but they're starting that early.

Von:00:22:19 - 00:22:20

Wow.

Stephanie:00:22:20 - 00:22:25

Right? And I've heard people complain about this, like, oh, I thought I knew the language and then all of this happened.

Von:00:22:25 - 00:22:40

You ever wonder if like we learn it backwards? Our way of studying a language is to deconstruct it and then like rationalize it, but the way that you learn it as a native is different. Yeah, maybe we should be going about it the same way they do.

Stephanie:00:22:40 - 00:22:47

Maybe, because then you wouldn't have learn that stuff, which is commonly used later on when you think that you've already learned so much.

Von:00:22:48 - 00:22:57

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, maybe, maybe problems with fluency or like the, the correct way to phrase something like the phrasology wouldn't be so like different.

Stephanie:00:22:57 - 00:23:15

And I asked him, I was like, well, okay, you guys were in first and second grade. Do you feel like you and your classmates understood what you were reading? And he's like, of course we did. And I'm like, oh, okay, nevermind. I'm thinking of like 8-year-olds in the US and the intense stuff we didn't read at that age. Well, we did read the Declaration of Independence. Or at least part of it.

Von:00:23:15 - 00:23:18

That was— is that even a comparison though?

Stephanie:00:23:18 - 00:23:19

Like, no, I don't think so.

Von:00:23:19 - 00:23:25

They're classical Chinese. Would that be compared to like Middle English or like Old English?

Stephanie:00:23:25 - 00:23:52

Maybe. I had somebody else compare it to Shakespeare, which does take some time to get used to. Like, that's one author with that way of writing, I suppose. I don't know. I don't know enough Chinese to know this yet. I'm just kind of getting it in English into— yeah, I'm collecting information, but I was floored by how early they started that, and they had to memorize sit and recite it. They had to write it to do their writing practice. And I'm just like, whoa, that's amazing.

Von:00:23:52 - 00:24:00

Like, I, I can't imagine it cuz it's just like, it's totally different from, from what you hear off the street, you know, or, or anywhere.

Stephanie:00:24:00 - 00:24:24

Like, we, we quote Shakespeare every now and then, sometimes jokingly, sometimes not. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have literary references throughout English too because we grow up with it. We don't think about it until somebody says, hey, what does that mean? But that's not taught in English language textbooks either. Language teaching in general, ignores reality for a very long time. Crazy. Second grade. What was the hardest thing you read in second grade?

Von:00:24:24 - 00:24:28

I don't even remember second grade. Um, I think I blocked out most of my schooling experience.

Stephanie:00:24:29 - 00:24:44

I just remember the Declaration of Independence because it's just when we moved from New York to Pennsylvania. And so I was like super conscious about standing in front of my new classmates. Oh yeah. Citing it. But if it wasn't for that, I don't think I would've even remembered that.

Von:00:24:44 - 00:24:56

Yeah. Maybe it was like learning the American kind of things. I do remember I missed the day that we learned the, uh, Star-Spangled Banner. I came back the next day, everybody was singing, and I was like, what are the words of this?

Stephanie:00:24:56 - 00:25:03

Wow, yeah, that's funny. They spent only one day on the national anthem.

Von:00:25:04 - 00:25:08

Yeah, I don't know why. I don't know, I don't ask questions about that kind of stuff.

Stephanie:00:25:08 - 00:25:40

Yeah. Oh hey, I was not an active participant in most of my schooling until I got to the last part of my bachelor's. I really, really disliked my primary and secondary school experience in the US. Yeah. K through 12 was like, can it be over now, please? You've started and stopped calling character words and words characters. And I find that this happens so often when I talk about Mandarin Chinese. When you're talking about learning this to anybody that isn't learning it, how do you describe to them how confusing characters and words are?

Von:00:25:41 - 00:25:45

Um, I, I say, uh, terms now. I use the word terms.

Stephanie:00:25:46 - 00:25:48

Oh, instead of either one of them.

Von:00:25:48 - 00:26:06

Yeah, cuz I mean, even technically in English, what really is a word? I mean, like we separate things out with spaces, so that's what we call a word. But you know, it gets confused sometimes. Like, I mean, I'm sure you, you obviously definitely know this, but like each other, like that's, that's one word or is it two words?

Stephanie:00:26:06 - 00:26:13

Yeah, it's like, I thought it was two, but I'm beginning to question it now.

Von:00:26:13 - 00:26:16

Or, or, you know, myself, you know, is that one word or is that two words?

Stephanie:00:26:17 - 00:26:20

Well, that one's, well, yeah, going by spaces, it's one.

Von:00:26:20 - 00:26:35

Yeah. You know, and if you think about like German or something like that, you know how they concatenate like words together, so yeah, it becomes a longer word, you know? It's like, really, what is a word? In my opinion, a word is an idea. Like it expresses one basic ideal.

Stephanie:00:26:35 - 00:26:42

So would you call collocations like get up, go to sleep, those kinds of things, would you call like each one of those a term?

Von:00:26:43 - 00:27:21

So I, those, those move on into phrases, I would say. Mm-hmm. But like just slightly smaller than that is a, is a term or is a word. And, and I think that's, that's what's more important. So, um, when I, when I describe what Mandarin is like to people that don't study languages or or studying Mandarin in particular, I, I say like, oh, well, you know, imagine, imagine you were learning English by syllables. Mm-hmm. Like, what would that be like? Yeah. Oh man. You know, I learned today, I learned like 30 new syllables. I'm like, okay, that's great. But like, what does that actually mean? Like, what have you, what have you actually done? You haven't really done anything.

Stephanie:00:27:22 - 00:27:23

Like, yeah.

Von:00:27:23 - 00:27:51

Sometimes a syllable is one word, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that, you know. But like, um, but yeah, like again, you say like yourself, like, ah, yeah, I mean, you got two syllables there, but that's like, that's not too different. It's not really not too different. More is like, that's, that's like the one idea right there. Yeah, it takes a time to like put those together. In Mandarin, I'll express it as zìyǔ, which is like word, language, like term.

Stephanie:00:27:52 - 00:28:27

No, that makes a lot of sense. We have syllables in English. We sometimes teach syllables. We understand what syllables are to a point, but Chinese is much more syllabic than English is. We have a lot of loanwords and things like that that don't— like, we don't have the specific pattern to English like Mandarin does. And yet spacing and words and the sentences with only punctuation generally at the end is very confusing at the beginning, I think. What was the biggest thing that was hard for you when you first started?

Von:00:28:27 - 00:29:20

This might not be kind of like in the direction you're looking for, but it's like getting in the habit. The way that I do like new skills or new information is like, I won't tell anybody about it so I can promise myself that I can do it for a month, at least a month straight. Sudden. So it's just really hard because of that, that, that brain burn or whatever it is. Like, I've never experienced that before, like ever. This is the— I think there's only been, uh, one other thing now that I've, I've gotten like this, but I mean, this is just recently, this is after studying Mandarin, but like that, that, that serious like headache you get after like trying to decipher what things mean for so And so like, because of that, like I, it was just really hard to commit. Like it becomes like, and that's, that's why I have to take those, like those breaks after like 2, 2-ish weeks.

Stephanie:00:29:20 - 00:29:21

Yeah.

Von:00:29:21 - 00:29:38

Because like, I can't even force myself. I can't even like think about it. I can't manage to think about studying. Like it's, it's almost physically painful to be like, oh, I gotta do this again. I was like, oh my God. So, so I would, I'd hate doing that, but like I forced myself for a month. And then after that, it became easy.

Stephanie:00:29:38 - 00:29:51

That sounds like a natural rhythm, but you keep coming back to it and that's the important part. Yeah. What do you do to make sure you keep coming back to it? Do you have any sort of like timeframe where you say, I'm going to take this much time off and then I'll come back?

Von:00:29:51 - 00:30:38

I've gotten clever on my ways of studying. So a couple months in, say 6 to 8 months in, I switched my phone to Chinese. And then shortly after I switched my browsers on my PC to Chinese. I started subscribing to a ton of Chinese channels every day. So if I didn't want to look at it, like I would always be forced to look at it. And then, so I still get burned out, but what ends up happening is at the end of the burnout period, basically what that, what I've deciphered that means is that I processed the information and now I'm like open to receiving more information. So I'll become curious again and I'll see the words. I won't know what it means and I'll be like curious to look it up. That's when it happens. That's when I know I can go back in and it just happens organically.

Stephanie:00:30:38 - 00:30:42

How long is it usually when that happens? Like a few weeks?

Von:00:30:42 - 00:31:05

Um, yeah, it's usually a couple weeks, but you know, it can be longer. It doesn't work. I like to learn a lot of different things at once. I can only balance like certain kinds of things. One like kind of academic thing, one like kind of physical thing. Mm-hmm. So basically that, that's, that's all I can do is I have one of those each of those slots filled up and then like over time, like I can just return to it. Felt that the burn yet? Like the—

Stephanie:00:31:05 - 00:31:51

Oh, yet from the beginning. Well, I did do a lot more games and apps and learning about the language for the first few months, but ever since I switched over to Words and especially when I started to read with the characters without the pinyin, oh, the burn's been real. The burn's been real. And I, I do do physical flashcards cuz I didn't find that the, um, the digital ones didn't quite stick. I don't know if it was the process of writing them or what have you, but I will literally just stare at the flashcard and wait for it to hit me. And the burn happens a lot of times then. When I get to the point where I start to recognize it, but I can't remember it, it, it's a little painful. And by the time I get to the fourth deck that I'm reviewing that day, I'm like, ah, but I, well, there's only 9 in a deck, so I mean, it's not that impressive.

Von:00:31:52 - 00:31:54

Well, I mean, it is, it is what it is. Yeah.

Stephanie:00:31:54 - 00:32:10

Yeah, but it, no, the burn, the burn is there, but I feel like the burn's what happens just before it hits or it sticks. Do you know what I mean? Like, it feels like the burn is the precursor to the muscle changing for good. At least that's what I wanna believe. 'Cause it, it hits often.

Von:00:32:11 - 00:32:53

Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's really cool. Like, I, I've, that is one of the things I've been most interested about your process is, is that you decided to stick with the Lightner Box and, uh, I, I really just wanna see how this progresses. I, I feel like Like I said, there are not many other people that I've found that study language. Either they're like the pros, like the polyglots and stuff like that, or like they're people that are just now beginning or something like that. So I'm like, I saw you posting videos, like, oh crap, like I get to like actually talk to someone who's like actually developing and doing this and is passionate about it. So like every time you post a video about like a new like plateau or progress I'm like, I'm stoked cuz it's, it's true.

Stephanie:00:32:53 - 00:33:41

That's so cool. It's so funny because I was looking for 5-minute language videos when I first started, and that's what got me on YouTube looking for that. I usually just used YouTube for videos, maybe interviews. I don't know. I didn't use it for a lot of things. And so I was looking for the grammar videos and I stumbled across my first YouTube language blogger, and then one led to another, led to another, and the algorithm got me sucked me in and pulled me in and I started watching a bunch of different people doing this and I was like, oh, wait a minute. There's a way to track my progress. 'Cause I have a habit of, or I had a habit of starting languages and just kind of petering out. And I was like, if I'm vis— visibly accountable, then maybe that'll be part of, you know, the process to pressure me to keep going.

Von:00:33:41 - 00:33:42

Yeah.

Stephanie:00:33:42 - 00:34:05

So it was a bunch of different folks. Books talking about languages they were learning and showing their methods. Oh my God, it was so cool to watch other people study languages because I've only seen my students do that in the classroom. Like, I've never actually hung out with, like, in a study group watching other people study languages. And I was like, oh, how was this done? How are you doing this? So crazy. So crazy. Are you an Instagram person?

Von:00:34:06 - 00:34:07

Not really.

Stephanie:00:34:07 - 00:34:18

Oh, there's a hashtag called #studygram. And it literally is pictures of what people are studying. They'll take pictures of their highlighters, their study material, their textbook, like all these different things.

Von:00:34:18 - 00:34:20

Oh, okay. I wanna look this up then.

Stephanie:00:34:20 - 00:34:30

Really bad. I first, I first saw it and like somebody recommended it to me and I'm like, I don't know, I'll check it out. And like after the first day I'm like, this is my tribe.

Von:00:34:31 - 00:34:34

Oh, okay.

Stephanie:00:34:34 - 00:34:37

No, you sound like a lifelong learner. You'd like to learn new things, right?

Von:00:34:38 - 00:34:38

Yeah.

Stephanie:00:34:38 - 00:34:46

And that's what these guys are doing, only they're showing you what they're working on and it's like, that's so cool.

Von:00:34:46 - 00:34:49

So nerdy. So awesome.

Stephanie:00:34:49 - 00:35:07

So awesome. Yeah. Well, I've met, I'm sure you've met a number of people outside of an academic setting and even in who don't really, aren't really curious about a lot of stuff and just wanna make some money or just have a happy life and all that kind of stuff. And that's not how my brain functions. I need new, I need to be challenged.

Von:00:35:08 - 00:35:09

And yeah.

Stephanie:00:35:09 - 00:35:12

Yes. And they're that hashtag studygram. They're those folks.

Von:00:35:13 - 00:35:18

Right on. Yeah, I'll check it out. That sounds freaking awesome.

Stephanie:00:35:18 - 00:35:34

It really is. Okay. There's a little, a little too much highlighters, but get past it. The other stuff is very cool. From one of the local women in Shanghai that I interviewed about her learning languages outside of Mandarin. She wanted to know what language people dreamt in.

Von:00:35:34 - 00:35:53

Normally I don't really think about that. I guess I would say I dream in English. There have been some times where I think I'm dreaming in Mandarin. I think maybe 2 or 3 times that's happened, but I would relate it to what happens when you read a novel. You don't really read the words, you experience the story.

Stephanie:00:35:53 - 00:35:59

So you're not thinking about what language things are happening in, you're just experiencing things.

Von:00:35:59 - 00:36:18

I'm working on my output now. Like I've totally neglected output the entire time. I'm just now starting it. When I'm listening to people or when I start feeling like I'm, I'm able to communicate in the language, like in small sections, I'm not speaking the language, I'm speaking the story of what I want to say and it just happens to be coming through that filter.

Stephanie:00:36:19 - 00:36:39

The only other question is what should I ask other people that I interview in the future? Cuz I'm interviewing two sets of folks, folks learning and then using the language like you and I learning, using, and then I'm also interviewing Chinese folks who learn other languages. And so for either set of folks, what should I ask them?

Von:00:36:39 - 00:37:09

Being from an IT background, I've seen a lot of developments in the past couple years, mostly pertaining to AI, artificial intelligence, right? One of the things that's coming up is natural language processing. What was that new product, which I'm forgetting the name of, that Google just showcased? It's in its beta form. It's one that allows an AI to talk to restaurants or something, to call restaurants and have a conversation that sounds like a human instead.

Stephanie:00:37:09 - 00:37:10

Oh, okay.

Von:00:37:10 - 00:37:18

Things like that coming out and going to be happening very soon. Do you still find a point point in learning a language?

Stephanie:00:37:18 - 00:37:22

That's a good one. Thank you. Well, okay. Do you want to answer your own question?

Von:00:37:22 - 00:37:54

I will answer it from my perspective. Yes, I will still learn it. Still learn languages because of the challenge. You know, it may not be the most efficient way to communicate and computers may do it better. I mean, we still have to always communicate with our own voices, obviously, but despite the fact that the language learning process could be totally upended and replaced by Robots. I still find a lot of value in it. Same as learning any other skill. It's for my own enrichment, you know? What about you?

Stephanie:00:37:55 - 00:38:46

Oh, this is a tough one. I don't, this does not come easily at all. There are skills that I find writing is super easy for me. I'm not saying write, writing eloquently or amazingly or whatever, but writing, the process of writing, what to write, how to write, editing. I find that entire process. Test super easy. If anything, I overwrite. So, and I know that a lot of people struggle with that. On the opposite side, learning languages is one of the hardest things my brain tries to do. If there was a chip that I could put into my brain to learn a language, I wouldn't want just the words. If I could put the chip in my brain and see that point of view from the languages that use that language, then I would want the chip. If the chip was only the language without the point of view, without the cultural stuff that goes with it, then I think I'd still wanna learn the language.

Von:00:38:46 - 00:38:48

Yeah, I, I get it.

Stephanie:00:38:48 - 00:39:04

The most interesting part for me, in addition to just the script of Mandarin Chinese, is the viewpoint that goes with it that I hope I can understand at some point in the next 12 years is the different ways to view things in the world. That's really what I want.

Von:00:39:05 - 00:39:10

What do you, what do you think causes that, that viewpoint? Um, what gives that to you?

Stephanie:00:39:10 - 00:39:11

With different cultures, you mean?

Von:00:39:11 - 00:39:17

With learning a language, getting a new perspective on the world. What do you think it is that actually?

Stephanie:00:39:17 - 00:39:22

Oh, I, I mean the viewpoint of the, the people that use the language I'm trying to learn.

Von:00:39:22 - 00:39:22

Oh, I see.

Stephanie:00:39:23 - 00:39:34

Part of the appeal with Chinese is that there's a lot of things that seriously confuse me with Chinese culture. And as I learn the language, are those going to start making sense?

Von:00:39:35 - 00:39:35

Oh, I see.

Stephanie:00:39:35 - 00:39:44

And so it's sort of like a cultural puzzle in addition to a linguistic puzzle, and they may or may not, but that is to be seen.

Von:00:39:44 - 00:39:45

Yeah, that's interesting.

Stephanie:00:39:45 - 00:40:01

Yeah. So I think if that were taken away from the experience and it was just, just communication with just words that meant a word was an intention and something happened and that was it, it, then I'd say, forget it. Technology can do everything. I'll go do something else.

Von:00:40:02 - 00:40:07

Interesting. Yeah, I think that's a pretty practical and reasonable answer though.

Stephanie:00:40:07 - 00:40:10

Yeah. Although I don't think any of this is going to happen in my lifetime.

Von:00:40:10 - 00:40:11

No, you don't think so?

Stephanie:00:40:11 - 00:40:34

No, there's, there's so much behind AI and machine learning that's really clunky right now and they're, they're testing out stuff, but they don't really know what's happening. And with natural language processing, my God, that's a whole other conversation. 'Cause I learned to use Python in order to do natural language processing and it was not the beautiful creature that I wanted it to be.

Von:00:40:35 - 00:40:36

Oh wow.

Stephanie:00:40:36 - 00:40:45

Yeah. Yeah. I had high hopes. It, it could still turn into something really amazing. It's just not there yet. And I'm an impatient person.

Von:00:40:45 - 00:40:49

Is this, is this the, the app that you were talking about before?

Stephanie:00:40:49 - 00:41:50

Oh, no, no. No, this is the PhD program we were in. We had to learn Python to use— and I'm not remembering the natural language processing stuff, but there was, there was all this, all these packages and all these things we needed to do. And so the first class was Python. The second class was just natural language processing. We had a variety of different projects to work on in that. And I eventually wanted to lead that into helping folks with writing fluency, but it's just so freaking clunky. A lot of the language apps right now seem to be made from people in tech that don't know or don't want to know about the language learning side. And then you have the language learning teachers or creators of paper content who seem to be allergic to technology, and the two folks are not really getting together very well. Ah, the whole intention of that PhD program was it was like applied linguistics and technology. It was supposed to combine the two, but the technology is focused on— we're working on accuracy, basically red penning everything. And that's not really where I wanted to pitch my tent.

Von:00:41:50 - 00:41:52

Yeah. You haven't given up, have you?

Stephanie:00:41:52 - 00:41:56

I think I've moved over to the motivational side, to be honest with you.

Von:00:41:56 - 00:42:04

Oh, this is where I was supposed to play the clip from, from Star Wars. No, you were the chosen one.

Stephanie:00:42:04 - 00:42:34

I would not run from a situation where I could use my language learning teaching expertise with this much technology stuff that I know. I wouldn't run from a situation. On, but I think there's a space for motivation in language learning as well, which could still be app-driven, but it would need to connect people to people, not just be automated. Like, I've got some great ideas. I just have very little patience to sit down and code the damn things into existence.

Von:00:42:34 - 00:42:35

Fair enough.

Stephanie:00:42:35 - 00:42:46

Yeah. At some point I need to find somebody who has the technical expertise and not the ideas so I can put the ideas with their technical expertise and poof. Yeah.

Von:00:42:46 - 00:42:47

That was a lovely thing.

Stephanie:00:42:48 - 00:42:53

Yeah. I say, I say this in my late 40s as if I've got like 5,000 years left in my life. Right.

Von:00:42:53 - 00:43:07

Well, you know, that's, that's the great thing about ideas and, and everything is that, well, while it might feel like it will take forever, like it doesn't, it just takes the right stuff at the right time and then it can just like that. And you'll be like, I'm already there.