Question by Chiou-nan: How long does it take to learn to understand 3000 Chinese characters?
If an English speaking foreigner spends 1 hour a day learning Chinese, how long, you think, does it take him or her to learn to understand 3000 Chinese characters?

Best answer:

Answer by matt_of_asia
My estimate is probably 7 to 9 years for full on text only reading. I studied 2 hours a day for one year. And that was enough to get a very low conversational level about the same as a 4 to 6 year old child in kindy, which with semi-regular practice has improved to an intermediate level. Of course I am not exactly a good example of a student. perhaps someone else who has studied longer for a consistent period of time and actually can read a newspaper can share with you. My gut feeling is probably after 7 to 9 years of constant everyday usage of chinese you would understand a newspaper and talk fluently, on the theory that elementary and junior high students in Taiwan probably start looking at papers around that age. Perhaps after 4 years one can read a simplebook with pictures and no bubamofo. My G2 students seem able to read mandarin books much better than I. I am estimating most of them had 2 full years of kindergarten training before entering the school that I teach English at. (I still need bubamofo- most of them don’t but still appear to enjoy using books with pictures.) Of course they are in a full mandarin environment whereas I have not yet abandoned my cultural background yet out of my laziness/convienience. sigh.

My theory is the same for acquiring english fluency as well. Its something that only time and usage in an environment with native speakers correcting us and helping fix mistakes without needing to worry about the students ‘self esteem’ or other BS ideas will give us. If people make mistakes, they must be fixed. (The main issue with the education industry here is everyone thinks it hurts self esteem to have mistakes pointed out to them- thus perpetuating the use of mistakes. This is the single biggest complaint I have about the idea of ‘face’. I get around this by basically stomping on everyones face equally and not really caring if they feel bad. It helps to not care if you get fired. Of course heaping praise on sucess is the best idea so you arent a complete a$ s. Fortunately I have an excellent boss who backs me up.)

All the one month/3 month cram programs that are popular here are not giving real fluency. They just teach mouthing key phrases using repetition. It has its place but… outside of the tiny, specific situations those programs were designed for, they dont allow for much real development of fluency. If one stays at a task for a long time and pushes past minor failures/mistakes and learns from them rather than calling ones lawyer and squacking about the unfairness of a difficult world, then one will succeed.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!