How long does a person take to speak Chinese?

[checodelacueva]

I don't mean you're able to understand what's being said on the evening news, or even understand fully what's on the newspapers.

Regular, daily conversation. How long did it take you to actually feel comfortable speaking Chinese, in order that you could explain some points of English grammar, open a bank account, deal with your landlord, etc?

Thanks

[rezaf]

as far as i have seen in my school there are people who can do that after one year and people who are not able to do that after 3 years.but for normal students it takes about 2 years.

[rezaf]

sorry, the above post is for proficiency in chinese. i have some vietnamese friends who have been studying for 2 months and apart from their accent they are comfortable using chinese in daily conversations. they study very hard..

[Senzhi]

Well ... it all depends how you learn.

If you started like me, being a foreign teacher, always forced to speak English ... and in my free time trying to learn solely by myself: many many many many ... years.

But now that my best friend is teaching me I feel like a Volkswagen Beetle with a Ferrari engine!!!

What I mean to say is that it is different for everybody: how do you learn, how fast do you learn, how do you integrate into the culture, how fast do you integrate into the culture, what are your intrinsic motivations, what are your extrinsic motivations ... shall I stop now?

[renzhe]

It really depends. Learning in China full-time is different from learning in Europe as a hobby. Studying 5hrs a day as a hobby is different from studying 3hrs a week.

[dan ni er]

It took me three months of full time study in China to get to a level where I was able to use Chinese in simple situations: ordering; renting a flat etc. However, of course, there would be times, even in these situations, where I would have difficulty expressing myself clearly and the tones would be shody.

I think its not so difficult to pick up above survival level chinese. What I have found difficult though is getting to a level where I am even near to understanding the news, paper etc. That's taken near to 3 years and counting!

[Lu]

It took me three months of full time study in China to get to a level where I was able to use Chinese in simple situations: ordering; renting a flat etc.

Ordering is mostly a matter of knowing names of dishes, but you could rent a flat after THREE MONTHS??! Took me 2-3 years at least, all full time study, including one year in China, and then I could figure out most situations without too much trouble. When I arrived in China, after two years of intensive study, I only managed to open a bank account with help from other people with better Chinese.

Checodelacueva, I'd say it takes at least two years in situ to get to a reasonable level. Then you will still regularly have trouble expressing some things, but you will be able to talk your way around it and get your point across in the end.

[muyongshi]

Ordering is mostly a matter of knowing names of dishes, but you could rent a flat after THREE MONTHS??! Took me 2-3 years at least, all full time study, including one year in China, and then I could figure out most situations without too much trouble. When I arrived in China, after two years of intensive study, I only managed to open a bank account with help from other people with better Chinese.

I rented after 3 months with a friend so as to ensure I didn't screw up but then by my 6 month mark I was helping a friend rent his and at that same time opened a bank account by myself.

The big thing is that it will be different for everyone....I was very comfortable in almost all situations (Except 四川话) after 1 year (of intense study).

But I know people that they are after 2 years not even ready to do the above....

[DrZero]

It also depends on what standard you use for "handling" the situation. When you go to rent the apartment, does "success" mean you walk away from the situation with the apartment rented and the terms understood and agreed upon? Do you get to use hand signals, write things down, refer to a dictionary? I could probably get the thing rented, especially if I boned up on some apartment-related vocabulary before going to do it.

Or does success mean you understood every term used, caught every joke the landlord made, and understood his/her discourse about the history of the nearby temple? I certainly couldn't do that ...one could study for 15 years and still might miss a few things in a conversation like that.

[renzhe]

One of the problems discussing things like this one is that people have different standards as to what "fluent" means and what "speaking" a language means. That's why there are such varying accounts of how long it takes to get to a certain level.

This is even more pronounced in Chinese, where the term "intermediate" refers to anything from having finished Pimsleur Chinese (which is nothing, really), to having scored an 8 on the HSK (which is pretty bloody advanced).

Some people are happy being able to talk about general topics and understand basic conversations (when people are talking directly to them), and don't ever intend to reach a fluent level, or understand TV or newspapers. This is possible in a relatively short time.

On the other hand, something like DrZero is talking about will take ages. In fact, native speakers usually don't catch every single reference and nuance either, especially if they come from a different region. This sort of mastery can take a lifetime.

That's why this question is difficult to answer, especially not knowing how or where the OP is studying, or what his background is.

[Ari 桑]

Mm, well, I spent my first three years learning chinese in highschool, which didn't really get my anywhere. After I moved to china it took somewhere between 3 and 4 months of hard studying to feel comfortable with some daily conversation. Now, about a year after that, conversation is fine, and I can understand a good amount of the news. But there are still endless things to learn, which is the fun of it.

But like others said, the more effort you put into it, the faster it comes.

[wushijiao]

These conversations always come down to "how do you define fluency", or "how do you define...X".

But, I think if you define "daily conversations" as common events that happen to you on a day to day basis, including a fairly wide range of vocabulary (but very few specialized, rare, or academic words), then I would agree with others that it might take anywhere from six months to two years, depending on how hard you study and whether or not you are in China.

However, keep in mind, whether you are talking about understanding "daily conversations", understanding the news, or being "fluent", there is no magic line in which at one moment you understand nothing, and then the next you are fluent. It is more a process of increasing your proficiency, step by step.

[LiYuanXi]

If you just want to speak then you can focus more on conversation practices because the writing and reading part will take you quite some time. Try to speak more with native chinese~

[hunxueer]

always an interesting discussion. i honestly think a lot of this has way more to do with personality, inhibition levels, etc., than it does with actual command of the language. for instance, when i first arrived in china knowing how to say only "ni hao," "xie xie" and "bu ke qi," i would have starved had it not been for my then-boyfriend who had no qualms about going into a small restaurant and gesturing, pointing, even drawing pictures, to communicate what he wanted (i have theories as to why he was able to do that so easily; he moved to the states at the age of 6 and was raised by parents who spoke no english so he continually had to deal with official documents, credit-card collectors, etc. from a young age).

i, on the other hand, was mortified if i had to try to say anything until i was sure i could say it and be understood. luckily my first roommates in china were two chinese women who drilled me on pronunciation nightly for the first few weeks and filled my head with all sorts of random vocabulary (usually anything that was in sight), and with my canvas blank so to speak, i was able to retain most of it. so it took only a couple months before i could take cabs, buy train tickets, haggle prices, etc.; but i'd say it was two to two-and-a-half years of living here and studying on my own with whatever help i could get from native speakers before i felt comfortable walking into a restaurant on my own and ordering; but once i jumped over that hurdle i actually had enough command of the language that i could do more complex tasks like open bank accounts, find and rent a flat, etc. actually i think that revelation came about because 1) i enrolled full-time at a uni program where i was put in a relatively low-level class so i became something of a loudmouth in there; and 2) i had a job that involved management of a staff who spoke very limited english. that was probably the main thing that helped boost my confidence, an audience that had to listen to me, no matter how slow and torturous the process was.

now i'm starting my fourth year here, and i'm not very diligent about studying but i do use chinese pretty much daily; especially having to find information online in chinese, and i think the pace of my improvement has definitely slowed down, but i'm finding it hard to push past that middle-intermediate level since it's pretty comfortable here. (plus, the textbooks are generally so dull that they've actually been making me angry every time i open one up to study.)

[Qcash3]

always an interesting discussion. i honestly think a lot of this has way more to do with personality, inhibition levels, etc., than it does with actual command of the language.

Definitely, I think people who are more confident and willing to look silly will pick up a language alot more quickly. My friends and I have a running joke that you speak better Chinese when drunk, but actually in some instances it's true. When your inhibition levels fall, you stop thinking about every single word you say and whether or not you will sound stupid when you speak, you just go with the flow so to speak.

As far as being comfortable with using Chinese, it differs with every person. I studied Chinese from 5th-12th grade and after graduation I went to China to study, and I discovered that I was not yet comfortable speaking. However, after being in China for about two weeks it was like a switch flipped. My previous eight years of study laid a very solid groundwork for vocabulary and study, and it seemed that I just needed complete immersion to tie it all together. It also depends on how dilligently you study while in China, I know people who have been there for two years and are still not ready to order in a restaurant or even ask for simple directions.

now i'm starting my fourth year here, and i'm not very diligent about studying but i do use chinese pretty much daily; especially having to find information online in chinese, and i think the pace of my improvement has definitely slowed down, but i'm finding it hard to push past that middle-intermediate level since it's pretty comfortable here. (plus, the textbooks are generally so dull that they've actually been making me angry every time i open one up to study.)

It seems that many language learners hit that plateau where it becomes much more difficult to advance, and it is true that the dull textbooks aren't helping any. Unless you are working in a Chinese company or something, standard immersion generally isn't enough to help you pick up specialized vocabulary and it can be very difficult to further your progress. I guess the only thing to do is keep on truckin and working hard.

[Josh2007]

I am sure that if you stick to a speak-no-English policy and make Chinese friends who can't speak English, you will progress much, much faster. But, my best Chinese friend gives me loads of help with Chinese, but I am reluctant to just use him for Chinese practice, as I know he needs English practice too. So, I frequently pass up the opportunity to speak in Chinese. I know this is not the best way, but I don't want to be too hard-nosed about it.

I studied Chinese for a degree in the UK, which included a year abroad in Tianjin, and since then I have lived for a further 2 years in China. However, I feel very cagey about the word "fluent". I can talk on almost any topic to my Chinese friends - where they are used to my accent and I to theirs - but it is also possible to bump into a Chinese person whose Chinese I have great difficulty with, and I feel as if I have made less progress than I have. In reality, there are always going to be situations even for relatively advanced learners that take them back to square 1, or near it. The man who fixed my washing machine the other day understood my Chinese perfectly, but I could not understand more than 10% of his, as he came from a county outside Chengdu and could not speak putonghua.

You could learn conversational Chinese in a couple of years, or maybe in one year in China after studying for one year in your own country. Fluency is quite another thing entirely. The thing that gets me is that if someone says "I have conversational French", it sounds like a fairly basic command of the simplest features of the language, but conversational Chinese is actually quite an achievement!

[Josh2007]

standard immersion generally isn't enough to help you pick up specialized vocabulary and it can be very difficult to further your progress.

I can understand this totally. You can spend too much time of a day talking about the same topics to Chinese people. Eg. everywhere you go someone wants to know where you are from and how long you studied Chinese. Even with Chinese friends, you may find that if you get into discursive topics (politics, economics, social issues) they may suddenly say they are not interested in talking about them. The sorts of things I would talk about in England - the whole gamut of social, political and cultural issues - might seem like a controversial mix of issues in a country were government handles government, and people handle their own lives. Eg: supposing you want to discuss the theory in the West that population ageing in China means that China will become old before it becomes rich, ie that the nation will not make it all the way through to the prosperity of the advanced countries before demographic ageing starts to put a huge burden on economic growth. My gut feeling is that the numbers of Chinese people who would enjoy or could contribute to such a discussion is limited. The only way you can address this is to make lots of different Chinese friends with different interests.

You may find a Chinese friend studying science is not interested in social issues, but a Chinese friend studying politics may entertain the topics more readily. But what is true for sure is that I can read fluently articles on subjects that I have never managed to have a conversation on.

[etribe]

Hey guys, i know you've probably been asked this question a lot...but how many years did it take you to reach a good level of chinese "fluency"? (in speaking and listening terms). I've only been studying for a year and a half and still have some way to go!, but i'm interested in teaching english in china soon. at the very least, how many years would it take to be able to 'get by' whilst living in China (i.e. a basic understanding of the language)....so sort of two questions there i guess!!

regards

etribe

[renzhe]

Reaching "true fluency" is something infinitely easier in China than abroad. If this is what you want, I suggest that you go there and teach English, and your spoken language should pick up much faster than here.

Not many people achieve fluency in a year and a half of studying outside of China. It's not easy.

It would also help if you say how good your Chinese is right now.

[taylor04]

Yeah, renzhe is dead on. I studied pretty hard for a year before I went to China and even basic things like how much something cost was hard for me when I first got to China. After a week, my speaking and listening was twice as good, a month later it doubled again, etc. I guess my meaning is you can study in another country and when you get to China it all falls into place. IMO it's about the foundation you build before you go to China. For instance, I have watched Japanese anime for years, however, I never built a foundation and wouldn't be able to say more than a few sentences.

How hard you study, how well you study, how good of a foundation you build/built is all up to you and will affect how quickly you pick up the language when you move to China.