If you’re wondering how long it would take to learn Mandarin Chinese, the answer of course has to be: “it depends”. If you make a decision to use your brain and your time in the correct way, and put in adequate time, then you could be communicating competently at a basic level within a few months.
You Can Learn To Speak Mandarin in Six Months
For me personally, from a completely zero base (i.e. complete beginner) I was very competent at Mandarin speaking within six months and reading and writing within a year. In my case I was able to do this because I moved to Beijing and although I was doing classes at the Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages (as it was called at the time), I actually spent most of my time interacting with people around simple daily life. I also had a couple of GREAT “Language Parents”. That was my introduction to the power of BrainSoaking®. Find out more about how I learned Mandarin here.
So, I learned Mandarin in six months. But I’m not the only one by far!
Early readers of my book “The Third Ear – You CAN Learn to Speak Any Language” on average mastered a new language to fluency in six months, including Paul Coffey who after reading the book went to Qingdao in Northeast China to immerse himself in the language. He was speaking fluently in six months and reading/writing complex material within a year.
So, if you are able to put yourself in China or Taiwan or a Mandarin Chinese speaking community such as Singapore or Penang in Malaysia, you realistically could be speaking competently within six months as long as you make use of the 5 principles of accelerated language acquisition and the 7 actions to learn any language fast that I shared in my 2013 TEDx talk: “How to Learn Any Language in Six Months”.
If you don’t have the option of traveling to somewhere where people speak Mandarin, then you do have other options. I’ll start with the worst choice.
Textbook Learning Will NOT help you to Speak Mandarin
If you plan to rely upon textbooks or written materials with pinyin and characters, but no access to audio content of any kind, it will probably take you many years to learn to write but you’ll not understand what you hear and you won’t be able speak.
Basically, traditional language teaching methods don’t work.
People in China who learn English this way are known as “English Mutes”, suggesting that when it comes to English these people are like deaf-mutes.
Mandarin, like all languages, is a sound-based system. Humans have been hearing languages and speaking them for hundreds of thousands of years. Maybe longer. Reading and writing for most are a new invention.
As little as 100 years ago most people in China could not read or write. If they wanted to send a letter to someone they would go to a letter writer and dictate the letter. The letter would then be sent. When the reply came back the customer would go to the letter writer and he would read the contents to the customer.
Universal literacy is a modern phenomenon. In order to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese, as with any other language, you have to:
- First hear it – a lot
- Second – mimic it, a lot
- Thirdly start to speak it, from VERY simple words and phrase, in a way that makes things happen in your life.
Mandarin Classes or Individual Mandarin Tutors
Attending a class or getting a tutor might solve the problem of hearing Mandarin Chinese being spoken, although even that is not guaranteed. Many teachers like to use English to talk about the Chinese language rather than let you experience lots of it.
Even if you are hearing lots of Mandarin right from the get-go, in many cases the experience is not that positive. Very often a teacher or tutor will be “encouraging” you (demanding?) to start saying things almost from the first day. This violates a basic principle in language learning where a Silent Period is required.
Simply, when you start learning Mandarin or any new language for that matter, there is a LOT going on. Your brain has to learn to hear unfamiliar sounds. Your mouth has to learn unfamiliar muscle movements. You have to recognize patterns which connect sounds to meaning. Initially that is going to be concrete objects and actions in your immediate environment. You have to work out what word orders mean, and what funny little sounds at the end of sentences mean. It’s a LOT of stuff. And your brain can’t do it all at once.
Because of that, if you are being required to understand and speak in response before your brain even knows what’s happening you will just freeze up. No matter how encouraging a teacher or tutor is, you won’t be able to do it! There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s just that your brain is in overload.
How long will it take to learn Mandarin with classes or tutors? Maybe forever. Dropout rates for language learning courses globally are very high – on average from 80% to 99%.
The Exception to the Rule for Courses
There is one type of language course that does actually respect the silent period and works WITH how your brain learns language. It’s called TPR – Total Physical Response – and it’s one of the inspirations for one of the training methods that we use in Speech Genie.
If you really want to do an offline course for Mandarin, look for institutions offering TPR-for-Mandarin classes. Especially if you’re a beginner, this approach will really give your brain what it needs, and you really will Learn Like a Child, Speak Like a Native.
If you want to experience the power of TPR enhanced with AI, then check out the L2B exercises that we use as part of the Speech Genie immersive learning experience.
Online Courses for Mandarin
If you want to do an online Mandarin course, you need to distinguish between online-copies-offline models, and courses that are designed around how the human brain learns language. If online models are copying the basic brick-and-mortar and face-to-face tutor models, progress will be patchy at best.
If, however, an online course (or a Mandarin Learning App) respects the need for the silent period, and gives you specific brain focused exercises, that help you build the foundational skills in a fun and engaging way, that approach is definitely worthy of your attention.
Claude AI has generated a clear overview of what a great online or App based course should look like in this century.
If a course is designed as micro-lessons, ranging from a couple of minutes, to maybe 15-20 minutes a time, then that’s ideal. This is especially tailored for busy people who are faced by uncontrollable downtime – riding the train; in traffic jams; waiting for flights; anything like that.
If you have one or two hours a day of this fragmented time available to you, and you use it with Mandarin Micro-lessons, then with this approach you’ll find yourself speaking at least something within weeks.
We have already built a system on these principles for Chinese people to learn English with great results.
We’re now building Speech Genie with the same approach but integrating Cognitive AI for effective interaction AT YOUR LEVEL. It will be like having a Language Parent and a playmate at the same time! This approach is like playing a game and turning your brain on at the same time, and you’ll be surprised at how fast you learn.
Check out the full product description on our Learn Mandarin Chinese page!
By Chris Lonsdale