I have a question: how many hours (per day) do you focus on a language when you start learning it?

this varies. But right now I would say an hour or so a day mostly listening. Some days I'll put more effort into reading.

How long would it take you to learn all the almost 300 Chinese languages.

Do you speak German? You have the German familyname "Kaufmann", Kauf means buy. Ich habe in der Schweiz an der Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich Theoretische Physik studiert. I can speak High German and Swiss German as well as my motherlanguage Chinese. Ich kann mit anderen auf Deutsch über Quanten Feld Theorie, über Quantenmechanik diskutieren.

How do foreign people like Anming and Xiaoma get their Chinese names?

Ikr, certainly the language learning process have a great participation in his mental health. I know people from his age that didn't study and are really old, Steve doesn't seem old, it's incredible.

Same

Thought he was 50

@@annilanta4583 what reality do you live in?

@@Gerald69420 what do you mean

谢谢哥们儿😁

@@r0conscious 哈哈没问题哥们儿 没事来我频道看看！

@@phoenixhou4486 好，我关注你，视频看起来不错！

@@r0conscious 谢谢！

@@phoenixhou4486 I understand 6 foreign languages : English, German, French, Arabic, Russian, and Mandarin with different levels of abilities. I speak German pretty well, and been to Munich to learn German. It was long time ago that I reached B2 level, nearly C1. But it seems that my German deteriorates. I also learned French and Russian, but I don't speak those languages very well like my German, and of course, my fluent English. Now I'm learning Mandarin, and I believe my Mandarin reached A2 or B1 level, because I got Hsk-3 in October 2019. The problem is maintaining the ability. Once you get the B level, you start to be fed up with the language you have learned, unless you have a very high motivation and specific purpose to learn the language. And after that the next question is whether you can maintain the level that has been attained. I reached B2 or even almost C1 in German long time ago, but now it seems that I can only answer relatively correct the B1 level. My German deteriorates. Language is a matter of habits and habitation....

Wow, thank you!

I agree with the part learning a language needs motivation，that‘s how I learned English@@Thelinguist

i want to learn english🙂

KNOWLEDGE

and not just for display, he seems to have actually read all of them 👏

Thanks for sharing!

Thank you so much!

Spanish as rather close language to English can be sticked easily in one's mind, if it is well studied and retained during the initial learning. I would say probably due to the simplicity and the obviousness of its phonology + the resemblances.

Congrats to you on your progress 💜💜

I am an Urdu speaker and here we have an idiom that says (when someone don't understands you , you ask them) "Did I say this in Persian?" and yesterday I watched a video on poly-glot-a-lot's channel and I was surprised to see that I could understand the 90% of the conversation .

You should say " very motivating" I think

Best of luck!

thank you

Hiragana isn't too difficult. Katakana on the other hand...

那学习日文汉字应该难不倒你 •̀.̫•́✧

I think it's important to focus on the rhythm and stress. Because Chinese is syllable-timed

En?

加油！

i know this sounds weird coming from a stranger but congrats!

@@wanda5548 Thank you! It means a lot, very exciting adventure to come!

@@maitlandbezzina2842 good luck!!! tbh i'm really happy for you and you motivated me to keep going!

Wow. congratulations and thank you for letting me know.

Congratulations! I’ve lived in Taiwan for almost 15 years. It’s THE best country! You’re gonna love it here.

hi bro i can speak chinese i am learning engliah if you donot mind we can add social media accounts and study together😃

@@user-ik7tm4hd3eHi. Im a native english speaker and im learning chinese. Are you still looking for someone to practice with

Happy to hear that!

You should read his book, it's pretty awesome

韓字배워야지

nice ! keep it up !

@Its RX want to know too!

The Tang dynasty period is pretty great for contrast too.

Same, I started using it a few months ago and it's awesome

let's interchange. TBWEIXIN2017

What's pleco?

@@dimitrikavanaugh7868 A Chinese-English dictionary app -- extremely useful

It's not about talent. If there was a talent for language learning, he could easily maintain all his languages at a decent level even after being away from them for years which they must be quite rusty. Also he would be able to learn a decent amount in a short period of time which I've never seen or heard of before. If he had talent, he could probably be fluent in Finnish within a year which I'd like to see when someone else lived in Finland and reached fluency after 2 years. It's all about motivation and resources

@@michaelrespicio5683 Maybe you are right about the use of the word. However, it is not common to get to a level that Steve describes in only one year of learning Chiense, I think. And needless to say to have command of the number of lenguages he has. So I would not argue about the word I used, just stating that average learner who put a lot of time and effort into learning, does not get to that level stellar achievements, and more advice for these kind of learners, that assume slower progress (despite investment of time and effort) can be useful

Just choose which one you're more familiar with

You can also see the hundreds of thousands of dollars these videos have made him over the years

I'm glad he kept it up.

I didn't rely on the radicals too much at first but after a while I noticed them more and more but still really felt I had to learn each character. I found the phonetic side of the characters more helpful.

You can in many cases guess the meaning of a character by the radicals and the context. By sheer exposure it allows you to acquire familiarity with new characters and a vague sense of what they mean. This is how you treat unfamiliar characters when reading. It is just disruptive to the experience to look them all up. Maybe just once in a while, look up a character you are dying to know. As for pronunciation, the radicals are helpful only sometimes and half the time or more your guess will be wrong. But you don't need to know how to pronounce a character to get a sense of its meaning. That's a unique feature of the Chinese language. Written Chinese has been around for millennia, and sure it has evolved over time, but even modern usage is strongly influenced by and borrows greatly from older forms of Chinese, especially when using idioms or being more poetic. Yet in all this time the characters have been pronounced in many different ways across regions and across eras. The characters themselves change less than the pronunciations assigned to them.

What the West had was the advantage of more advanced and greater-ranged gunpowder weapons and more experience in gunpowder warfare. Why did the East fell so behind the West in terms of firearms & innovation? Answer: An extended period of relative peace & stability with no external foes. When the Manchu Qing took over, they disarmed the Chinese. This is due to revolt of the 3 ex-Ming Lord Generals (三藩之亂) and the fear of the Han Chinese that they now ruled. They demoted and degraded the 神机营 (Divine Weapon Bureau) to measly undertrained palace guards. They controlled the recipe for gunpowder (as well altering it to set certain officials/generals up for failure). With no external enemies, progress stagnated and the govt disarmed the population to prevent insurrections. There wasn't a reason to innovate or the inspiration to innovate in terms of firearms. There was also a clear dividing line and a racial caste system that didn't exist before, further crippling technological advancement, pushing China into the Dark ages. Soldiery as a profession suffered and military family paid beggars & the dregs of society to take their place as enlistees. These dregs/beggars were often the old/underaged/homeless/malnourished/desperate/degenerate drug addicts who were hardly battle-ready (And they were chained to their posts during battles to stop them from fleeing). When the West came, European gunships and guns heavily outranged and outgunned the Qing Dynasty's heavily outdated firearm arsenal (That dated back to the Late Ming Dynasty) & inexperienced troops (who were not even drilled in the proper handling and production of gunpowder as the Manchus feared a Han rebellion and endemic corruption). At first, there was peace and the trade was going swimmingly for both sides, which drew the Qing to greater complacency. Then, the Qing Dynasty got unsurprisingly destroyed in the 1st Opium War, its open wounds attracted every shark in the ocean. In the battles that followed, European gunships were able to easily hammer Chinese coastal fortifcations, bait out retaliatory fire by staying out of their cannon range and silence each emplacement with cannon fire without taking any casualties. The Chinese coast guard which consisted of underarmoured requisitioned merchant vessels and armed with obsolete firearms & underranged torpedoes were easily destroyed. This marked the start of the century of Humiliation.

yall are over complicating this, what he said was right. China was at a disadvantage in the tech department. Dont be pedantic about this black powder vs that gun powder etc. The west had guns, lots of guns, and the ability to make lots of guns. Guns are better than not guns. Guns are better than fireworks and fireworks on arrows. Guns

@@possumsam2189 唯一的原因就是需求，三十年战争后促进了西方燧发枪的诞生，对于清朝来说周边没有敌人，在与俄罗斯于尼布楚作战的时候双方并没有科技上的差别，但是在一百年后清朝极度衰弱，这是中国王朝共性，中国最大的弱点就是庞大的地理和人口决定了统治非常困难，统治者稍不注意就会快速腐朽

At least one year, but probably closer to three years depending on how much time you have to spend and how much opportunity to connect with native speakers. Good luck.