One of this blog’s top search terms is “AJATT Chinese” — that is, people looking for ways to adapt Khatzumoto’s All Japanese All the Time (AJATT) method to Mandarin. Given the similar challenges that learners of Japanese and Chinese face, extending the method from the former to the latter isn’t a particularly daunting task, but below I’ve put together some ideas and resources to do just that.

Step 0 + 1: Mental Tools & Equipment

The first two steps in AJATT are directly usable for Chinese (the steps I’m referring to are outlined in the AJATT Table of Contents). In fact, they’re most likely directly usable for learning any language, or learning just about anything. Staying motivated, having fun, immersing yourself, and getting started with SRS are all steps that you should take when learning Chinese, too.

Step 2: Kanji

For this step, obviously you’ll want to replace “Kanji” with “Hanzi,” but the principle is about the same. I’ve stated before that I didn’t follow the Heisig method (or anything much like it), but if you’re just starting out, then Remember the Hanzi is probably a good place to start.

One change I would probably make to the Heisig method, though, is that I would learn the reading for the characters while you’re learning to read and write them. Unlike Japanese, where one character can have quite a few pronunciations, the vast majority of characters have a single pronunciation, and the ones that do have multiple pronunciations (多音字) tend to have only two or, at the most, three. Given this, it makes sense to just get at least the most common pronunciation down pat while learning the character, so you don’t have to go back and do it again in the (very near) future.

Step 3: Kana

Yay! No kana for Chinese. It would probably do you well to learn either Pinyin or Zhuyin (and, seriously, go for Pinyin, even the Taiwanese are starting to see the light). Since both systems are pretty simple (not that kana is particularly hard, but…), take this extra time to install Google Pinyin (谷歌拼音输入法), because it’s awesome and you’ll be typing in Chinese sooner or later.

Step 4: Sentences

For the most all of this stuff can be used directly for Chinese, particularly the “Secrets to Smoother SRSing” series and other theory-related posts. What you may be missing, though, are resources specifically for learning Chinese. I’ll try to fill in some of these gaps now:

1. Youku and Tudou. Both are “Youtube clones with Chinese characteristics.” In addition to having access to basically every episode of every American television show that has aired in the last decade, they are both chock full of Chinese television and movies. I’ve heard from some people that they can’t be accessed reliably outside of China (particularly those pesky copyright infringing foreign shows) but I believe that you can access Chinese language material outside of China.
2. Amazon.cn and Books.com.tw both offer a massive selection of books, magazines, movies, TV shows, and music, and ship internationally. The former is for the mainland (i.e., simplified Chinese) and the latter is out of Taiwan (i.e., traditional Chinese). They are both, perhaps unfortunately, entirely in Chinese, so navigating them may be difficult for beginners. YesAsia also offers a good selection of material, and their website is in English, but you’ll pay a premium.
3. Google.cn Music is only available in mainland China (or via a mainland proxy) but there is no better place to download (or stream) Chinese music, period. Thousands upon thousands of totally legal, high quality MP3s are available, along with lyrics, all wrapped up in an excellent search and discovery interface. There aren’t many high points to having to live with the Chinese internet, but this is one of them.
4. nciku is a great online Chinese dictionary, containing both the complete Collins Comprehensive Chinese-English Dictionary and the Contemporary Standard Chinese Dictionary (现代汉语规范词典), as well as user-edited definitions. There is also a traditional Chinese version of nciku, but it doesn’t seem to have the range of dictionaries that the simplified Chinese version enjoys.

What am I missing?

For the most part, All Japanese All the Time could be called “All [Search and Replace] All the Time” — it is a method that will work for most any language, Chinese included, with just a few minor tweaks. The core — having fun, and running sentences through an SRS — work no matter what you’re learning.

What have I missed? What Chinese learning resources do you use and love?

Related posts:

1. Heisig, SRS, and my experience with learning Chinese characters
2. REQUEST: content recommendations for an intermediate Chinese learner
3. In praise of the single use (dictionary) device
4. The great debate: simplified v. traditional
5. Creating a foreign language listening environment

Tagged as: ajatt, chinese, khatzumoto, languages, learning