How I Taught Myself Chinese

On my very first trip to China, way back in August of 2002, I spoke zero Chinese. Well, that’s not entirely true. I think I could count to three: Yi – Er – San. And by the end of the two weeks, I think I knew how to say hello (Ni Hao) and goodbye (Zaijian), but not much else.

What saved me on the first trip, and what helped to jump-start me the next year when I moved to China was a little phrasebook created especially for illiterate, yet zealous, missionaries like me. The phrasebook could serve in two basic ways. You could attempt to read the words (usually a failure), or you could point to the phrase in question and let the other person read the words. This latter option served well in ordering meals, buying tickets, checking into hotels, etc. There was even a section at the back with simple “Gospel” phrases, sentences like “Jesus is the Savior of the world”. 

But in early 2003, since I was planning to be in China for a year, and knowing that I would not be able to personally articulate the Gospel (or talk about much of anything, really) without learning the language, I dove in to really studying Mandarin Chinese. 

The best way to describe my learning method is with the word “immersion”. I never took a proper language course, although our small team did spend a couple weeks with a Taiwanese Mandarin teacher who drilled us primarily on proper pronunciation. I would be lying to say that this wasn’t a tremendous help. In fact, I still use some of the drills she taught us with my own kids.

Beyond that, however, I merely studied on my own while traveling in China, traversing the country numerous times (more than 120 cities!) in 2003. I learned to speak, listen (understand), and read (using a Bible, dictionary, maps, menus, signs) Chinese naturally that way, chatting with people everywhere (even with homeless people at 4am) and studying on my own whenever possible (buses, trains, hotels, restaurants, the bathroom), sometimes late at night and so intensely that my brain would hurt and I would have to stop and go to sleep.

I guess it really does depend on the person. There are probably many who couldn’t learn Chinese the way I did, but there are others (like me) who will likely learn much more quickly in this immersive (one might add “obsessive“) style.

One the greatest advantages of this method is that from the beginning you are out traveling and living with the real people, including among (if you want) some of the most unreached people groups. In other words, from the word “go”, you can not only start learning the language, but also commence sharing the Gospel in some way. 

Like I said before, it depends on the person.

But I do pray that more people would follow my lead and just jump in the deep end.

Two final thoughts:

Although my method might not be for everyone, here are a couple of things I DO recommend for all Chinese language students:

1. Force yourself to look up words in a real Chinese dictionary instead of using an electronic dictionary. The experience of learning to recognize characters and endlessly searching for the correct ‘radical’ and then skimming through thousands of characters looking for the exact one you are trying to locate is immersion enough to cause the brain to hurt and to throw you into a world where your head swims with Chinese. Electronic dictionaries are simply too easy. No pain, no gain. Grab your dictionary along with a Bible, map, or menu (or walk the streets looking at signs), then dive into reading Chinese. And don’t forget to try using new words in your spoken conversations!

2. Study “Pinyin“, but as a tool to help master written Chinese! Chinese is so rich and Pinyin is limited in conveying that richness. Knowing the actual characters is so rewarding and helpful in really grasping the language. Now that I know how to read Chinese characters, I hate reading something written only in Pinyin, because it’s hard to understand the context. It would be sort of like readingenglishwithoutanyspacesorpunctuation. Not impossible, but feels unnatural. The Chinese symbols say so much more! Don’t make Pinyin a substitute for learning to read actual Chinese characters.