Will I ever learn Chinese

Send a text Children learn their first language without looking up any grammar rules, so why can't adults do the same? In this episode look at how the grammars of the world's languages differ. Having previously worked on "grammar" and even written a grammatical description of an Amazonian language, Mosetén, I decided to study Chinese without learning any explicit grammar rules...

Send a text Once I had decided to learn Chinese, I needed to find the right method to do so. In this episode I describe my thought-process and why started with an app that was entirely in Chinese, without any translation. Support the show

Send a text In this episode I look at what the term 'Chinese' refers to. Mandarin? Cantonese? Why are there so many different terms for Chinese in Chinese itself? I try to investigate whether Chinese is difficult to learn. Well, apparently it is, because everyone keeps telling me so! But is it really? Is my learning doomed right from the start? Support the show

Send a text Would a 49-year-old even be able to learn a new language? Spoiler alter: yes! But why are people different in their language-learning success? What affects language learning? In this episode I compare how children learn their first language and second language acquisition and I look at the different factors behind language-learning success.  Support the show

Send a text Hi, I’m Jeanette Sakel and I’m a professor of Language and Linguistics. I’m an avid language learner... or at least used to be, until I settled into a permanent teaching post, had a kid and somehow did not have the time or inclination to learn languages for a number of years. But this changed about a year and a half ago, when, pretty much out of the blue, I started to learn Chinese.  ...