Welcome to my log! I intend to write here my progress while I learn Chinese from zero. That means, I will try to track my progress in this post (or list of posts), the tools I use, the tools I make, my worries and difficulties and what I learn in the process.

I hope I will see in 1 or 2 years to this post and say, well… you did something with your “free” time.

So, after spending 1 week searching for resources to study Chinese, I came up with this study plan:

1. Search for information and read the most I can about the basics of the language, which means to read: wikipedia, blogs, books and their commentaries, … (time spent in this step: few days to few weeks)
2. Study pronunciation of Chinese Mandarin, it’s a tricky language, with many weird sounds (zhi, chi, zi, ci, ji and qi sound incredibly similar to my ears) and tones. Use pinyin for this. (time spent: few weeks to one month or two)
3. Study spoken Chinese with help of written pinyin. Don’t even bother with the written Chinese, maybe learn some useful characters but not focus on learning them. (time spent: One year to many! Actually, I think I’ll never go out from this level)
4. Learn written Chinese, or memorize Characters by means of reading, mainly. Don’t focus on learning characters isolated, it’s a dumb idea (Chinese characters represent a sound, a syllable, and many (most?) words in Chinese are compose from 2 or more syllables).

Measuring my progress

I will measure my progress on hours using a spread sheet. I don’t wanna use days, because days are no reliable when talking about a portion of a day in a running time of months/years (I could study 3 hours one day an only 20 minutes others).

That’s all!, or at least for now, until I know what more to write, and boy, I think I will write a lot (if not, you know I stopped trying and that I’m really terrible at fulfilling the goals I give myself)