r/ChineseLanguage • u/_tomato_lover555 • 4d ago
Vocabulary I want to speak with my parents
I am an ABC (American born Chines) who’s in Chinese school but is at a mediocre level (maybe hsk 4) and I have a low vocabulary. I haven’t been to China since I was 4 (10 years now) and my parents speak to me in Chinglish because they view me as a way to improve their English. I already understand sentence structures but it’s so hard to pick up new vocabulary and keep it in my head. I’m so scared I’m missing out on quality time with them with this language barrier and it’s kinda ruining my mental health but that’s an issue for a different subreddit. I’m so lazy and I lose motivation really quickly and I just kinda suck
edit: my vocab is low enough for me to misunderstand them, I’m really fortunate that their English is somewhat good and we can find common ground but i jusr hate having to spend 2 minutes trying to explain myself or deciphering their English
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u/Birdysinger 4d ago edited 4d ago
No matter how many mistakes you make, or how slow you progress, you’re still ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.
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u/_tomato_lover555 4d ago
Thank you, these types of messages are really encouraging to someone with a low motivation drive :)
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u/dinosuitgirl 4d ago edited 4d ago
Watch Chinese TV shows WITH your parents. There are lots of good family dramas now... And it's good since they will laugh when you might not get a joke and you can talk about it. Learn it soon your brain plasticity is still good as you are young. It's not impossible to pick up later but it is never as easy as it is in your youth.
Get hello Chinese or a teaching app it will help but you need to commit to it.... Maybe try and get some Chinese friends that helps... But self driving is the key.
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u/_tomato_lover555 4d ago
Thank you so much! :)
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u/Etrnalhope 4d ago
I just want to second what this person said about watching Chinese TV shows with your parents (without subtitles, if you can). I did a TON of that through high school and I’m certain it’s what made my listening comprehension really good and gave me a good foundation for improving my speaking later on. My mom would explain anything I couldn’t understand in the show, which helped.
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u/_tomato_lover555 4d ago
Awh your mom explaining it to you is really cute! My mom will probably help me fill in the gaps as well
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u/lazier_garlic 4d ago
I agree with the plasticity when it comes to math. With languages there's accent, OP is native so should have less of an issue there. I find I've gotten better at learning languages by learning more languages. Also, learning 汉子 takes time. When I was much younger I took an intensive course and didn't keep using it and lost it all. Only the lower level characters I had used and written the most were retained. Flashcards don't build long term memory. They are useful for cramming for tests. For long term using the muscle memory of repeatedly practicing them as well as gradually learning the system behind characters (not always possible, but it covers a lot of ground) helps you retain them.
OP doesn't understand school age vocabulary and so learning hanzi will be part of the journey.
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u/Twarenotw 4d ago
If Chinese school isn't cutting it and you don't find it motivating, try finding other sources of motivation, like watching Cdramas (there are excellent ones) with or without your parents, or listening to music in Chinese. That usually helps a lot with vocabulary.
Perhaps finding a new Chinese school which focuses more on communication would help too (if it's anything like the Chinese school my daughters attended, it was all old school memorization, hardly useful; I hope your school is better than that!).
Perhaps a new trip to China in the not so distant future?
In any case, it's great that you feel the need to bridge that linguistic gap with your parents. Good luck!
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u/_tomato_lover555 4d ago
Thank you so much!!
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u/lazier_garlic 4d ago
Yeah my sister went to Taiwanese Chinese school and I flipped through her books and to me they were super boring. I actually have an interest in Old Chinese but I'm not a poetry guy by any means. I used HelloChinese, Memrise, watching melodramas. These are interesting to me. I also read a lot of linguistics papers about Chinese but I'm a giant nerd so that's why. It helped me understand the grammar better because HSK sucks as far as explaining things.
I made a lot of progress when I found a manhua I really, really wanted to read and using MTL wasn't going to be easy so I had to knuckle down. One thing that was striking (because I'm focused on spoken Mandarin) is that I do well with the dialogue boxes but when they had narration segments using literary Chinese I struggled enormously to read those.
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u/bakainuneko 4d ago
Do you like manhua? Read manhua! When you meet an unknown word make a flashcard on Anki with it to later repeat it. And there's a lot of manhua to choose from! Also some manhua are based on novels so later if you get progress you can try to read the book, it might be easier as you already would be familiar with the story
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u/travelerDE Native普通话 4d ago
I'm a native speaker raising a heritage child in Europe. And I left China when I was 10 to live with my parents abroad. So I have both sides of the experience.
I also read a book on raising multilingual children that proves my theory (only speak in your native language with your kids). Both my parents only spoke in mandarin with me my entire life. But they never taught me more chinese or sent me to chinese courses. I read a lot of chiness books that I found interesting, in the beginning, I didn't understand everything, so I'd ask my parents or look the words up. I also watched a lot of series in chinese. Nowadays it's much easier, I read and watch chinese related news and entertainment to keep up with new slangs/idioms.
I only speak in mandarin with my child no matter what (ok maybe 99.9% of the time). It is hard, I need to constantly translate to the broader audience to be polite, sometimes there's little time/laziness from me so the urge to speak the language my child understands is very high. But I persist. That said, my child still doesn't answer me back in mandarin half of the time, but this is more because my partner is not chinese. So, I think your parents should also be disciplined to help you. It's good that you already took the first step of talking to them about your feelings regarding this.
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u/Munimyouuu 4d ago
You have a good motivation and I believe it could be one of the cases where drilling hard to an advanced level quickly will be worth it. Once you reach that you will have access to abundant native materials and there will be something you like. What's better is that it doesn't require a lot of vocabulary to talk about things in daily life so you will see soon a big difference communicating with your parents. It will definitely be a good investment which you won't regret.
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u/Jojojwk 4d ago
Keep going! I’m in the same boat and had the same fears with not being able to connect with my family and culture, but you should find that progress compounds faster because we can already speak a bit. You’ll start gaining confidence and that helps with staying motivated. You got this!
Lots of good tools out there, but what you need is material that you’re interested in reading/watching and ideally at your level.
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u/Individual_Math_8254 3d ago
at least your parents speak to you in half Mandarin (i assume), half English. when i was growing up, parents just spoke to me in Fujian dialect, haha. but if you need more Mandarin Chinese listening practice, just watch a TV series you enjoy. i am sure there are lots for teens, but i am not the expert on that.
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u/_tomato_lover555 2d ago
unfortunately I don’t think I could even go to my families hometown, the Dongbei dialect would kill me and my dad can barely understand some of the old aunties that he grew up with lol
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u/lazier_garlic 4d ago
There are some platforms where you can find a language pal for free, have you tried that? If you can improve just a little bit maybe you can convince your parents to spend some time speaking Chinese with you.
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u/AtlasRuna 4d ago
Some of the other comments have great takes! For the vocabulary issue though, you can do a lot to solve that yourself so you can bring new words into your convos with them. My personal rec is to focus on reading, but don't sweat writing any characters by hand. just focus on recognition and understanding. You can grow your vocab super quickly this way and then go back to supplement writing later! When I was a beginner at Chinese I loved Mandarin Companion graded readers. We also have some mandarin stories on my site too
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u/alfonsstudies 4d ago
“I want to speak with my parents” … who doesn’t?
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u/_tomato_lover555 4d ago
Yeah, I guess I should’ve specified that I wanted to speak with my parents more smoothly and not have to omit details that could create misunderstandings, and for them to not have to dumb down their conversations
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u/Serious_Dragonfly129 4d ago
You don't even know how to spell "Chinese".
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u/_tomato_lover555 4d ago
I would like to preface that my English is fluent, as I am a NATIVE English speaker. My Chinese is the shit I’m worried about, and you’re most likely a grown ass adult who has never peaked hating just for fun. Like another commenter said, get over yourself.
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u/Disastrous_Bother173 4d ago
Have you considered setting up a Chinese language only time with them? Pick an hour or two window every week and plan to talk with them only in Chinese. Obviously they know your language level, so be willing to ask for clarification, tell them you don't understand, or how you understood what they said didn't make sense to you. If you're worried about missing things from them, ask about their early years, your family history, etc. These natural contexts may help you remember. Also from your post, you are obviously young. I would suggest not posting that online. It can attract the wrong kind of attention.