diggleboy

I've been studying the Chinese Mandarin language since September of 2013. I've really taken to it since then and will write the HSK test on June 14th, which is a test of Mandarin Chinese proficiency issued by the Chinese Government. I've taught myself Espanol in high school and can understand 80% of the spoken language. I also taught myself Japanese in College. I had a great teacher for learning Japanese and I became fluent in 3 months while working at Japanese for at least 4-6 hours everyday. Studying languages while in school was beneficial because of all the free time I had to learn. I plan to become conversationally fluent in Mandarin Chinese by September of 2014. I have many Chinese Mandarin speaking friends at my work that have been extremely helpful and supportive, even helping me to prepare to write the HSK, but this journey wouldn't have happened without my own will, determination, self-interest, self-motivation, and support of so many people, and most of all, the internet to help me achieve this goal. I've found that my past and current approaches to learn a language quickly is what many famous polyglots use in their quest to learn many languages. My Grand Master once wrote, "learning requires time, time requires patience, patience teaches one to progress wisely." Languages become better over one's lifetime. I find the polyglot club to be the conduit which would hopefully allow me to improve my conversational Chinese Mandarin. I've found the one ingredient missing is my ability to be able to speak regularly with native Chinese speakers. Speaking the language or reciting key phrases, sentences and Mandarin tone pairs increases vocabulary and retention exponentially. I look forward to being able to meet other polyglots, like myself, and build on the gift of language to connect with people and with the sincerity that I'm looking for in learning the language. I just discovered polyglots yesterday! Fascinating this even exists! So cool!