According to this: http://churchofrationality.blogspot.com/2010/02/10000-hour-rule-vs-evidence-pt-il.html

It's a long way to be a great in the topic we are all trying to master here... Is there someone in Skritter who's hours counter shows at least 1,000 not talking about 10,000?

Just to see if it works

Nope. You just don't need that many hours to learn vocabulary. Or Chinese. It's debatable how long it takes to become fluent, but according to the Foreign Service Institute, around 2250 hours total (for everything) can get you to general reading and speaking proficiency. Varies from person to person, but I'll bet someone using Skritter doesn't need anywhere near that long just to learn the vocab side of things.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

I think the most anyone has on Skritter right now is about 600 hours.

I agree with the 10,000 hour rule: I'm an avid athlete and I can assure you that there are different levels in sports. Same thing occurs in languages. Being "fluent" is not the same as mastering the language.

Even so, at the average Skritter rate, you could learn how to write 6000 characters in just 350 hours. You can spend more than that on words, but how much more? I heard that DeFrancis cites that Chinese university students have a vocabulary of 46,000 words. If you studied all of those on Skritter (and you probably wouldn't need to after a point), I guess you could break 1000 hours, but you wouldn't come anywhere close to 10,000 hours. Including other types of study, you could push it higher, but if it's deliberate practice you won't need ten times as long to learn how to use all those words as you did to learn the words themselves.

If you wanted to beat an average Chinese person at Chinese and write Chinese novels or replace Dashan, then I guess you could spend a lot longer. The point is that 10,000 hours is a meme, not a rule.

"Even so, at the average Skritter rate, you could learn how to write 6000 characters in just 350 hours"

I must've gone wrong, somewhere then!

@Byzanti you and me both.

> If you wanted to beat an average Chinese person at Chinese

In fact that's the good motivation. I have a friend, who is not Russian at all - he made himself a goal similar to above. He ended up to be an editor in one of the most popular at that time literature magazines. He edited new novel writers grammar, style etc (considering that the writers all were native Russians - that's a huge achievement. And it took for him years for that, and I estimate that more than 10,000 hours.

@Nick - to be fair, Skritter isn't the only tool we use to learn Chinese. In addition to the hours a user would have to spend (optionally, on Skritter) learning vocab, there's also recalling that vocab (think how long it would take to run through 6k characters and 46k words just once), listening comprehension, learning the grammar, idioms, nuances of the language, etc. Then there's speaking and writing - just because you know a lot of words doesn't always mean you know how to use them, and just because you know how to use them doesn't mean you know how to use them fluently.

Also, logging 1,000 Skritter hours would actually mean 1,500 hours or more of actual study time for most of us, though that hardly approaches 10,000 hours...

Now, with all of this put together, 2250 hours does seem like a reasonable amount of time for _general proficiency_, but if we're talking mastery, we've got to look at the time someone like 大山 put into it, not the amount of time the average 会说中文的老外 puts into it. I agree that 10,000 hours is generally just a silly rule of thumb, but with something as complex as Chinese, mastery could actually take that much effort.

For the 10,000 rule I've read this article. http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-hours-building-listening-comprehension

Those 10,000 hours don't have to be just learning a new word, whether it's kanji or hanzi, but can (and probably should) include listening, reading, and whatnot.

As for how long that would take? Well it shows about 3 years if you did 8 hours a day. Ouch.

I have generally found that there are built in time switches and the more time you spend studying the faster the switches get flipped. I have seen for a student living in China and actively studying those switches are at roughly 2, 6, and 12 weeks. Then at 6, 12 and 24 months you also have them. After every switch gets flipped there is a SIGNIFICANT improvement in the skills of the speaker. With that said, the numbers change from person to person. I think 10,000 is just a fun fashionable number, though.

The more I think about it, the more I am becoming concerned with a different question. I am about to leave China. I may be coming back for a job over here but for the time I will be heading back to the States. What does it take to maintain this language once you have it to an acceptable level?

That is what my current linguistic nightmare is.

"What does it take to maintain this language once you have it to an acceptable level?"

It depends on your age and how long you studied the language. My experiences are unique as I have a lot more breadth than depth.

I spoke nothing but German until I was two; I lived in Turkey for two years (8th-9th grade); I took two years of Spanish in high school; and I took a semester of Thai and lived there for four months.

I lost close to all of my previous language abilities. I still have my Thai food vocubulary and simple greetings. I can no longer read any Thai -- I never really could read much though -- and writing is now impossible. My own mother is German and the only thing I converse with her about is my cat. I recognize Turkish people; Arabic writing; and Turkish speech. I can not reproduce any of them. I can almost read Spanish but only because I was really into Latin and learned tons of vocabulary words; I also recognize cognates.

If you view learning languages as switches, you will come back down about as fast as you came up. It's sad to say: use it or lose it. Language ability deteriorates rapidly.

My father's Spanish was basically perfectly fluent at one point and now he is down to a couple of phrases. I know the downfalls. My only issue is that some people don't lose it because they are good at maintaining it. That is what I need to work on now. I need to figure out what I need to do to have that result.

"My only issue is that some people don't lose it because they are good at maintaining it."

Practice. It's that simple. You don't need to put nearly as much effort into maintaining as you did in learning but you still need to put in some time.

@west13
The good news is that even if you lose your some of your language ability, it is a lot easier to get back to that level again than if you were starting afresh. Especially things that are fairly important (and therefore used often) will only take one or two cues and you'll be back where you left it...

I went to Argentina with a friend's parents; the father had been fluent in Spanish in the 60's when he was there as a Mormon missionary (the Mormons are great language students) but had basically forgotten everything. When he was forced to speak Spanish, it all slowly came back to him over the span of about a week. It was amazing to watch.

Polyglots (three or more languages) seem to maintain them by periodically going back into them.

This maniac, for example, has a spreadsheet where he schedules his time studying 50+ languages:

http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/polyglottery.html#s

James

As far as maintain reading/writing ability, I'd suggest getting a pen pal. I've used Lang-8 to pick up two or three, one of whom is becoming a pretty good friend of mine. We've been emailing each other almost daily for about 4 months. All three are great about correcting my Japanese/Chinese and are eager to accept guidance with their English. It's been a surprisingly successful experience.

But my speaking practice is a whole nother issue. There aren't all that many Chinese/Japanese around where I live, so that part will be hard.

@jcdoss Skype, man. There are 36 trillion Chinese people on there. Probably twice as many are on qq.

Get QQ. Set your profile information to male, single, and from the United States. Have a webcam. Open QQ. Wait 5 minutes.

You won't complain about a lack of speaking practice again.

Reading and writing doesn't bother me too much. I have several books that I have bought and am disciplined enough that I will work through them slowly but surely. I also have things like Skritter. The listening comprehension is the most difficult to be honest. I recently took 6 weeks away from all reviewing due to grad school exams. The last two weeks of which I didn't even have any significant time speaking with the language.

The English on the LSAT can mess up a normal English mind much less one that has gone to great lengths to be thinking in Chinese. After it was over, I came back to a Skritter queue of 5k and just nuked it. I am starting over now. It is going relatively quickly. I know that relearning is 1000 times faster than the first time you learn it, but it is still disheartening. The spoken aspects were weird for a while, but thankfully they didn't suffer TOO badly.

Thanks for the ideas, though.

@jww1066 That polyglot is nuts. How good can he possibly be in all of those languages? I just want to be trilingual. After this nightmare Spanish will be easy.