I was the one who asked this question. Thanks again for the reply.
Specific questions I have for you
Is there any particular Anki deck you’d recommend (with pinyin and audio)? Should I just use the probability table and generate it myself?
I want to go from 100 words to 500 words vocabulary. Should I do that using immersion or using Anki deck?
Is there any particular video or podcast channel you’d recommend at a beginner level (100-500 words vocabulary)?
Would you recommend I try generating my own video? I have enough notes at this point I can ask o1 or gpt 4.5 to generate full stories based on my notes. AI video generation is expensive but I could look into it if you’d recommend that as a good use of my time.
Update on my progress
I have been studying spoken Chinese maybe 1 hour a day for past 4 months with plenty of off days. Have made some progress but less progress than I’d like.
I decided not to search for jobs in order to shift to China, as that would mean a significant amount of my time consumed doing a job I don’t actually want to do. I figured I should first learn Chinese better and then take a decision on job search.
I can recognise atleast 100 words by sound.
I still can’t differentiate between accents by sound, but I haven’t prioritised this as it seems less important to me, usually from hearing the word it’s obvious what it means.
I am studying spoken Chinese and written Chinese pinyin. I have put zero effort learning Chinese characters.
I am mostly using ChinesePod podcast. I couldn’t find any video immersion resources that I liked, at beginner level. I haven’t put enough effort searching though.
I haven’t spent a lot of time using Anki decks.
I use o1 a lot to get translations and transcribe words when I mishear accents and stuff
I’m glad you’re making progress. Focusing on the spoken language at first is a much better better for your pronuncuation. In the long run, learning written Chinese will eventually be necessary to building a large vocabulary. But until you feel that holding you back, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on the spoken language.
Differentiating accents is not important. You are correct to deprioritize it.
For more video immersion resources, I recommend Douyin. Getting it onto your phone can be tricky, but once you do it’s a great source of video immersion.
Is there any particular Anki deck you’d recommend (with pinyin and audio)? Should I just use the probability table and generate it myself?
It has been many years since I have used Anki for Chinese, so I don’t know which deck is currently the best. There aren’t a huge number of Chinese decks on ankiweb, so you can just try out the top rated ones and pick whichever one you like. (Or generate it yourself. The last time I checked on ankiweb, the decks there were from created before computer voice got good.)
Is there any particular video or podcast channel you’d recommend at a beginner level (100-500 words vocabulary)?
This is probably too hard for your right now, but my favorite beginner-level podcast is 慢速中文 - Slow Chinese.
Would you recommend I try generating my own video?
No. The video part is basically a waste of compute. What matters is the audio. Generating audio and text can be useful.
In particular, I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode and it’s fantastic for language immersion. I give it the following instructions: “Always speak to me in Japanese [or, in your case, Chinese], unless I ask you ‘How do you say ___ in Japanese’ or ‘What does ___ mean in English’?” Actually getting it to follow those instructions is finicky, but when I get it to work, the result is basically an on-demand personal immersion tutor that never gets bored.
Yes OpenAI realtime API is really cool. When speaking to realtime API, I start each sentence with two words indicating what I want it to do. It’s clunky but it works. “Translate Chinese, what is the time?” “Reply Chinese, how are you?” Ideally yes I could write an app to prepend the instruction audio to each sentence.
If I had this as higher priority I’d actually want to setup this Twilio app.
I was the one who asked this question. Thanks again for the reply.
Specific questions I have for you
Is there any particular Anki deck you’d recommend (with pinyin and audio)? Should I just use the probability table and generate it myself?
I want to go from 100 words to 500 words vocabulary. Should I do that using immersion or using Anki deck?
Is there any particular video or podcast channel you’d recommend at a beginner level (100-500 words vocabulary)?
Would you recommend I try generating my own video? I have enough notes at this point I can ask o1 or gpt 4.5 to generate full stories based on my notes. AI video generation is expensive but I could look into it if you’d recommend that as a good use of my time.
Update on my progress
I have been studying spoken Chinese maybe 1 hour a day for past 4 months with plenty of off days. Have made some progress but less progress than I’d like.
I decided not to search for jobs in order to shift to China, as that would mean a significant amount of my time consumed doing a job I don’t actually want to do. I figured I should first learn Chinese better and then take a decision on job search.
I can recognise atleast 100 words by sound.
I still can’t differentiate between accents by sound, but I haven’t prioritised this as it seems less important to me, usually from hearing the word it’s obvious what it means.
I am studying spoken Chinese and written Chinese pinyin. I have put zero effort learning Chinese characters.
I am mostly using ChinesePod podcast. I couldn’t find any video immersion resources that I liked, at beginner level. I haven’t put enough effort searching though.
I haven’t spent a lot of time using Anki decks.
I use o1 a lot to get translations and transcribe words when I mishear accents and stuff
I’m glad you’re making progress. Focusing on the spoken language at first is a much better better for your pronuncuation. In the long run, learning written Chinese will eventually be necessary to building a large vocabulary. But until you feel that holding you back, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on the spoken language.
Differentiating accents is not important. You are correct to deprioritize it.
For more video immersion resources, I recommend Douyin. Getting it onto your phone can be tricky, but once you do it’s a great source of video immersion.
It has been many years since I have used Anki for Chinese, so I don’t know which deck is currently the best. There aren’t a huge number of Chinese decks on ankiweb, so you can just try out the top rated ones and pick whichever one you like. (Or generate it yourself. The last time I checked on ankiweb, the decks there were from created before computer voice got good.)
This is probably too hard for your right now, but my favorite beginner-level podcast is 慢速中文 - Slow Chinese.
No. The video part is basically a waste of compute. What matters is the audio. Generating audio and text can be useful.
In particular, I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode and it’s fantastic for language immersion. I give it the following instructions: “Always speak to me in Japanese [or, in your case, Chinese], unless I ask you ‘How do you say ___ in Japanese’ or ‘What does ___ mean in English’?” Actually getting it to follow those instructions is finicky, but when I get it to work, the result is basically an on-demand personal immersion tutor that never gets bored.
Thanks for taking time to reply!
Yes OpenAI realtime API is really cool. When speaking to realtime API, I start each sentence with two words indicating what I want it to do. It’s clunky but it works. “Translate Chinese, what is the time?” “Reply Chinese, how are you?” Ideally yes I could write an app to prepend the instruction audio to each sentence.
If I had this as higher priority I’d actually want to setup this Twilio app.