Aster's
Asterisms

Language Learning (Day 2)

Date: August 2nd, 2026

Last modified: August 4, 2026 (09:34 UTC)

Despite the fact that I have been interested in learning languages ever since my pre-teens, it is perhaps a bit embarrassing that the only language I’m fluent in is in English (although my Mandarin abilities are getting there). In any case, I wanted to discuss the languages that I am learning (and that I plan to learn) along with resources for anyone else that is interested.

Mandarin

It’s apt that I am writing this post while currently being in Taipei studying Mandarin (although I will be returning to the United States in a week after being here for two months). I have been learning the language for around two years and while I would consider myself highly advanced in the language, I am by no means fluent (as is evident by any of my interactions with service workers!). I still make pretty basic mistakes and I feel like my grammar pattern use is still fairly rudimentary.

I started learning Mandarin as I have always been interested in Chinese history and culture. Within my first semester of college I decided to change my major to Religious Studies (along with East Asian Languages and Cultures with a focus in Chinese) and decided that I want to focus on contemporary Chinese Buddhism. Thus, Mandarin is pretty much required for what I want to do in order to read texts and conduct field interviews. It’ll also be extremely helpful for when I start learning Classical Chinese.

Because of the fact that I learned Mandarin in school, it is a little bit harder for me to recommend resources for learning the language. The textbooks I’ve used have each part of the Integrated Chinese series, Eyes on China, and A Course in Contemporary Chinese 4-3 and 5-1. I’ve also found the Chinese Grammar Wiki immensely helpful. For studying the language, it’s the same as I do for any language: for learning a piece of vocab, I will take the sentence it’s in and add it to Anki, doing cloze deleting for the vocab word in question. In the “Extra” field I’ll add the English translation. For the pronunciation of hanzi, I will use an Input type of card and have zhuyin on the reverse (I prefer zhuyin over pinyin; for those unaware, zhuyin is used in Taiwan as a syllabic system, compared to pinyin which is romanization. For example, 中文 (Chinese) in pinyin is zhōngwén while in zhuyin it is ㄓㄨㄥˉ ㄨㄣˊ. Might make a post in the future why I use it!). I do grammar the same way as I do for vocab, but I have the explanation in Chinese.

Now that I am entering advanced Chinese, I’m more confident in using native texts so most of my supplementary readings will be using those. My problem is now that I need to actually find native materials… I know of Liberty Times (pro-independence Taiwanese newspaper) and Xinhua (Chinese-operated newspaper), but not much others. I’ll probably need to start watching C-Dramas and reading academic articles to get a better understanding, especially as I’ll be taking Media Chinese next semester and would be nice to have non-news related inputs.

French

I first started learning French in high school as the choice was between Spanish, French, and German. Unfortunately I learned very little as COVID hit my freshman year and my teacher was on maternity leave for every other year. I restarted my French learning in college, but I am very much a beginner (doesn’t help I deleted all my French flashcards!). I started learning French as I planned on attending graduate school in France (and due to one of my close friends being a native French speaker). This is not the current plan anymore, but it’s still a useful language to know regardless, especially in academia.

I unfortunately do not remember what the textbook I used was, but my French friend told me that the translations were not great, so perhaps that is for the best. Lawless French has probably been my favorite resource so far!

Japanese

I actually self-studied Japanese throughout high school, due to wanting to go to undergrad in Japan, but I have forgotten everything besides how to read hiragana and katakana, along with some kanji. Japanese is fairly essential for research on China, so I want to learn it to an advanced level. I remember Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese and Tofugu being helpful; I used to use WaniKani but I think knowing Mandarin will make learning kanji fairly simple. In terms of textbooks, I plan on working through Genki.

Classical Chinese

My research focus being in Chinese Buddhism does require me to learn Classical Chinese in order to understand sutras and exegesis (and honestly, any pre-Republic works). I’m going to start with Kai Vogelsang’s Introduction to Classical Chinese, and then go straight into native texts with the Guwen Guanzhi, Zibuyu, and sutras (especially since Buddhist Classical Chinese has a bunch of specialized vocabulary due to different preferences in translation by the Chinese).

Tagalog

My boyfriend is half-Filipino and we made an agreement with each other to start learning Tagalog with the primary purpose of speaking each other secretly. As a result, it’s not as high up the list as other languages, but I will be working through Elementary Tagalog: Tara, Mag-Tagalog Tayo!.

Other languages

I haven’t researched much into these languages, so I think it’d be a bit of a waste of space to give them their own categories, but I have been wanting to also learn:

I’ve also been thinking about making my own language… but that’s a project for future Aster.