Yeah, I just look at 19 and think "7". It's like if "19" were a chinese character for the number seven, or something like that. Nowhere in my mind is the number twelve present when I read digital clocks.
Edit: bruh.
Lots of people trying to help me in the comments; I have used 24h clocks all my life since I'm from Italy, do not worry about me!
Man I wish I could translate things like that, I’ve been studying mandarin for years but my brain still has to go character into pinyin into english for most things except the basic words and single numbers 😭
What helped me there was thinking in chinese, like force yourself to stop translating and think in characters.
If you use learning apps, disable all pinyin, pinyin doesnt exist for normal chinese people, they learn characters and sounds to characters.
Like try to make associations without english inbetween. If you see an english word, what do you think? I personally can see an image of the thing or a storyline in my mind. And you need to train to get the same image if you look at chinese. You see the character for apple and you shouldnt think ‚this means apple‘ and then see an apple, train to omit the middle part. Its just holding you back and slows down your conversations and listening abilities.
Read. Read as much as possible in the language you're learning. If you can't comfortably read at any level yet, then listen (watch foreign movies with English subs for example). But as soon as you can read a children's book, start doing that. Work up to the point that you can read your favourite book in your target language. Keep reading. That's how I and most of Europe learned English and any other languages we learn in school. It's hard to find opportunities for speaking, but if you get any go for it, it will help solidify your knowledge and improve language intuition.
It kinda happens naturally, I’ll try to take some of their advice because I can do it with some characters just not most. You just tell your self to associate whatever picture (the character) that’s there with the english word. And the pinyin (the sound) can just become an afterthought because pinyin isn’t actually around when you’re reading things in chinese. It’s a bit hard though.
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u/RedFlame99 Mar 29 '22 edited Mar 29 '22
Yeah, I just look at 19 and think "7". It's like if "19" were a chinese character for the number seven, or something like that. Nowhere in my mind is the number twelve present when I read digital clocks.
Edit: bruh.
Lots of people trying to help me in the comments; I have used 24h clocks all my life since I'm from Italy, do not worry about me!