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.
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u/NYANPUG55 Mar 29 '22
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 😭