China's rapid rise spurs Americans to learn Chinese

[Glenn]

Yeah, sometimes I feel a bit behind the times for having decided to study Japanese (not that I regret it). However, I have started learning Mandarin, albeit very slowly. I guess I could say 我慢慢地在學中文。 Can anyone confirm that that's correct?

[lexico]

I am surprised at the relatively small number 24,000 of students of Mandarin; only roughly 1.2% of the US population. Does the figure include Amrican-born Chinese and young students from recent immigrant families ?

Yeah, sometimes I feel a bit behind the times for having decided to study Japanese (not that I regret it). However, I have started learning Mandarin, albeit very slowly. I guess I could say 我慢慢地在學中文。 Can anyone confirm that that's correct?

I regret for dropping out of my Japanese class just because the Caucasian instructor sounded way to weird to be a near native-speaker, not like my British TA whose Mandarin sounded genuine. Was I too negative or suspicious ?

Anyway it sounds like you are on the happy path of langauge learning !
Your sentence sounds right except the 在; which would roughly correspond to the Enlgish prepositions 'at, in' referring to either the physical presence or being imbedded 'in' a surrounding or context. Compounds such as 現在 'right now (present)' or 正在 'right at, in~, currently ~' can also specify time.

how about (short): 我慢慢(地)學中文。地 would be formal language; casual speech often drop it.
or (long version): 最近我開始學中文學得慢。 for "Recently I started to slowly study Chinese.' The construction of repeating the verb 學 is often used when there is an object 中文, esp. if the object is long. V+O+V+得+adverb. In this case the object isn't long, but somehow it sounds better that way. Perhaps Quiet Sunshine, TonySoong, or some other Chinese member can give a genuine native speaker's view on this.

[Glenn]

Only 24,000 is quite a surprising statistic indeed. It's no wonder that Chinese language courses at universities advertise by saying that if you learn Chinese you'll be able to speak with one billion people, but it apparently isn't having too much of an effect.

I certainly agree that learning Chinese is a good career move for anyone, not just Americans, because the way things are looking now Chinese will be the next global language. It looks like Chinese will be replacing Spanish as the most learned language in high school in the next decade or so.

Anyway it sounds like you are on the happy path of langauge learning !
Your sentence sounds right except the 在; which would roughly correspond to the Enlgish prepositions 'at, in' referring to either the physical presence or being imbedded 'in' a surrounding or context. Compounds such as 現在 'right now (present)' or 正在 'right at, in~, currently ~' can also specify time.

how about (short): 我慢慢(地)學中文。地 would be formal language; casual speech often drop it.
or (long version): 最近我開始學中文學得慢。 for "Recently I started to slowly study Chinese.' The construction of repeating the verb 學 is often used when there is an object 中文, esp. if the object is long. V+O+V+得+adverb. In this case the object isn't long, but somehow it sounds better that way. Perhaps Quiet Sunshine, TonySoong, or some other Chinese member can give a genuine native speaker's view on this.

Thanks for the guidance, lexico. I thought that using 在 would show than I'm currently learning in this instance, although I wasn't sure of the position. I also wasn't sure of whether it belonged there in the first place, but my native English intuition said "you need to put the progressive marker in there" so I stuck it in where I thought it would be most logical.

I didn't know that 地 could be omitted as the pre-verbal adverbial marker, but then again I'm still on the textbook beginner-speak level.

I had learned the V+O+V+得+adverb pattern, but the first thing that popped into my head was the duplicated adverb+地 pattern. I guess I've just seen it more with 慢. Thanks for the refresher.

I haven't looked at my Chinese books in a while, mostly due to being busy with work and some life changes, so that's why it's 慢慢. I think sometime in the next year or so I'll start taking formal lessons, which should drastically accelerate my rate of learning.

[quiet sunshine]

Your sentence sounds right except the 在; which would roughly correspond to the Enlgish prepositions 'at, in' referring to either the physical presence or being imbedded 'in' a surrounding or context. Compounds such as 現在 'right now (present)' or 正在 'right at, in~, currently ~' can also specify time.

The usage of "在" is ok here, "在" has the meaning of "right now", see:
你在干什么? What are you doing?
我在看书. I'm reading.
I think "我在慢慢地学中文" would be better.

[lexico]

Ohh, thanks, both of you. My hard-learned Chinese has gotten rust, I can see. Really appreciate this moment of learning; back from my text book I've mislocated !
我在要再学中文 !

[Glenn]

The usage of "在" is ok here, "在" has the meaning of "right now", see:
你在干什么? What are you doing?
我在看书. I'm reading.
I think "我在慢慢地学中文" would be better.

I thought that might be the case, but I've only seen it next to the verb from what I can remember, so I went with that. 謝謝你，quiet sunshine小姐!

[quiet sunshine]

I thought that might be the case, but I've only seen it next to the verb from what I can remember, so I went with that. 謝謝你，quiet sunshine小姐!

不客气!
Hm, we did exercises like extending or contracting sentences when we were kids, I think it's a useful way to make sentence structure more clear.
我在学中文==>我在<慢慢地>学中文
我在看书===>我在<认真地>看书

我在要再学中文 !

Lexico san, this sentence has a small problem.
我要再学中文,or 我现在要再学中文 is ok.
Your grammar knowledge is richer than mine, so I'm sure I don't need to struggle to use my poor English here.

[lexico]

exercises like extending or contracting sentences when we were kids, I think it's a useful way to make sentence structure more clear.
我在学中文==>我在<慢慢地>学中文
我在看书===>我在<认真地>看书

Lexico san, this sentence has a small problem.
我要再学中文,or 我现在要再学中文 is ok.

Thanks for all the learning you give me. Some things I never got right, so I'm glad I get those corrected now, not never.