How long does it have to be a "dan" player

Bill Spight · **#41**

Knotwilg wrote:

I recently started learning Polish for fun. I don't have the impression it's particularly harder than when I was 25 and learning Portuguese. However, the motivation is completely different. Back then, I needed to crash into it because I was studying math in Lisbon. Now it's just for fun and not in any way practical, other than impressing my Polish colleagues whom I visit a few times a year. According to them, my accent is flawless, so it doesn't seem much harder to internalize the sounds and flow than it was for French back when I was 10.

(Emphasis mine.)

There are people who seem to have a knack for languages.

IMX, they have a good ear, which goes along with musicality.

daal · **#42**

Knotwilg wrote:

According to them, my accent is flawless

As my English teacher used to say: Flattery will get you everywhere. ;-)

Polish pronunciation is also difficult for some similar reasons: Like Chinese, there are several sh and ch sounds and although they don't have characters, they do use an awful lot of z's...

Regarding the difficulty of Polish and Chinese, the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) lists Chinese as one of the hardest and Polish as one of the second hardest languages for English speakers to learn. It is interesting to note however that opinions do indeed differ widely. Here is a well known rant by a student/professor of Chinese, David Moser, about how hard Chinese is, and here is a rebuttal by Benny Lewis, the creator of Fluent in 3 Months. I concur with Gotraskhalana that having a positive attitude is beneficial, and that imaginary demons can indeed inflict harm, yet it seems prudent to acknowledge a difficulty if it actually exists. Benny Lewis did in fact manage to learn a good deal of Chinese in a short amount of time, but I think the pessimest Moser might be better prepared for the long haul.

Regarding the OP, who might still be interested in the OT, I have heard of a number of people who have achieved dan ranks in a year or so. None of them afaik were over 30. Some may say that this is due to outer constraints such as job and family and that may be true, but University can be a bear too and I also know that some of us older folks somehow manage to invest a pretty hefty amount of time into their go...

EdLee · **#43**

Quote:

I reached 11-12 kyu in about 7 months, and 2 kyu in about 13 months.

Two atypical cases:
- one person went from 30k to ~2k in about a year;
then stayed there the following 30+ years, never making 1d ;
- another person stayed in kyu range for years (non-Go field),
while his contemporaries made shodan; then in one year, made godan. ^(*)

negapesuo, please check your pm.

____
^(*)

How long does it have to be a "dan" player

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