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Blistex posted:Learning Mandarin will be an excellent business opportunity for westerners. Is there anyway I could ignore your obvious experience on the issue and call you a racist?
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Oct 26, 2016 06:23
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It is kinda weird how adverse Americans are to learning another language
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Oct 26, 2016 06:28
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Away all Goats posted:It is kinda weird how adverse Americans are to learning another language It goes against the idea of American exceptionalism that is ingrained since birth.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:31
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THE PWNER posted:The only real objection could be that Spanish is way more useful in the US. People in the anglosphere in general just have an immediate negative reaction to the notion that learning a second language is a good idea, regardless of the language, because we already know the best language!!. is this actually the perception of it outside the anglosphere? it's come up a few times now. I have never met a monolingual English speaker who is anything but deeply ashamed of that fact. the reason we only know English is because we are lazy, not because we think all foreign tongues are revolting or whatever
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Oct 26, 2016 06:31
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Let us English posted:Is there anyway I could ignore your obvious experience on the issue and call you a racist? Yes, but we will both lose face! Here is the female version... <American woman learns to speak Mandarin> <company sends her to their Chinese factory to sort out their issue with substandard straight bevel gears> <Chinese handlers stare at her like she has two heads before she can say a word> <Chinese handlers shoo her away from the factory gate while she tries to protest in Mandarin which they don't hear> <In the cab ride to the airport her handler and the taxi driver talk about what it would be like to gently caress her>* *A white coworker from Hong Kong who can speak Cantonese and Mandarin had this happen to her, except it was a handler from the school who picked her up at the airport and was talking to the school's limo driver. When they arrived at the school she thanked him for picker her up and carrying her luggage in Mandarin. He then proceeded to yell at her for embarrassing him in front of the limo driver. Blistex fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Oct 26, 2016 |
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Oct 26, 2016 06:32
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Some insane tag team action from The Pwnerer and Falun Bong Refugee in this thread tonight, I'm glad we sorted out that China will rule the world and that learning French is useless because it's a white-centric language with very few speakers. Except for all those black and arabic people in Africa that speak it. Why are you two so racist? Have you ever considered that your Sino centric view has excluded these proud people of color? I bet you're just a bunch of Mandarin Mersaults, gunning down unnamed arab workers on beaches for daring to look at your glorious asian queens with their rape filled eyes.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:33
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Away all Goats posted:It is kinda weird how adverse Americans are to learning another language Where do you get that. How does "Mandarin education is not a useful investment on the systemic level" equal "Don't learn other languages."
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Oct 26, 2016 06:34
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White apologia never gets old.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:33
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Falun Bong Refugee posted:It goes against the idea of American exceptionalism that is ingrained since birth. アメリカ人は最低だね
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Oct 26, 2016 06:36
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Falun Bong Refugee posted:White apologia never gets old. 白人も最低
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Oct 26, 2016 06:37
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Blistex posted:He then proceeded to yell at her for embarrassing him in front of the limo driver. lol
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Oct 26, 2016 06:38
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How come nobody ever posts bad things about Taiwan?
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Oct 26, 2016 06:39
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JaucheCharly posted:How come nobody ever posts bad things about Taiwan? One time I had a mango there that wasn't the best I've ever had in my entire life. Just the once though.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:40
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Falun Bong Refugee posted:One time I had a mango there that wasn't the best I've ever had in my entire life. Just the once though. Get a load of the racist goon
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Oct 26, 2016 06:42
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Blistex posted:A white coworker from Hong Kong who can speak Cantonese and Mandarin had this happen to her, except it was a handler from the school who picked her up at the airport and was talking to the school's limo driver. When they arrived at the school she thanked him for picker her up and carrying her luggage in Mandarin. He then proceeded to yell at her for embarrassing him in front of the limo driver. now this is a good story
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Oct 26, 2016 06:43
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JaucheCharly posted:How come nobody ever posts bad things about Taiwan? I think the Taiwan goon population has decreased in recent years. Same with Korea. All left for the land of milk and plunging.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:43
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Yea, but why go to france?
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Oct 26, 2016 06:46
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JaucheCharly posted:How come nobody ever posts bad things about Taiwan? Taiwan #1.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:46
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Nanomashoes posted:Some insane tag team action from The Pwnerer and Falun Bong Refugee in this thread tonight, I'm glad we sorted out that China will rule the world and that learning French is useless because it's a white-centric language with very few speakers. French is a second language in its former colonies, not first. But it's okay because you can speak to some quebecs or belgiums (who are white)
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Oct 26, 2016 06:47
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JaucheCharly posted:Yea, but why go to france? L'Afrique n'existe pas.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:50
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THE PWNER posted:People in the anglosphere in general just have an immediate negative reaction to the notion that learning a second language is a good idea, regardless of the language, because we already know the best language!!. nah
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Oct 26, 2016 06:50
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We need that greentext reposted, warning not to learn mandarin.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:51
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THE PWNER posted:French is a second language in its former colonies, not first. But it's okay because you can speak to some quebecs or belgiums (who are white) Are you arguing that African francophones are not native speakers? Or that French isn't a useful language in some parts of Africa?
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Oct 26, 2016 06:54
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Late to the party but if you're a privileged white rear end in a top hat like me you learn languages to expand the places you can go, the people you can talk to and the benefits you can get from the two things (places and people). Actually thats why 99% of people learn a new language. If you want to go to China/Hong Kong/Taiwan you learn Chinese. Otherwise it's kinda useless. If you want to go anywhere in Latin America or Spain you learn Spanish. Plus it's close enough to other romance languages that it kinda works in Brazil, Portugal, and Italy. Plus it makes learning French, Portuguese and Italian pretty simple since they're virtually the same language. And Spanish is easy enough for a lazy white privileged rear end in a top hat to learn. Objectively, learning Chinese is only good if you have a very specific goal, whereas Spanish opens up more doors and opportunities. Pretend I finished my post with some banal racism.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:56
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It actually speaks really well of most Americans that despite knowing the best language they're very open, indeed eager to become multi-lingual. What they lack is opportunity and the motivation to overcome it. After all, they speak the best language and so does the rest of the world to some extent or another. Parallel to this is the abysmal level of English spoken in China. It's pretty depressing to think that such a large percentage of the earth's population lacks the gumption to learn the most important language in the world despite more than adequate resources being made available to them for free by the state and ample encouragement from the same to make full use of them. I don't see how Mandarin speakers outnumbering English speakers says anything good about the language, rather it says something really bad about the people.
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Oct 26, 2016 06:57
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She had instances where she would literally introduce herself to Chinese teachers (in Mandarin), do a minute or so of small talk (in Mandarin), then not 5 minutes later the staff would start talking about her, out loud amongst themselves. The two most outrageous incidents happened at another high school we both worked at where we showed up on the first day and were introduced to the staff, and she would do her thing, "Hi, I'm Jennifer, I'm from Hong Kong, this is my first time in Liaoning province, I'm excited to meet and work with all of you (all of this in Mandarin). We took a seat, were chilling in the staff room having coffee while everyone was socializing before classes started, and a group of female teachers were looking (and pointing) at her and talking loudly. I asked her what they were saying about her (didn't need to be fluent in Mandarin to figure it out) and she sighed and said, "They don't think my hair is actually red, and they think my insulated vest looks too much like an older style. . . also my freckles are hideous". Another time, a few weeks later, (after we had become well known, and she had continued to speak Mandarin to everyone) we were in the same staff room and the vice principal came in and told the head teacher in Charge of us that we should be sent home before classes, and told that English classes had been cancelled for the whole week, and that the school will pocket the money they were given to pay us (we were being sub-contracted to another high school as part of a program). The head teacher (who had spoken to her numerous times IN MANDARIN) told the VP that he would tell us that the kids had gone on a week-long school trip. We get the message from the head teacher, mouths agape out of shock, nod, and leave the school. We go straight to our program director at the main school we worked at, and she tells him EXACTLY what had just happened (in Mandarin), and he asks her in broken English, "how could you know this?". Edit: somehow deleted the last paragraph. Blistex fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Oct 26, 2016 |
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Oct 26, 2016 06:58
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Let us English posted:Are you arguing that African francophones are not native speakers? Or that French isn't a useful language in some parts of Africa? I'm not sure why you're so caught up on this, is it because you feel bad about spending your life travelling as an unskilled English teacher, yet are unable to actually speak another language?
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Oct 26, 2016 07:02
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Stringent posted:It actually speaks really well of most Americans that despite knowing the best language they're very open, indeed eager to become multi-lingual. What they lack is opportunity and the motivation to overcome it. After all, they speak the best language and so does the rest of the world to some extent or another. There are other languages to learn in China that have a larger impact on everyday life. Now, the government is doing their damnedest to stamp those languages out, but they're still around. Seriously though, the Mandarin push is scary. Last year I saw a kindergarten that had a pro-Mandarin poem written on the LED display out front. The gist of which was, "We are all proper boys and girls who speak Mandarin." The parenthetical "and not filthy Tibetan/Sichuanese/whatever gutter dialect you speak at home." was left unsaid.
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Oct 26, 2016 07:05
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THE PWNER posted:I'm not sure why you're so caught up on this, is it because you feel bad about spending your life travelling as an unskilled English teacher, yet are unable to actually speak another language? 実は、物理学を教えています。 Less threadshitting, more content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uDEiCCkCvc This is the yearly thanksgiving meal at work and it's amazing. Let us English fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Oct 26, 2016 |
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Oct 26, 2016 07:07
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I'm going to do an effort post on why I agree with GBM that learning Chinese is a waste of time: I started learning Chinese ten years ago. I speak it fairly fluently but am not the greatest...especially now. My reading/writing has decayed from disuse, but I still can do it. The trap of Chinese language learning is that it's very difficult, the characters are cool, and the perceived value of it is very high. Certain types of people can get very, very sucked in by Chinese--and I am that kind of person. I think I spent a good 3-4 year period where my primary recreational activity was "studying Chinese." It was the thing I did if I had extra time. I'd drill characters for hours at a time, I'd watch Chinese TV shows that I could barely understand with Mandarin subtitles and no English as semi-immersion training. I'd go out of my way to find Chinese people just so I could speak Mandarin in a real situation. I ended up getting quite good at it very fast--but only because I sunk so much time into it. I self-studied so much over a summer that I tested out of Intermediate Chinese so I could get into the more advanced classes quicker. Studying Chinese basically became the thing I wanted to do and base my entire career around. Of course I didn't know what, exactly, that career would be. Going back to the "high perceived value," when you are studying Chinese everyone you talk to about it acts like it's some great and valuable thing you are doing, and you start to really buy into that as well. I might not have known how exactly "being good at Mandarin" was going to benefit me in life or set a career path for me, but I knew that it would all work itself out. So from age 20 until 24 or so I was just nerding out and studying Mandarin obsessively before even ever going to a Chinese-speaking country. I was planning to go live in China after I graduated to finish "getting good" at Chinese and becoming really really fluent etc. I think back on this period and on all the actually useful skills I could have learned in this time. I was working between 15-20 hours per week at my university and online, and I had a scholarship paying my tuition. I had shitloads of free time that I was sinking into learning Chinese. I could have been learning any number of actually valuable skills like writing, coding, math, etc. I could have been learning one of the skills that you can pair together with being super fluent in a language to create real value rather than perceived value. What I failed to realize at the time is that for "being good at Chinese" to actually be a useful skill that is worth the time you put into it, you have to have a base skill and thing you are good at to combine with Chinese fluency. Without that, you are a dumbass who wasted all his time learning a language who has no actual skills. There are millions of people out there who speak Mandarin and English better than you simply because they grew up with both languages. You can work really loving hard for ten years to partially overcome that, and if you are one of the rare people with a REALLY good ear, you MIGHT have pronunciation as good as an American-born Chinese. But you'll never look Chinese enough to overcome being a laowai. When I got to China, I sort of loved it at first. I felt frustrated though when very few people on the street actually spoke Mandarin in Chongqing. I had just spent all of my time learning Mandarin, only to realize that Mandarin really is a "common language" in that it's something educated people will use to reach a common ground. It's not what is widely spoken all across China in day-to-day interactions. Even my friends in Chongqing who were educated spoke in a mishmash combination of Mandarin and Chonqing dialect, meaning that my immersion and picking up new words was pretty compromised because I could never tell if the tone or sounds of the word I was learning were Mandarin or not. Skip ahead to the end of my time in China, and I hated it. If you're non-Chinese, you will never be treated like a non-oddity. You will always be a foreigner, regardless of your Mandarin ability. You will always have people shouting "HALOU" at you, you will always have people talking about your nose shape and other super racist stuff right in front of your face as if you can't understand them. Mainland China kind of loving sucks (I can't speak for Taiwan or HK), and learning Mandarin to better understand mainland China will only make you see its faults much more clearly. Keep in mind that you can live and have a decent life in China even if you don't speak Mandarin. Sinking tons of effort and years of your life into becoming proficient at Mandarin is not like learning French or German. It will not allow you to move through society like everyone else and become more integrated. You will NEVER integrate into Chinese society, and you'll probably always have to fight to get people to actually speak to you in Mandarin rather than English. Add in the fact that Chinese media and entertainment is totally poo poo, and there is even less reason to learn Mandarin. It's almost entirely ripped off from Korean and Japanese pop culture, and anything that isn't is insanely, racistly anti-Japanese. I hope you like watching cartoonish and racist historical accounts of WWII where a lone Chinese hero eviscerates 10 Japanese dogs who piss their pants at the sight of him. There's a few good things in Chinese film and literature, but they are so comparatively far and few between that they cannot possibly justify the time investment. There are a few highly specialized fields where learning Mandarin would actually make sense. More likely than not learning Mandarin is an awful trap that will very likely waste many years of your life for very little gain. When I got back from China, I was fluent in Mandarin and had a B.S. in Linguistics with no other real skills, so I couldn't find a job and had to work at a grocery store until I found a lovely office job that I worked for five years. My Mandarin ability in that job allowed me to have to deal with more Chinese people (a disadvantage) while not receiving any extra pay over my monolingual coworkers. Finally, ten years later, I've almost completely disentangled myself with Mandarin and have no interest in getting better at it or speaking it. My wife and I only ever speak English, and her parents speak a lovely dialect that I can't speak or understand, so Mandarin didn't even help me there. I finally also have a job I like that pays well and has nothing to do with China or Mandarin. I could have reached this point in my career path like...eight years earlier...if I had just never bothered learning Mandarin. If you are learning Mandarin or thinking about learning Mandarin, think of how many skills there are out there that will result in like...$70k+ annual salary after two years of hard work acquiring the skill. There are A LOT of skills like that out there, and Mandarin is not one of them. After two years of hard work on Mandarin, you will be firmly at the "can barely hold together a stilted conversation, and you're proud as gently caress of it" phase of language acquisition.
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Oct 26, 2016 07:07
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Blistex posted:She had instances where she would literally introduce herself to Chinese teachers (in Mandarin), do a minute or so of small talk (in Mandarin), then not 5 minutes later the staff would start talking about her, out loud amongst themselves. The two most outrageous incidents happened at another high school we both worked at where we showed up on the first day and were introduced to the staff, and she would do her thing, "Hi, I'm Jennifer, I'm from Hong Kong, this is my first time in Liaoning province, I'm excited to meet and work with all of you (all of this in Mandarin). We took a seat, were chilling in the staff room having coffee while everyone was socializing before classes started, and a group of female teachers were looking (and pointing) at her and talking loudly. I asked her what they were saying about her (didn't need to be fluent in Mandarin to figure it out) and she sighed and said, "They don't think my hair is actually red, and they think my insulated vest looks too much like an older style. . . also my freckles are hideous". So is this obviousness, or face-saving, or wtf?
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Oct 26, 2016 07:07
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Let us English posted:実は、物理学を教えています。 I have Google translate too! When are you going to teach in Cameroon?
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Oct 26, 2016 07:07
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That last paragraph is what clinches it. Sorry guys, but learning English if you don't speak it is incredibly valuable compared to the other direction. 
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Oct 26, 2016 07:09
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french will be useless once china buys up all the arable land in africa in perpetuity
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Oct 26, 2016 07:08
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Let us English posted:実は、物理学を教えています。 You know this is the chinese thread and not the weeaboo thread, right?
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Oct 26, 2016 07:10
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THE PWNER posted:I'm not sure why you're so caught up on this, is it because you feel bad about spending your life travelling as an unskilled English teacher, yet are unable to actually speak another language? "Why are you so caught up on this stupid thing I said, when you in fact are the stupid one?"
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Oct 26, 2016 07:16
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The language of the little devils exits for China to smash it!
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Oct 26, 2016 07:19
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if you're learning a language as your primary pursuit in life you're bad at language learning mate. I am learning three disciplines at once, one of them is a language. Not tough... Mate. But then again all native English speakers are bad at language learning. THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Oct 26, 2016 |
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Oct 26, 2016 07:18
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Stringent posted:Parallel to this is the abysmal level of English spoken in China. It's pretty depressing to think that such a large percentage of the earth's population lacks the gumption to learn the most important language in the world despite more than adequate resources being made available to them for free by the state and ample encouragement from the same to make full use of them. I don't see how Mandarin speakers outnumbering English speakers says anything good about the language, rather it says something really bad about the people.
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Oct 26, 2016 07:19
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Nanomashoes posted:"Why are you so caught up on this stupid thing I said, when you in fact are the stupid one?" By making the thread believe that I am incredibly stupid, I'm actually the puppetmaster troll, and am owning them all!
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Oct 26, 2016 07:20
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