>white foreigner goes to some country, speaks the local language and SHOCKS everyone
Does this kind of stuff happen IRL?
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>white foreigner goes to some country, speaks the local language and SHOCKS everyone
probably depends on the foreigner
any gringo who speaks Chinese in particular is a novelty period, as far as I'm concerned
(or a small m mandarin of some kind)
Hispanic Black person
It's very easy to befriend Arabs if you can string together a sentence in the language
Arabs are friendly in general if you aren't an autist.
According to a buddy, being a "good host" is a religious requirement which was pretty surprising
>According to a buddy, being a "good host" is a religious requirement which was pretty surprising
It’s been backformed into most interpretations of the religion, but the concept of hospitality as a requirement for humanity is actually an ancient tribal custom among Arabs that long predates their Islamization.
But is it desirable to shock people? What about just having a convo and making friends? I learned enough mandarin to get by in Taiwan, I didn't shock anyone but I got a lot of really gratifying smiles.
It's a cultural thing far more than a religious thing. Unfortunately the longer you spend enjoying Arab "hospitality" the more it becomes obvious it's completely self-serving. Feeling nauseous after a week of eating white bread and sheep stomach 4 meals a day? Frick you, you're at my dinner table and you're gonna eat more of this greasy shit to gratify my benevolent self-image. Looking for some alone time in the mountains? Hiking with you is the last thing on earth I want to do right now, and I have work in the morning and kids to take care of, but I'm not gonna leave you alone, in fact I think I'll camp out with you tonight, even though I have no food, blanket or tent, just to make sure you're OK and not in any danger. See how hospitable I am?
I have many genuine friendships with these people which I treasure and wish to sustain, but their sense of "hospitality" is hollow, hollow, hollow.
They had lesbo sex that night after drinks
I can speak Chinese and while some people are SHOCKED they quickly get over it
You'll definitely get compliments and maybe some interest in how you learnt it etc but it's surface level
Idk how the response will be if you're shit at it, because I'm pretty fluent
Something like 1 person in 10 reacts like this, she said it herself in a video.
At last she has an ounce of self reflection about her "craft" and she's not as annoying as the guy picrel.
The guy is kind of a fraud. He said in a video that he learned french in 1 day, at the end of the video it was total gibberish garbage, people could not even identify what language he was trying to speak.
So my guess is that it's the same for everything he's pretending to speak, except english and his wife's chinese.
he is on a grift which is just marketing for his 'brand'. he learns some stock sentences and practice conversations and then deploys them.
Lol this guy. I saw a video where he is identifying languages by listening or some shit and he failed right away identifying Greek
He's israeli so of course he's a grifter.
yes, and it has the obvious good aspect of getting laid very easily, but IRL in everyday its literally like youre a celebrity where every single fricking interaction is "OH WOW YOU SPEAKUH KOREAN SO WELL!!! HOW LONG YOU.. "blah blah etc when i literally just asked for a fricking coffee.
t. very good korean speaker who is white. also i dont like the language much, its much cruder than english tbh but its nice to be able to sort of be real about discussing stuff instead of the constant tiptoeing around so many "sensitive" issues in english. re: the shock factor - probably unique to korea since imho very few foreigners there learn korean. in other asian countries your mileage likely varies. people under 25 generally speak english well now, people 25 to 40 likely but maybe 50 to 70%, over 40 pretty few, over 65 very very few.
yeah there was another guy on youtube who would "speak" certain languages, and me listenign to him speak korean and japanese - it was travel garbage you could memorize in an hour, and he just has the scam artist way of responding ambiguously to people like "ahh yes yes, very good!" and askign a different question so the interaction continues on without him having to comprehend anything. this is why i dont even like to say im "fluent" in a language.
yeah there is definitely both factors of ease-of-learning a language and worthwhileness of learning a language. i always studied german here and there and some classes in university but there just never was that much media in it, though its a lot better since the mid 2010s and just - unless youre in germany no one is goign to speak it at all. french has imho even worse media than german so i have always hated french. people here in canada just mentally block out all the stupid french gibberish under english on every product though could probably understand what most of it is, but couldnt pronounce it well or conjugate a sentence.
Legit what made you one day think, "okay, I'm going to learn Korean to a very good level". How old were you and how long did it take?
I've started learning Korean before when I had an ex gf who was Korean then stopped because I realised I was never going to live or work there. Started Chinese and came to the same conclusion. Started German and came to the same conclusion.
not the person you're asking but I was in the same boat as you for a while with languages. To be fair, there isnt much fun immersion material for German learning. And Korean and Chinese are both massive undertakings. Your best bet is to pick a language that you can get some decent immersion in, and perhaps with the same script as English. Spanish isn't a bad bet if you're stateside. Also、setting the expectation of fluency right off the bat can be demoralizing. Best to set little goals without crazy expectations like living and working in the target language. Learn for the frick of it in the beginning and then it starts to become an actual skill.
i thought i implied it, but i lived there and just ended up learning it so i could get stuff from stores and govt things i needed. it just spiraled i guess from me talking, then i started studying from english to korean study books at the library. it has a pretty linear path since once you know hangeul you dont need to know hanja really. though i know prolly about 100 basic characters ie. colours, numbers, foods, core things, gim, san, lastnames etc. it kept getting better over a period of about 8 years. i didnt bother leraning at all my firs tyear there.
you dont speak english well, so maybe youre asian - making your argument utterly moronic. yes i agree there are the other social norms there with people in public, constantly praising people despite how boring what they are talking about is. i would attend social things and partner's events but i definitely would say i had no interest in ever maintaining a friendship where i just spoke korean - people seemed incredibly shallow and superficial and just boring. though i didnt live in a super educated city. also im sure things have changed since when i lived there. i sort of like reading ilbe, but its just not super funny. 전라놈 홍어 빨갱이 죽어라
also re: you i found a lot of the non-white foreigners in korea to be really annoying and to have huge chips on their shoulder. there was a whole bunch of central asian scumbags who came in since 2015, are you one of them? you need to go back to your desert shithole and worship your pedo prophet if so. saranghae
based response.
How did you even end up there in the first place? and staying for 8 years? If you teach english would you recommend someone do this in 2024?
I live in korea for a while, and speak it pretty decently, enough to go to uni here and stuff, and i definitely have to disagree with you
Maybe it's just cause im not white, but usually no one really cares if i speak korean, its basically expected most of the time, like they literally just talk to me normally
at max, you hear shit like "와 한국말 너무 잘하신다" and then we just move on
even at my school clubs and shit it's not like celebrity status, lots of young zoomer foreigners (especially white girls) these days can speak a decent level of korean, so it never seemed like something impressive.
also you definitely have to tip toe in korean, yeah they wont care if you talk shit about Black folk or trannies or call someone fat, but 돌려 말하기 is a very real thing if you want to integrate well, with english you can mostly just speak your mind if it's not about culture wars, but in korean you have to be careful to not stir up shit or be too overbearing, they really tend to dislike confrontation or people "being real", in 술자리 some of those rules are relaxed a bit however
yeah this moron, listen to his talking
"haha you are very cool. i speakuh a chinese" "mandarin is very cool!"
the guy looks like some mutant muttoid who is desperate to show his "superiority"
He's a israelite
his chinese pronunciation is fricking awful, he can't do tones at all
i actively avoided watching his videos for a long time but eventually one popped into my recommended and i watched 30s then closed out
very few react like that unless you're pushing for this kind of reaction. they might be surprised for a second the first time you speak but if you actually know the language and can keep talking they get over it and then it's just a normal interaction
This only happens if you speak perfect Chinese to dumb college students or if they're rural to the point of never having seen a white person before. Most don't even bat an eye, I mean Mandarin is the second most spoken language on the planet and you're speaking it on their homeland so it really shouldn't come as much of a shock to begin with. I don't go buck wild over Chinese dudes speaking perfect English in my c**try.
> I don't go buck wild over Chinese dudes speaking perfect English in my c**try
if you don't see the difference between the two situations, you may actually be moronic
>mandarin is the second most spoken language on the planet
...and 99% of those speakers are ethnic chinese living in china
I'd say 9/10 people will make some basic 'your Chinese is good' compliment but only 1/10 or less will basedface over it like OPs pic rel
Why is there a fricking white weasel western woman in my playground speaking the language?
Why do white women travel? Get the frick out
Honestly, white women in East Asia are top cuties.
Same reason as you, they saw kpop and think they all look like that
Sometimes I wonder if this place really is full of moronic incels or if its people larping as an unfunny joke
You get some fleeting interest most of the time but that’s about it. Speaking Chinese in China isn’t a special skill
I don’t know about Chinese, but I speak Thai quite fluently, and only rarely are people very surprised. Nearly everyone just responds to me normally. People make a much bigger deal out of it outside of Thailand, where they’re not usually expecting it, than they do inside the country, where it’s at least somewhat common. I get occasional compliments but people mostly just engage with me like a regular human person. The only exception is when I throw in some dialect (I speak Isaan dialect/Lao moderately well, and at least a little kammüang/northern Thai), which often gets raised eyebrows and sometimes a laugh.
Early on, I occasionally had people tell me I spoke “very clearly,” which I didn’t know at first was not a compliment—it meant that I was over-articulating certain sounds (like pronouncing /r/, which doesn’t really exist in conversational Thai). It meant I sounded stilted, or like a newscaster. When I became more fluent I just sounded like a normal person.
As someone who's been in Thailand for a few years on ED visa's (not language school) I could not even begin to think of a reason why any foreigner would try to learn this legit.
Unless you're on a work visa doing a real job and actually want to settle down there. Or by the sounds of it married an Isaan dog.
>Unless you're on a work visa doing a real job and actually want to settle down there. Or by the sounds of it married an Isaan dog.
I was indeed on work visas doing real jobs, mostly kind of in the sticks where English wasn’t spoken. I don’t know that my intention was ever to settle down forever—I mean, I eventually left, although I go back pretty often. It was just that I was in a good place to learn, I am inclined to be good with languages, and it made my life a lot easier to speak Thai well.
And I guess I technically did narrowly escape being married to a nice Isaan girl, but I met her after I already spoke Thai. She’s now a professor at a teacher’s college. Very cool woman. We’re still in touch. But my wife is a Canadian of Ukrainian descent.
If you live there I think speaking Thai is a must. Amazing how many fat moronic boomer expats I met in Thailand who couldn't speak a word of Thai. I lived there for two months. Didn't learn a word because I don't plan to stay there more than two months but the level of English even in the tourist areas was fricking atrocious. Every thai just knows how to respond to you asking the price for something but as soon as you go off script of asking "what do you recommend?", "what time do you close?", "does this have meat?" their robot brain goes into full moron mode and they can't respond. Living there without speaking Thai would drive me fricking crazy. No wonder so many of the fat retired boomers there are so bitter. They have to go through that shit everyday.
>hurhur you're in a foreign language, of course they dont speak english
Yes but for a country where a major industry is tourism I expect some level of competency. Thais are moronic at English.
I'd like to learn to speak Thai fluently. I studied with a Thai teacher for a while and later on my own, but I still don't know much apart from some numbers, letters, tones, and conversational phrases.
I'm considering going to Thailand to study Thai. Is it better to take group classes or private lessons there? And how far can I expect to get in 1 month of intensive study? I would probably need to quit my job if I wanted to stay several months.
> I'm considering going to Thailand to study Thai. Is it better to take group classes or private lessons there?
Sort of depends on you. I started with a few months of daily small-group intensive classes (six hours per day for about eight weeks, followed by around six weeks of just a couple of hours daily), and later had a private tutor sporadically, and got quite a bit from both. In general, I enjoy group classes more than 1:1 study, but if your classmates aren’t any good it can be less helpful, since it’s possible to wind up repeating things they say wrong, etc. But I didn’t start to reach a point that felt like real fluency until I’d had at least two years of daily study and practice. I didn’t read or write comfortably for even longer than that.
>And how far can I expect to get in 1 month of intensive study? I would probably need to quit my job if I wanted to stay several months.
I think you can make real progress in that span of time if you have unusual dedication—my first intensive program saw people go from nothing to basic conversational abilities in not too much longer than a month. But that was six hours of lessons every day, taught by university professors, to unusually serious students—grad students, profs on Fulbright fellowships, and government employees on their way to consular/embasssy postings.
And not everyone pulled it off—one of my classmates was never able to get his pronunciation good enough to be comprehensible. He knew a lot, but people couldn’t understand him. It was honestly a bit sad. My favorite of his gaffes was when he was trying to explain a job he’d had at a ski resort. He was trying to tell people, “I used to make snow,” and ended up saying something people heard as “I used to make dog c**ts.”
I think you could make progress in a month of serious study with a good teacher (conversation partners/unstructured immersion don’t suffice). But anything approaching fluency takes years.
How long did it take you guys to get conversational? I became conversational Russian within like 4 months (I stayed there so that helped) but I have spent a year trying to learn Korean (literally stayed in Korea) and holy shit do I fricking hate how complicated the language is, how fricking stuck up the people are, how everyone just speaks English to me despite me trying to talk Korean and how hard it is to find a friend in this country. Problem is I have gone too far so i cant give up now.
Once I finish learning this dog shit Korean I want to learn something else that won't take years to become conversational. 6-9 months is fine. I can stay in the country too.
How2getgud at russian?
Got a russian girlfriend and we speak german or english most of the time, but I want to get better at it
>How long did it take you guys to get conversational?
Thai speaker from above here; I was ‘enthusiastic caveman’-conversational within just a couple of months, genuinely conversational in about six months, and starting to feel pretty fluent in about a year and a half. This was with local immersion and extensive study. But I wasn’t conversant in local dialect or able to understand absolutely everything around me for at least two years, and it was even longer than that before I was literate without some struggle. I wasn’t able to read books comfortably until I’d been studying pretty hard for at least four years. After around five years, mostly in-country, speaking Thai all day every day, I was getting mistaken for a second-generation Thai kid who grew up in LA on the phone.
But spoken Thai is pretty easy if you can pronounce the tones and a few potentially-difficult sounds (mostly a few vowels, but also a couple of not-so-easy consonant sounds, like syllable-initial /ng/ (ง) and distinctions between /k/ (ก), and /kh/) (ค etc.) accurately; the grammar is relatively simple compared with Korean, in that the morphology is closer to isolating—verbs in Thai are marked just for aspect, not tense, person, or number, and word order/syntax and a relatively small number of particles do much of the heavy grammatical lifting. The forms of morphemes don’t really change, unlike in Korean or Japanese, among others.
What were you doing in Russland?
I think if you're natural enough with a language, rather than hyping yourself up about it, native speakers will not notice you're speaking that language. Like I was tired, wanted to get turkey on my sandwich from a shop in Australia, and I asked for 火鸡 because it seemed natural and the lady behind the counter didn't shoot back "哎呀!你的中文那么好". It was just "什么火鸡?".
It could be part of why Japanese people claim to Whypippo who grew up in Japan that the other person can't speak Japanese, despite the conversation itself having started in Japanese and being conducted in Japanese.
>go to japan
>speak rudimentary japanese (probably with a very thick accent)
>people look at my like i'm speaking total gibberish
many such cases
>~4000 hours of japanese
>speaking is my weak point but can still carry long conversations despite making mistakes
>spending a few months deep in the countryside of kyushu
>people don't give a shit, just ask where in Japan I live
>maybe if I use a rare word I just learnt in a book they ask me why I know it
As people said in this thread, if you're in the country it's not shocking to them except if you're native level and they didn't see your face first.
But abroad is another story, when I talk to japs in a random country they actually do the soi face and want to take a picture or some shit.
I really really really like this image. Sauce?
>Google
Ankle
>Yandex
Table
>maybe if I use a rare word I just learnt in a book they ask me why I know it
This is the shittiest part of knowing Japanese. It's not even that the locals don't care, that would be great. It's that most Japanese seem a little creeped out if white people know any Japanese. They're like "why the frick are you learning Japanese gaijin do you like anime or have japanese girlfriend??" Of course I really am a gross weeb, but this is not a topic that I am comfortable bringing up with strangers. Last time I went to Japan, I just stopped speaking any Japanese like a week in. It just felt wrong.
I'm still practicing it because I love my cartoon girl smut that much, but speaking it just kind of makes me sad. I kind of wonder if I should just focus on mandarin or something at this point. Just an asian lingua franca that the locals wouldn't be as creeped out by if i spoke any. I feel like there are just too many assumptions about white guys that know jap at this point. Probably partially in my head, but I think there's some truth to my insecurities.
It's definitely in your head. That being said you will get a clear positive reaction to spoken mandarin so there shouldnt be any room for you to be insecure
I think a lot of it is in my head, but I think there is a clear "why is this dumb goober learning my xenophobic island language" vibe I get from a lot of japanese people when I speak to them. I do also kind of suck at it, I'm definitely conversational but not fluent and I can't keep up with natives speaking to natives too well. That could be a bigger factor in retrospect, might just need to practice more. There is a considerable amount of awkwardness that comes from simply not understanding what people are saying.
I hope east asia genuinely does get a lingua franca like english with europe. I wonder if mandarin will truly end up like that at some point, because I do love east asian country hopping.
I'm a regular 35yo white dude who posted
and I don't think I've ever creeped out anyone because I know the language.
They're just surprised I have enough interest in it beyond the basics and don't speak like the caricatural gaijin on tv who talk like a 14yo yakuza.
Maybe the fact I'm "old" and don't look like a weeb helps.
Actually when they ask about anime and I say that I don't watch I can tell they're somewhat ashamed they mentioned it.
I have very little experience using it in the cities though, I rarely go there and people talk to me in english anyway.
>Of course I really am a gross weeb, but this is not a topic that I am comfortable bringing up with strangers.
I bring it up when prompted. Not like I'm ever going to see them again.
One time it has led to a long discussion about visual novels at a bar since the assistant bartender was also a big eroge otaku
>Of course I really am a gross weeb, but this is not a topic that I am comfortable bringing up with strangers.
can you read and write kanji? becuase that is a giant stumbling block about japanese imho that makes it significantly harder than say korean or most other languages. if you do already, you would already be halfway to learnign mandarin - so actually that sounds like a bit of a larp.
Unironically this. Japanese people don't want you speaking to them in Japanese. They want to practice their own shitty English on you, and that's the only purpose that you serve. If you're learning Japanese at all, it's exclusively for the purpose of listening to them when their shitty English doesn't reach quite far enough, and they have to finish their thought in Japanese. But god forbid you attempt to reply at all in kind - it's English only for you, Gaijin piggu.
I guess it depends where you are. Outside of tourist hubs they fricking hate speaking English or just aren't able to.
I always see a look of reassurance when they understand we'll do everything in jap.
But I think you have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about and parroting what you read on pol about how it's impossible to be seen as a human being in Japan even after 3 generations.
yeah true, it depends entirely on where you are, even (crazy thought) the individual people you run into and your language ability. by the time i was able to explain myself and random concepts pretty well and have conversations i only had maybe a 1% of the time bad reaction which was usually some chip-on-shoulder bullshit about how im an entitled rich-euh white man and need to go home.
i followed a casual GF there who said it was easy and good pay. that was around 2010. i would and do recommend contrac tthings that pay okay, but give you a unique life experience and take you far away from your comfort zone to everyone from 15 to late 20s. its such a great experience to know it has a finite end and then you can go home if it sucks. the actual danger is enjoying it so much you get sucked into staying in a place that doesnt develop you.
so - these days china in a big city is the best money you can keep vs. cost of living. japan has actually stayed very stable despite what people say and cost of living in a city outside of tokyo - even osaka, nagoya etc big city is probably the same price as a city in america, but smaller portions at better quality. you get your visa for a period of 1 year in japan and are free to teach 24 hours a day if you want so you can make a lot of money if you are ready to go from day 1. cost of living has gone up in korea insanely, like house pricing has gone up about 5 times plus, 500% from 2010 to present. food at the store maybe 200%. keeping in mind i havent even been there in 5 years.while english teacher pay has stayed the same and expectations are actually higher there now. also you get your visa tied to the school that hires you and it is harder to teach privately outside of that and technically illegal. korea is cheaper than japan tho prolly still and eating out/nightlife is insane in any big city, as in i would be in a bar until the sun came up then buy booze from convenience stores and just do whatever (contd)
you get the drill. also if you have an adventurous pallet, imho korean food is the best of japan, china and korea. (japan is a somewhat close second, though i lived there for only a period of a few months).
a lot of long-timers i knew went to china and stayed teaching there. china is NOT poor, china is not what people expect. it is a fricking huge country in terms of people and scale and its sort of ancient-history, giant size and majesty are implessive in and of itself. the pollution is real i guess, but they are tackling it and i think in certain cities its not as bad as others. i dont know the visa details but there are lots of rich people there who want their kids to get private english lessons and go to the west for university.
other choices really fast:
taiwan - food is actually not very good. literally everything was just doused in 5 spice powder, feels very small and dated. also the most unfriendly to foreigners place i ever visited in asia. litearlly had people yelling at me in the street twice in one week there. its not very rich really, nothing like japan or korea and pay is lower there.
-vietnam impressed me a lot, HCMC/saigon feeling way more developed than taipei, food was way better than i expected and cost of living is insanely cheap. its actually a high-trust society despite what online shit says. i never got ripped off and everyone was really nice and it was super clean. downsides - it is literally hotter than the hottest day in summer in canada almost all year round and pay is pretty low afaik. if you dont have a degree though it will be easier to teach here.
-hong kong requires bachelors in english at a minimum. they have actual standards and cost of living is really high.
hottest girls imho in order: japan/korea (very close, just different), vietnam, taiwan, china
I'm doing things backwards because I'm a moron. How is it for early 30's guys in these places? (I'm already financially secure, I just need a visa and want something that covers living costs)
its gonna be completely fine. there are all age ranges there, and tbh east asian english teaching does hold to the stereotype - there are a lot of misfits and freaks and people with semi-dark to very dark pasts there. this goes in descending order from koera/japan down to taiwan/china, then thailand/vietnam and you will meet actual insane and criminal/on the run westerners in countries like laos, cambodia, myanmar, etc.
if you have some actual skill try applying for a real job there, it would be a lot better
cool experience. why did you spend so much time there, considering that it seems like you didn't really like it that much long-term? did you ever consider staying permanently?
i dont see anywhere indicating i "didnt really like it that much". being an ESL teacher or a good visa is p addictive. the money is relatively good for that age when you start doing private classes/get the more choice teaching jobs but you are literally doing the same "hi im a friendly english teacher heehee!" act over and over and over again and you are your own secretary for these private classes. cost of living kept going up, pollution sucks bad there etc.
the booze is very cheap and everywhere, you can order food or eat out every single day very easily, there is a huge cityscape to walk around. beautiful women etc.
but that is it.
>beautiful women
I swear to god, only Americans find Korean women so pretty, most likely because its the first time they see a skinny woman in their lives.
Koreans aren't attractive at all outside of k-dramas, bunch of huge and busted faces and small eyes
maybe youre gay.
korean women are growing bigger breasts and gaining bigger asses with a skinny waist. they do their makeup and hair well and look clean and the right ones like going out and having fun. if you dont think smooth asian skin, tight clean pussies and great feminine bodies are hot you might just be gay dude. inb4 "HURR STICK TWIGS NO ASS NO breasts HURR". if youre saying that you have never even been to asia and you need to try it.
Not him but wow simp harder you fricking dork. Being this thirsty for such fake, materialistic women that are mostly 80% plastic surgery and 20% butt and boob pads definitely isn't going to get you laid in Korea or any other country for that matter. Stop being so fricking cringe. Korean women are easily some of the most stuck up and narcissistic women on the planet and have absolutely awful shit personalities even worse than Western women.
lol dude. i dont know what to say, but yeah okay. im sorry that you dont have a BWC to impress them. did they pull down your undies and make a sad face?
i had a great time and they dont have moronic psycho "FeTiShEs!!!" like western molested-by-their-uncle women have.
sorry, but i will not stop fricking plump asses korean women. i just wont.
didn't read
Imagine lifting up her dress and burying your tongue inside her dripping wet pusy haha... nah just jk
unless...?
based
idk about creeped out but after the initial surprise if you can actually speak more or less fluently they seem to care a lot less than if you say "arigatou..... gozaiii...ma....su....." which is when they hit you with the NIHONGO JOUZU tbh NE
I think the Japanese take a lot of pride in how their language intertwines with their culture(s). To speak better than a normal tourist implies to them you’ve been immersed in the real culture, which is a lot less friendly. Perhaps some take it upon themselves to represent that hierarchical society where experience rules and you are naturally on the bottom of the totem pole with regard to the Japan experience. I think the anon you are replying to has suboptimal body language and nuance recognition that presents himself as a loser, but they don’t realize it
oof my pee pee :DDD
I'm white and speak Vietnamese around A2-B1, but I have good pronunciation. If I speak Vietnamese literally anywhere, even a single word, people go crazy. Literally one đúng rồi to a grab driver and they talk my head off. The only exception are certain people in the service industry (waiters, hotel staff, shop assistants etc...) who couldn't really care less. I've found it has a lot to do with the fact that Vietnamese think their language is literally the most difficult language in the world to learn. They're kinda right but 99% of the difficulty is listening so I can speak without any real issues.
Funny thing is my girlfriend is Singaporean and I guess just looks generically Southeast Asian, because whenever we travel to another country people just assume she's a native and start babbling at her in Thai/Malay/Khmer/whatever...
I speak Cebuano at an intermediate level, and I get people smiling and happy when they do not have to try to speak English to me lol some want to speak english so i usually oblige
I learned because my wife's family may speak very little to no English, so I decided that it was easier for me to learn than everyone else adapt for me, which is kind of of arrogant.
Cebuano is hard. But at least it’s in the English script compared to Thai or Indian.
exactly this, they are speaking very basic broken language. it's cool to even learn that rather than be monolingual, and polite if you travel, but the fact they charade as fluent and go up to people who just weren't expecting it and shove a camera in their face to profit off of them is really fricking weird and conceited. people in comments who know nothing kiss their ass, assuming they aren't bot comments
Basicly everywhere where a white person is a not a frequent sight (deep africa, majority of china, some part of india) you will amaze 90% of locals if you speak native language/dialect as a white. Its weird albeit true, exotic countries that are not accostom to large number of whites are filled with locals that expirience thrill when they see white people, especialy younger generation (because they had less time to meet one). I had chinkman taking photos of me in a fricking kawloon numerous times, i can imagine their shock if i would go to them and strike a conversation in a perfect cantonese/mandarian easy.
"This man spent six years learning an obscure dialect of Min incomprehensible outside of three valleys in Fujian province, all for the dopamine hit of old women at a noodle shop in New York soi-facing over him asking for extra salt"
shock is an exaggeration. mild surprise because it is unexpected.
speaking conversational Chinese is the best fricking protip for traveling. I go somewhere, approach a random group of young-ish Chinese people (which are bound to be anywhere), bust out some Mandarin, and suddenly I'm their best friend and I'm getting invited to do all kinds of shit with them.
Wow! Please share more about your wacky adventures!
Larp. This never happens. They just look at you weird and scurry off.
Yes
Got ching puss-ay all the time because of it
how pick up womens in china bro, i'm not mongol
As someone with an n5 yes. In Japan I've been told countless times I'm not like any other foreigner they neet
these white utubers are so embarassing. worse than Johnny Somali. "ohhh look at meeee neehongoo o hanashimasuuuu. ahhh soo dezz neee" Jesus chris. sora the troll was right about these Baka gaikokujin cringe af.
>American
>White
Not really. In China I actually found a lot of people just assumed I would speak Chinese. Even if they didn't assume so, they would not be shocked when you started speaking.
However in the states, if you speak to a Chinese person in Chinese they are quite surprised, similar (but usually not as extreme) to the reactions I've seen on youtube.
I learned Turkish to B1-B2 and am conversationally fluent in Hindi, too.
Turks were typically pleased to hear me speak Turkish, but weren't otherwise very impressed. India was a somewhat different matter--I've been visiting for over a decade, and went from being unable to compose a grammatical sentence in Hindi to being able to go days without speaking any other language.
From what I remember, Indians used to act like I was a wizard whenever I'd speak in ungrammatical and broken Hindi. If I managed to get two or lines out in conversation, they'd start singing and my praises and claiming that I was practically fluent and "could speak better Hindi than [they] could speak English." It was fun, but they were clearly exaggerating.
Oddly enough, as I became increasingly confident and started initiating conversations in Hindi, people stopped acting quite so impressed. It got to the point where, especially in small towns and villages, folks would just assume I was an albino Indian, or from some far-flung corner of the country, or the descendant of some British family who'd never left. I even had a handful of hotels try to coerce me into providing my "Indian I.D.," since it would spare them the trouble of having to submit my passport to FRRO or local police station.
TBQH, I vastly prefer being treated like this to having people go ape-shit over me being a foreigner. I don't have to deal with endless "so how are you liking India" conversations anymore, and it's much easier to talk to normal people about normal things.
Another of my friends did the Peace Corps in sub-Saharan Africa--in a place that actually receives a lot of tourists--and had a similar experience. Other foreigners would get hassled endlessly, but people would leave him alone the second he started speaking fluent Swahili.
It's crazy because people were trying to learn Chinese for a while until they realized China was doing more to hurt civilization more than help
I speak a very niche North African dialect of Berber, don’t ask why but I spent several years learning it from yt. Native speakers consider their language inferior to Arabic, and many people refuse to teach it to their kids. I pretty much had the xiaoma experience (frick that guy fr) when I would approach people using their dialect. Xiaoma gets views by exploiting the entertainment value that comes with dramatic irony (80’s movies loved this, think “that’s not a knoife” scene). I never got any kick out of that aspect of it, because what’s the purpose of traveling in pursuit of irony, I can find that kind of cynicism on SighSee any time. The gratification is more akin to grinding for several years on Minecraft, and then standing back for a minute and enjoying your hard work.
This is true but I genuinely believe it’s necessary to learn. People who know nothing about China think “wow these toxic clowns are gonna rule the world in a couple decades”. People who know a little bit about the real situation understand there’s no way that’s gonna happen. Then people who really know a lot about china’s place in geopolitics, their methods and cheating strategies, utter lack of institutional morals, those people understand that these toxic clowns really are gonna rule the world in a couple decades.
Besides this grave necessity, Chinese as a language is preposterously fun to learn.
>The gratification is more akin to grinding for several years on Minecraft, and then standing back for a minute and enjoying your hard work.
Fricking hell I know this feel.
it comes along when you're fricking asian women and they say shit like 老公. it just hits so deep.
Lies; no self-taught white guy has ever gotten laid by a Chinese woman.
You just gotta find the right language anon. Everyone can do it. But if you're not obsessed, you'll never learn.
>Lies; no self-taught white guy has ever gotten laid by a Chinese woman.
lol, lmao even. I almost exclusively lay asians. it is wonderful since I am full fever.
>The gratification is more akin to grinding for several years on Minecraft, and then standing back for a minute and enjoying your hard work.
That's a funny, but accurate description. I really wish I had the capacity to pursue long-term goals like learning a language, but it is something I'm dismal at.
Never had this abroad, but as a bike mechanic in a port city, I come into contact with dozens of nationalities a week. Given that I look local, many clients are surprised to discover I speak (very basic) Russian, Spanish and Romanian, plus all languages spoken in neighbouring countries while also having a decent handle on Nordic languages.
People don't quite expect to get an answer in their native language if they show you something on google translate. Problem is if they then - clearly relieved - start gushing in Russian or Romanian and I inevitably fail to catch 50% of what they're trying to say.
>be very decent in a language
>currently in the countryside, clearly a foreigner because of skin color
>yesterday an old dude came to me and ask if I can understand him
>say just a bit
>immediately goes full speed in local + old man dialect
>joke's on him I can understand him
>gives me 10 packs of tissues (from a free promotion I think) because he thought I'm camping because of my backpack
>no soi face when I'm able to answer to his questions
>bit sad because the other day another guy gave me delicious fruits instead
The tissues makes me think this is japan, how did you get fluent? I'm n1 but cannot understand fast japanese at all
I think you wouldn’t have passed the listening comprehension portion if that’s the case. For N1 it’s faster and with way more recursion than you’ll ever hear in actual conversation and you need a minimum threshold score in that area to pass the exam.
You must talk to stupid people
Real convos have all kinds of recursion
For me it was live streams, I have at least 2k hours just on twitch.
If you're good enough already you can brute force it imo, watch manzai, youtube, tv, anything they speak fast.
Watch a few Hiroyuki vods https://www.youtube.com/@hirox246/streams
Must have been a long time you did the test because it's a joke compared to the actual Japanese real people speak.
It always pissed me off how purposely shit the audio quality on these tests was/is
I speak fluent english to other english speakers and they never act impressed 🙁
If a zoomer speaks fluent english without flapping their gums and talking like a Black person, I'm honestly impressed.
>happens in east
>whitie reacts with onions
>happens in west
>yellow reacts by calling you racist
>Does this kind of stuff happen IRL?
She explains in her videos that she only posts the times when people DO freakout/give a good reaction.
She says that 9 times out of 10 people just treat her like anyone else and aren't even fazed by it.
>white guy speaks local language
>black guy speaks local language
>*insert race here* speaks local language
>and all locals are shocked
What is the appeal of these youtube videos?
Duo Lingo psy op
are you autistic? it's just fun to see people get excited about a foreigner making the effort to learn about their language and culture. we take it for granted as English speakers but for millions of people seeing a white person speaking their language is an extremely rare occurrence
The opposite happens
>learn Brazilian Portuguese to a conversational degree prior to visiting Brazil
>excited to speak with my wife's relatives and locals
>they find out I speak English
>all further communication is in English because they want to practice
Same shit in Taiwan, man
what disturbs me about these frickers
>white guy speaks...to japs,chinks,mongols,spearchuckers,whatever
is the degradation of western identities, the youtuber is just a white guy but the person they are speaking to has a tribe, culture, nation, language? it's a bit gross.
yep, blonde nord here with rudimentary chinese. I'd get an entourage basically anywhere I'd go. (I don't want to sound like an butthole here, it was a really cool experience and locals were generally very cool)
People used to compliment 1st world immigrants on their English but that became racist.
>you're doing a trip alone ?
>no my girlfriend is in the guest house, resting and cooking
>where in Japan is she from ?
>she's a white tourist like me
>why do you speak Japanese then ?
Maybe I should remove the glasses and beard so they don't all expect me to me an expat redditor with yellow fever...
If you speak some basic phrases in Korean you'll get a lot of free shit in restaurants, especially in the countryside. It also makes people more likely to try to speak English to you, as they're not as embarrassed about not speaking it properly when they hear you struggling in their language.
I learned Russian to a high level before ever going to Russia/former Soviet world. When I finally visited, people would occasionally raise an eyebrow if I made a grammatical mistake or flubbed a pronunciation, but it was very rare for anyone to comment, ask where I was from, etc. If they did ask, and I told them (America), they would usually just ask me why I would learn such a useless language. I never did have a very good answer for that.
Ime, if you learn a major European or Slavic language (>25mn speakers), most people will not find it that unusual or express any surprise that you know the language.
However, if you learn the language of a (place that knows it's a) poor shithole or a place that it mostly cut off culturally from the White World, then they will be impressed.
But that said, when I lived in Shanghai for a while, I spoke Chinese to a rather high level, and no one seemed to care there either. Maybe that's because it's a somewhat international city.
i heard that about russia. russians are strange beasts but i absolutely respect them. i wish they didnt have such a militarized state, they can bring a lot to the world.
>white foreigner FRICKS expectations and CREAMPAIS social etiquette with UNCUT language
If you learned Japanese you got scammed by the fake anime dream. Japanese is only spoken in Japan so if you dont live there congrats on wasting your fricking time learning an irrelevant language.
If you speak Thai, maybe you can find a Thai restruant to flex it in. If you're in thailand people who think you're attractive will politely say you speak Thai well even if it is unintelligible garbage. They respect foreigners learning the culture.
If you learn vietnamese some people will be surprised. You'll definitely get more attention if you can speak vietnamese and will have alot of people abroad to talk to if you wanna flex on them.
If you speak Chinese, specifically Cantonese, a majority will be surprised le foreigner can speak the funny moon symbols language. And it's the second largest language in the world so it can be spoken almost anywhere.
If you speak Korean, it's the same as Japanese but less irrelevant. Depending on your nationality you might be shit on even more for trying to speak it.
If you speak Hindi you will be worshipped like their blue cartoon statues and cows there. People will instantly think you're a celebrity and invite you to restaurants daily while trying to pickpocket you.
If you speak Arabic, either arabs will find you cool or be brutally honest like the French are that your Arabic sucks. It's an extremely hard language to learn, even harder to get fluent in, and most arabs speak basic English so it takes massive investment if you think it's remotely worth learning.
If you speak French yeah the "le stupide american" meme is true. French will just be honest and say you suck at French unless you speak it perfectly, and even then they won't care if you speak French.
If you speak Spanish congrats you're either a passport bro or can understand illegal immigrants now.
If you speak Russian, most Russians won't give a massive shit but will be instantly much more polite to you for atleast being able to understand them.
>T. Le polyglot in 5 languages
>chinese
>can be spoken almost anywhere except outside of China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia
ftfy
Hey, you can find ABC's in the states, UK, Canada, Australia
Chinese people are like Hindus and Filipinos dude they are omnipresent
>you can find them anywhere!
yeah, if you are actively searching for chinese. Why, though?
>go to Paris with gf, only time I use it is when we stopped at a tiny Asian market for drinks and I wanted to flex (cashier also spoke French and English)
>go to Toronto with gf, only time I use it is when we go to a chinese restaurant and I wanted to flex (server also spoke English and French)
>go to South America for 6 months, never used it once
English (of course), Spanish, French, or Russian are far more useful abroad than Chinese
Mandarin is essential if you work in the financial sector, almost on par with English.
It is useful in all of Asia, especially SEA but also Japan/SK. I've been saved many times by speaking Chinese with non-Chinese locals who didnt speak English.
all of Asia? come on, now. yeah bro, like chinese is super useful in Saudi Arabia or India.
I had one or two encounters in Vietnam with a local that spoke Chinese and not English. If I didn't speak Chinese, I could have just used Google translate to get by. Chinese, in 2024, has very little use outside of China and rare occasions in E/SE Asia. That could change in the future, but get real. if you want to learn a practical language for traveling, learn English and Spanish/Russian
the definition of a practical language for travelling depends on where you're actually going to
Russian is very useful in the sovietsphere but outside it's useless
just learn some basic phrases in the language of your destination before going, English is the lingua franca of the world and people involved in the tourist or service industry are likely to speak English, to an extent
the only exception are places which are predominantly visited by tourists from one country (who do not speak English), i.e. southern Turkey and Russians, but even in these areas it's unlikely for people to only speak the non-English language
if you want to SHOCK people also it gets tiring after a while
it felt nice to go to a Chinese restaurant in Italy and order without having to explain my life story to the waiter
ironically, Italians were more likely to ask me and my gf where we're from and how come I know Chinese
I’m glad to have passed N3 Japanese. It is more logical in the etymology and social circumstances compared to surrounding languages.
Understanding Kanji is more useful than the entire Korean language.
Country has a great support system too if you don’t take the ratrace pill and live comfy as an English teacher or combini worker
What if I learn Portuguese?
you'll never learn portuguese.
Why do people watch this? It's just the exact same video over and over again.
When I was living in Japan, I was way out in the countryside. Like, a place no foreigner would ever need to go. Just a boring town in the middle of nowhere. And yeah, people would see I was a foreigner, and be kind of hesitant at first, but some would try to interact, and yeah, when I started speaking Japanese they would be surprised, and sometimes I would just have pretty long good conversations with random old people. People in cities would never react this way, and young people even in rural areas dont. But old japanese people in the middle of nowehre? Yeah, they are going to be kind of shcoked there is a foreigner speaking their language.
>Does this kind of stuff happen IRL?
I'm a white guy who is HSK6 and no it doesn't happen that often. A lot. Of foreigners speak Chinese now, that includes both white and black people. Usually I'll get a comment saying "your Chinese is very good" but no one is SHOCKED by it.
The problem is that youtubers post this slop by carefully editing it. Maybe one out of every 50 people really care. Probably more if you go to a small town. Chinese people overall are quite friendly but if you watch these videos they give the impression that these encounters constantly happen. Oddly enough the people more surprised about me speaking Chinese are white people.
>HSK6
Literally how? How many years did this take and how did you do this alongside a job / college...
I learnt about 400 characters and didn't even manage to say one sentence yet, doing it alongside work is just draining.
Goddamn brew, sounds like you’re doing it backwards. I learned how to speak confidently before I learned a single character.
Damn.. how did you learn to speak before characters? just pinyin and common phrases?
Didn't even bother learning pinyin. I just pirated the Michel Thomas audio course and then spent 3 weeks in Taiwan. I probably only had around 200 words in my vocabulary at that point, but that's enough to hold a convo if you have confidence.
If you can't take 3 weeks off work for immersion, just spend 10 minutes every day talking to yourself or to an imaginary chinese girlfriend.
Appreciate it man. How fluent are you now? or are you the HSK 6 guy?
Frick no, if you know 400 chars you know more Chinese than I do. I'm just making the point that vocabulary isn't correlated to ability to speak.
>be me
>go to asian supermarket
>old lady at counter, still working despite being 120 years old
>"hey, how do I say ___x___ in chinese?"
>she tells me and looks at me with a look of disdain for being the white devil that I am.
Kek I was in the Chinese market in Boulder with the infamous mean granny; I tried using Chinese to ask her where something was and she damn near slapped me.
it does, but people see you as a magic trick. a fleeting moment of novelty. you're about as whimsical as a talking dog.
absolutely, to understand what it means to be european (i mean ethnically) you need to do a lot of traveling and see both the groveling, the respect by default, the loathing, and the pathetic attempts to "get back" at you for how people perceive your ethnicity. it puts your existence and the world into perspective a bit.
lmao i had a gf who was vietnamese-american, didnt speak any korean and we'd go to restaurants etc and every single the staff etc would just directly engage her and she could say nothing while i would answer and they'd get pissed off. it was a lot of weird bullshit we got into
Yes it does, or at least it did. My brother (white guy) speaks fluent Mandarin, and we went together to China in 2012. Every time he spoke in Chinese, people there were amazed and asked him how he learned to speak it so well. There were two or three instances where random Chinese people wanted to get a picture with him just because he was a white guy that could speak Chinese. We even had one funny encounter where an older married couple wanted him to come to their home and meet their daughter (we randomly walked through an event in a park where parents were trying to intro their kids to eachother for potential marriage matches).
I've had so many surprised reactions when people heard me speak Spanish...even though I'm a Mexican wtf.
On the flip side of that. I remember being on the MRT in Taipei 10 years ago and over hearing a group of girls speaking in perfect Spanish. I'm talking so good as if it was their first language. That was a trip
most (>99.99%) people don't actually sound native in a language unless they were exposed to the language heavily from the age of 3
it's the same with English. People who aren't exposed to the language in those critical early years aren't going to get the phonemes and prosody right unless they put lots of effort into specifically that, and essentially none of them do, so native speakers know they're second-language learners.
The reason I bring this up is that this meme shit is almost always embarrassing bullshit where people are speaking in broken and nonsensical lanugage at best. They're basically never actually half-competent at the language. Wacky reactions are therefore a mix of things like people being polite, sheltered people (imagine a white person from bumfrick being surprised the first time they see an asian person speak english), misleading editing, paid actors, and just playing the numbers game.
Those people are pretty lame. Especially the ones who listen to Chinese women talk shit about them lol. Why would you want to know their foul inane speech? I can go to a brothel and get stds without all that nonsense. No it won't help you get a gf.
learning another language you realize that the average rando person around the world is actually dumber and way less worldly/wise/educated than the average westerner. people who arent university educated ie. blue collaroids in asia are dumber than the dumbest redneck in the american south. and talk stupider too.
i have seen a video from her before. i don't know anything about chinese, but as for her japanese it's perfectly fine in terms of grammar, expressions etc but her accent is terrible to listen to
i also felt second hand embarassment watching it because who chases after people just to show off their own language abilities like that and also film it
How much do k-dramas ham up the whiney ends to their sentences? Whatever my wife watches sounds like a bunch of Divas. We’re visiting in a couple months I’m going to be so bitter if they actually sound like this irl
a lot. its the stereotype of the seoul accent, so idk exactly. but yeah its kind of an annoying accent anyway. k-dramas frick with peoples minds badly, creating really unrealistic expectations and incredibly childish and naive about reality people.
>Why yes, I did teach myself fluent Chinese - contemporary, modern, medieval and ancient, including historic and linguistic context, reconstructed pronounciation, adjacent languages, the culture and its arts, regional accents, administration (government, private), and I obnoxiously misprounce it and pretend to be Belgian, in order to gain an informational advantage
Yes. And it's why I don't use languages other than English unless it's absolutely necessary.
this shit is pretty much always annoying at best, but what's worse is when they go to college or something and learn it as a skill then SHOCK people with it
yeah okay you studied something for 3-4 years, i'd fricking hope you're good at it
Guys, this seems like a good thread to ask so.. can you recommend me some good resources to learn languages? ive been getting lots of adds for zoom classes but i dont think getting 2 sessions a week will be optimal. Ive heard mixed opinions on duolingo and google is so pozzed that you just cant find anything reliable anymore
It really does depend on the language. Assuming you have no one to teach you daily, Imo get a uni text book first and grab the foundations. Start to branch into books on reading, listening, writing, vocab, and speaking when you’ve discovered your innate strengths and weaknesses. Get the workbooks too. being more attuned like that will help figure out your learning style and desires in the over-saturated landscape of language-learning software/websites. It will also give you more tools for critical thinking to create new sentences on your own and bridge the information neurally.
Thanks for the good advice, i was talking specifically about japanese.
Skritter is great for learning characters.
> figure out your learning style
This is the correct answer. This is how you narrow down the resources you’ll actually use.
People laugh at Duolingo because it advertises itself as the ‘easy way’ to learn a language. All it is is glorified flashcards. Flashcards are an essential part of the learning process, but they can’t be the only tool you use.
The formula that’s worked for me repeatedly is as follows: first, do entire Michel Thomas audio course (or Pimsleur) for the language (you can pirate these). Being comfortable speaking comes first.
Step 2 has a lot of parts: find 2 or 3 YT channels at beginner level which cover grammar and colloquial speech. Spend about 30 minutes every day listening. Yes, every day. At the same time, crunch as many flash cards per week as you’re comfortable with to build vocabulary. Choose vocab words specific to situations you think you’ll be in. Frick learning colors and asking about people’s interests. Be realistic: you need to learn how to order bubble tea from cute baristas and argue with cops at roadblocks. Most important is SPEAK every day. Fantasize conversations with women. Translate Disney songs in your head and sing them out loud. It’s tempting to just crunch flashcards as it’s easy and tangible progress, but one word in your active vocabulary is worth ten in your passive memory.
Step 3 is find people you can speak with. I’d start this when you’re at ‘advanced beginner’ level. If you live in a city you can probably find a weekly meetup group for your language. Otherwise there are plenty of websites for language exchange partners. I’ve been experimenting with the TeacherAI program; I wouldn’t recommend it in its beta phase but I do get a lot of value from it.
The real problem is that they'll assume you must know their language because you can say thank you, hello, and order some food, and then strike up a conversation.
It's more jarring to them when you've learned how to perfectly recite, "I don't actually understand your language, sorry."