SPEAKER_04

You're doing so well and encouraging people. Oh, nihan pang, ni han ni tsula, nama ha. And like that's not very common in Finnish. We don't receive or give a lot of compliments, I think, generally. And if we do, it's it holds a really deep sense of significance.

SPEAKER_05

Welcome to the Changing Scripts Podcast, where we describe our language learning stories with a focus right now on Mandarin Chinese. My name is Stephanie, and I was an English language instructor for about 15 years, mostly in Asia. Also, I was learning how to read Mandarin Chinese for about a year before taking the current language learning break that I'm on now. This podcast is part of the Changing Scripts Pod Tude Experience, which is part podcast, part YouTube channel. The YouTube channel is where I share my own slow but steady language learning experience, learning to read Mandarin Chinese. I share my challenges, questions, frustrations, and all. In this podcast, we chat both with people who grew up using Mandarin Chinese as well as people like myself who learned it as an adult. In this particular podcast episode, we talked to Low T, who is a Finnish college student who lived in Shanghai, China between high school and university. I would say gap year, but it was more than a year. During part of that time, she took an intensive Chinese language course, and that's part of what she shares with us. She has continued her Chinese language learning since leaving Shanghai, but she's done it in a slightly different way using TV shows and some other things. Lota in this interview shares with us her intensive Mandarin Chinese classroom experience, how she used the language outside of the classroom, and so much more about her language learning process. She also compares Mandarin Chinese to Finnish, Swedish, and some other languages that she has at her disposal. A quick note that Lota's mother, Pia, was a guest on the Expat Rewind podcast last year, where she shared her first impressions of Shanghai after moving here from Finland. Hi, Pia. If you have any comments or questions about this episode, please feel free to connect with me on any social media platform. My handle's the same everywhere. It's Steph Fuccio, it's S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O. You can also see any and all of my projects at Steph Fuccio, samespelling dot weebly w e b l.com. That has all three of my podcasts. Let's meet Loda and find out what her language learning story was. Thank you so much, Loto, for joining us on Changing Scripts Podcast today. Thank you. It's so nice to see you. In nice to see you too. So let's get started. Loto, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your language history?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so I'm 21 years old. I have studied some English, some Swedish, and then I stayed in China for one and a half years. And with my family, I studied Chinese in a university. And after that, I came back to Finland, and now I'm studying something else like engineering and stuff.

SPEAKER_05

The main focus of the podcast is on learning and using Mandarin Chinese. I do like to start with whatever languages came before they learned Mandarin Chinese. So let's dig back into your childhood. Well, what is your first language? So my first language is Finnish. And do you have any memories of learning it either before you started going to school or in a school setting?

SPEAKER_04

Well, uh, the first time I went to like a kindergarten, it was actually in Swedish. I learned Finnish at home before that. I remember my parents reading a lot of Finnish and Swedish books for me. So we used to have uh those around home a lot, and we used to learn learn speaking and reading through a lot of a lot of stories and books. But that's mostly what I remember. My parents reading books for me and and stuff like that. Yeah, don't really remember learning to speak Finnish for the first time, but yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah. It's funny now that you say that, most people I talk to don't remember when like starting to speak or learning to speak, but mo a lot of people remember learning to read and learning to write. Yeah, yeah, that's so true. I wonder why that is. Maybe it's a lot harder. I don't know. What were the the stories that they were reading to you?

SPEAKER_04

Well, I think it was lots about like just um children's books and stories written for children. I remember like stories about Finnish folklore or like Finnish old stories adapted to like modern books and and yeah, stuff like that. Some some really nice like children's books and and um picture books and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah. Did you have a favorite book that you asked them to read again and again and again and again?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I used to love a Finnish book. It was about a uh girl that went to Ireland to live with her grandfather, and they made like some honeybreads, and I always wanted to hear the story, and I wanted to eat the honeybreads, and I really liked that. That's really cool. What was do you remember the name of that book? Uh it was something like uh like Maya in the the archipelago or something like that, but I don't remember the actual that's really cool.

SPEAKER_05

So it sounds like you had the travel book pretty early in life then. Yeah, we had a lot of people. Do you have any memories of learning language or languages then?

SPEAKER_04

Uh I know that in the kindergarten we also like it was about it was in Swedish, so it was in the environment. The teachers would just speak Swedish to us and we could speak Finnish or Swedish. And afterwards I transferred to an English-speaking uh kindergarten because we had an expert here in the USA. So after that, I went to an English-speaking kindergarten. Uh, it was a lot about like I don't really remember then specifically teaching us the language, it was just around us, and we had like um we used to play games and watch some cartoons and have like a lot of fun with it.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_04

So it wasn't really they it wasn't ever really apparent that they were teaching a language, it was just in the way we interacted and used it in the daily life, I think.

SPEAKER_05

Very nice, very nice. So it it sounds like by first grade you already have been exposed to and were using Finnish, Swedish, and and English. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, uh to some degree. Like not so much, but yeah, that was the beginning of like I had some understanding of those languages. Yeah. How big is the difference between Finnish and Swedish? They have like influenced each other, or mostly Swedish has influenced Finnish. Uh but like the structure and the grammar is very different. It's very much about Swedish, I think it's more like flowing and stuff like that. Spanish is a lot about like changing the words according to the situation, and it's just a lot of like complicated structures. And Swedish is a lot, I think, like it flows really nicely, and it's like really they are not from similar country, like how do you say background? You don't have a similar origin. They are I think oh language families, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like so. So it's more like Swedish and Norwegian, and those languages are very um close to each other, uh each other. Finnish is closer to like Estonian language. Okay. Yeah, they're very they're very, very separate. Finland has been a part of Sweden, so that's why uh Finland has uh uh like a lot of Swedish speaking Swedish speaking people and uh like this Finnish-Sweden culture.

SPEAKER_05

Uh and usually in Finnish like primary and secondary schools, is Finnish and Swedish both used interchangeably or is it mostly Finnish?

SPEAKER_04

In my school it's mostly Finnish. Yeah, we have also Swedish schools, but we learn Swedish. You can choose to learn it from the fourth grade and then study through like the high school through high school. But my uh city is very there is a a lot of Swedish-speaking spee people, so that's like a part of that. In other parts of Finland, it's not so like useful. There are not so many Swedish-speaking people, so wow wow, wow. Yeah, but mostly the teaching is mostly in Finnish, and then we have separate Swedish classes.

SPEAKER_05

In your childhood, did you lean more towards liking speaking or more towards reading, or where where did you like to use language?

SPEAKER_04

I think I really like the reading part. I always used to really like reading like in Finnish too. So I really loved reading stories and I I enjoyed the the like books that we read at school, and yeah, I think that was also always the more uh more something that I did more and I enjoyed more, and I didn't have a lot of practice in speaking in school, so I really like the reading part and the stories and stuff like that. Me too.

SPEAKER_05

Do you uh did you go to yeah, right? Book lovers unite. Have many memories of going to libraries or bookstores as a kid?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I don't remember the first ones really because we went like the Finnish library system is really nice and friendly and stuff, and like for families, and it's really cool. So we used to go there a lot when I was small with my parents and grandparents, and and we could just like play there and and use the computers and played some fun games and stuff. So I think it was always a place that we loved to go to and just get we got the first library cards, and then we used could borrow books by ourselves, and and I really like that. So yeah, I I always enjoyed a lot like going to library a lot.

SPEAKER_05

I started going to libraries in the 70s, so there was mostly, let's see, books, some magazines, but not a lot of other media yet, like cassette tapes, even CDs, videos. A lot of those hadn't really come into libraries yet. But you're a little bit younger than me, wink wink. Um so what kinds of things were you checking out?

SPEAKER_04

We had uh also like the books were like we used to borrow lots of books, of course, but then we there was this game plays in the library, like you could they had this um, it's a game in Finland, it's called the Mumin, it's a very um Finnish uh story, so it's uh something that we could play play on the computers and we didn't have at home at that time, so it was really fun. I think it was mostly the games on the computers and then the books mostly, yeah. Some there were CDs and stuff, but I didn't really like borrow them much. And at home, was it mostly Finnish that was being used? Yeah, yeah, we used Finnish like in everyday language. Sometimes my mother would like read stories in other languages and then translate them, but it was just for like like in the evenings and stuff, so we mostly we just spoke Finnish, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Move on to Mandarin Chinese. So I think we're fast-forwarding quite a bit, right? So so far we have Finnish, Swedish, and English. Did you learn any other languages before starting to learn Mandarin Chinese?

SPEAKER_04

Yes, I did learn some German in middle school and high school, but it was very uh like just I have like it was very in a surface level, I think. I have forgotten most of that. But yeah, I used to go to the German lessons for like two years.

SPEAKER_05

Was it a requirement for the school?

SPEAKER_04

Uh no, you had to pick pick some subject to like um choose something, but it didn't have to be German, it didn't have to be any language.

SPEAKER_05

Just out of curiosity, do you remember what the choices were?

SPEAKER_04

Uh it was French. I I would have I wanted to have French. The course wasn't arranged, there were not enough people, so I had German as the second choice, and then there was something like kitting and uh like making clothes. I don't know what's oh wow, okay. Like the yeah, a crap.

SPEAKER_05

You could take knitting or a language, they were considered the same.

SPEAKER_04

What it was like those were the like optional choices in high school.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_04

Or then you could like you could choose any of those, or then you could have uh wood woodwork also, right? Like building stuff, or then you could have the the like how do you call that? Like making food, just cooking, cooking lessons?

SPEAKER_05

See, we had to take those. We had like a home economics class where we learned how to bake mostly really unhealthy desserts, and then we had to do, yeah, like a shop class where we played with all of the dangerous equipment, and then we had to make a what's that, like a model home? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a little, I don't know. It could have been fun, but yeah, it was it was weird. Oh, but we had to take a language and we only had three choices. We had German, Spanish, and um and French. Did you study one? This is in high school, I was a really angry, awful teenager. Uh so I took German because I thought it sounded the angriest. Kid you know, I was like, French is too pretty. I don't want to sound pretty. I want to sound I want to be like stern and you know, it has a harder sound to it, and I was attracted to that. So I took German. But I wasn't very good at learning languages. I still technically are not, but I really, really didn't know what to do, and so I didn't I can recognize some things now, but I never really got to the point where I could use it well. Yeah. Let's talk about Mandarin Chinese. When did you decide to start learning Chinese?

SPEAKER_04

So we went to China after high school, and I I hadn't I didn't study any Chinese beforehand. I was doing like my graduation exams, and I just didn't study anything. I was like, no, this is too much. And then we got to China and I started, I was there for five weeks. I didn't know if I was going to stay or go back to Finland and like study for university entrance exams. So I learned some things through like at home and through some apps and and learned like basic phrases. But then after I went for a short time to Finland, I really wanted to come back to China and I wanted to stay there, but I needed the visa and I'm over 18, so my I couldn't get the family visa from through my parents. Oh so you could get a visa if you go to a university program. Right. We enrolled to the the university near by our home, and there was uh the interns program. You had to take that one so to get the visa, and it was like four lessons every day, like every five the five days a week. And it I it lasted for um the whole like uh semester, and I stayed for one and a half years.

SPEAKER_05

Oh my gosh. Wait, is that like five how many hours a day? Was that five hours a day?

SPEAKER_04

Uh it was like four lessons, but it was around 8 30 to 12 p.m. So it was not like four hours, but four lessons.

SPEAKER_05

Still 8 30 to noon, 8 30. It was really intense. Yeah. Oh my gosh. For a year and a half. Yeah. Let's back up first to that five-week program that you were in, and then we'll talk about the year and a half of the intense program. I'll be covered by the week. Oh my gosh. Okay. So what was that? What was that five-week course like? Do you remember what um oh no no no, sorry. Let's start with the apps first, then the five weeks, then the one and a half year. So before you came to China, do you remember any of the apps that you were using to get those phrases?

SPEAKER_04

Uh it was like it was actually the five-week time that I was staying in China.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_04

First learning. I don't really remember the specific apps. There was someone with like a panda bear at the front, or maybe something like that.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

And it was just, and then there were like some some like phrase apps that were saying something like, I remember trying to drill drill into my head like, Whoa, Puhui Shua Chongman, like I don't speak Chinese. I tried to feel that over and over again that I could use it if if we go go somewhere and don't know anything. So it was really, really basic. I learned from my parents like right and left to the to say like taxis and some like thank you and goodbye and stuff like that. So it was really, really like I didn't really pay a lot of attention. I was just really like, I wanted to learn, but it was really chill and just like just really really basic and a little bit.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's the apps. So during the the five-week you were in a five-week in uh intensive course, right? That's what you said.

SPEAKER_04

Uh no, no, no. I was uh I was uh just uh staying in China first, like uh when we came back, like when we moved, I was only for five weeks. I was just having a holiday and oh okay, okay, okay. Oh my god, that's fun. Yeah, okay. And I had I have all I had almost graduated from high school, but I had to go back for one like three exams. So that's why I first came for came to China for five weeks, and then I flew back to Finland for like a month to do the exams, and then I came back to the intensity course.

SPEAKER_05

Right, right, right. So the phrases you were learning, it sounds like you were just learning them to use them as you were going around Shanghai. Yeah. Okay. So you weren't really uh reading the characters very much yet, were you?

SPEAKER_04

No, no, no, I didn't learn any characters. I didn't have any, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Ha ha ha coming. All right, so you were there here for five weeks. Compared to even just during those five weeks when you were learning those phrases, how did that compare to the other languages you had learned in the past?

SPEAKER_04

Uh I think it was kind of um very different because of like the you had to be start from such a beginning level. Like there was no no beforehand knowledge of Chinese language or the tones or anything. So it so it really started from the really basics. And then but the methods I was using, it was quite similar to the ones that I've been using in Finland, just like hearing a word and drawing trying to learn it many times. It was a lot of like finding a word somewhere and then using that and trying to kind of I I really trusted to my parents at that time. They they knew some Chinese, so I really, really was just like, okay, that's cool. I can like have fun and they just speak for me.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, I guess I better come clean to the listeners. Dear listeners, Loto's mom, Pia, was on at the another podcast that I did called X. She read lovely, lovely blog posts from her first year in China. So I know your mom studied the language too. Did she start studying before you or kind of the same time?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, she was really studying before me. She studied in Finland and she like studied a lot, and she was really like immersed in the studying already before. Wow. But yeah, she was just we went to China and she was buying buying like stuff in Chinese and speaking in Chinese. So it was like, wow, so cool.

SPEAKER_05

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. All right. So then you left and came back and you did a year and a half intensive course. Yeah. All right. So what was what was that class like? Uh, for example, how many people, how many classes a day? Any of those that any of that information?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Uh it was uh it was really nice. It was uh we had around 28 students, I think, like 20 to 30 students, I guess. We were through like from around the world, world, from very different backgrounds. Some of the people were like working in China and they had a a job uh with the intensive course, and some had learned some, and uh others were kind of uh planning to do a university course in in China, and so it was like the age range was um from 16 to I think 50 years old, and um it was like yeah, it was really, really like a really diverse group of people. And then when uh yeah, we started from very basics. We first went there and started learning the pronunciations and stuff and and like the tones, and we had for the first course we had two teachers. First in the morning, we had two lessons with like speaking teacher, and then the yeah, this was mostly about learning how to speak, but also we had some like reading. In that class, and then we had two lessons of writing teacher in the after a break. So it was like four lessons a day, and first two lessons of speaking and lit and reading, and then two lessons of writing, and then we had some homework to do at home.

SPEAKER_05

What was in the writing classes in the beginning level?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, we started like I didn't know that we would actually even learn characters, so that was really surprising. I was kind of hoping that we in the beginning I was kind of like hoping that we didn't have it because I thought it would be very, very hard, as it is, but it was really fun actually. So we we just had these um we we had these like practice sheets that our teaching was very, very like I got this like elementary school feeling. So we would write the same character like 20 times and with really really easy ones like Ko and the people like Ren and stuff, so it was really really easy, and we wrote that like 20 times a day at home, and then yeah.

SPEAKER_05

At that point, after like a few weeks or months of these classes, did you were you leaning towards liking more of the speaking aspect of it or the writing aspect of it?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I really think I I was at the beginning more keen about the speaking. I think it was really nice, and I thought it was kind of easy the level we were studying in, and it was nice. But the challenge of writing characters was really cool. Like I didn't expect it to be so fun and so useful with rememorizing the words, yeah. And like the it was like it was really hard. I remember we had some students from countries that also have similar handsis, like Japan and stuff, and they were already writing, and I was feeling like a like a first grade student doing the it was really it was really a challenge and a struggle, but it was really cool. Like it was um really fun to learn that new way of writing, and then being able to actually understand some easy, easy sentences and text, and kind of learning the the way that like you can actually understand them. And it it went it went a lot like hand in hand the speaking and the writing. So we would learn how to say something and then also write it and yeah, connect two parts.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, that's really good. So they were complimenting each other, learning both of them. That's really, really good. Oh, I think I nearly cried the first time I could read a full sentence in Chinese. Yeah, it was such a basic sentence too, and it took me a minute, I like I could read it, and then I almost was like about to tear up, and then I realized, oh wait, what does it mean? Like I had to like kind of backtrack and like look at the meaning, and I got what it meant. But it was so basic, but it just seems it's such a different script, you know? It just is so so so challenging. I'm still like way super low level, but that just feels like such a happy moment.

SPEAKER_01

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SPEAKER_05

So a year and a half. So did you end up taking any of the HSK tests when you were studying?

SPEAKER_04

I actually didn't. I think if I should have, it would have been really nice or like a good thing to have. Like I I really was anxious about exams, so I didn't want to. I I kind of I was I was like consciously avoiding them, which wasn't the best choice. It would seem like a great thing to do, and just like take the the take the challenge and step like out of the comfort zone and do and do some exams. We did have a lot of exams at school. We don't corresp like they don't correlate with any HSK stuff, so so I didn't I don't have the HSK level thing, or I didn't ever do those exams, but we did have the choice, we did have the opportunity through school to do them, and um yeah, many people did, and I think that was that would be really great. Yeah, there's still pl you still have plenty of time.

SPEAKER_05

I should do them. Yeah, I would say I've taken one, two, and three, and one and two were the test was a lot easier than the practice materials, and then three hit and it was a completely different creature. It just got exponentially harder. And I'm supposed to be starting studying for four. I think I think I might take four next December, not this December, like 2020. Yeah, okay, cool. Maybe it's just the leap between the levels is just so insanely different. Um they they probably told you this, but the HSK is like the the reading, listening, reading, listening, and writing. And then the HSK is the speaking test. So it's actually two different tests.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Which is really different than a lot of other language tests, but I really love the characters and playing with them. So I was like, oh, I can take this without the the stress of trying to like trying to speak. So that for me is really, really by far the hardest part of all this. When you first started uh studying in the intensive program, did you think you were going to stay in it that long, or were you doing it semester by semester and deciding?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I was deciding semester by semester. I didn't I first like planned, I didn't know that I would stay in China for so long. I didn't really know if I would stay there at all, like after the five weeks, but I wanted to take them more, and I think the point was like after after the first semester, I was really sure, like, yeah, of course I'm gonna do a second one. I want to learn more of this language that I began to learn, and I want to want to have like a somewhat of a found foundation of it, and I also really didn't want to leave China yet. I wanted to stay in Shanghai, and so that I think the third course that I it was like three courses, one course every half year. So after the second course, I think I felt really much like this is the point where I kind of am feeling like I could leave right now, but I really want to get a better foundation and maybe a deeper sense of the language. Like I'm in that point of now, if I still do one course, I would learn so much more and kind of get uh yeah, maybe a deeper level of the of speaking and stuff. And yeah, but after that time I felt like yeah, then yeah, the three three courses was really nice. Then I felt like I didn't, I wanted to uh I didn't have like a goal in it, I didn't have any sort of profession or stuff, so I wanted to come back and study something else. But yeah, that was really it was really a choice every half year, so if you want to that's nice, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_05

Let's talk about some of your study methods. I know they had they gave you homework in the class, but did you like what what kind of materials did you have? Like textbooks or flashcards, or were you still using apps? Like anything that you were can you tell us anything that you were anything and everything that you were using to study the language during these classes?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, we had uh books on the classes, like we had the textbook and the exercise book, and we would read the chapters, and we had homework. We we mostly had homework about reading something. We we had some sentences or words that we had to read in the rechat group, which was really fun, but also uh like you could get the uh feedback from it straight away. We would send a rechat message um speaking Chinese, and then the teacher would kind of give you feedback straight away. And then we uh we had the homework sheets and we had some homework stuff like filling up in sentences and stuff. Uh I think yeah, we I mostly relied on the things we had in the class because it was really like I think the class could hold up a lot of your studying. It was very much, it was really structured, it had a lot of it had a like a very wide range of things. It was a it was really like we could rely on the teachers and the the lessons a lot and then the stuff that I did at home, I did the homework, and then we did have a really nice book, something like about it was I think uh HSK level one book of characters, which explained the I don't really know the name of this one, but it was really it had like explaining the characters' origins and then the similarities in different characters and you grouped them together. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Was it on the radicals, like the 200 something, like the radicals, like the the smallest component of the characters?

SPEAKER_04

I think the book was something like that. It had the characters grouped by some radicals.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I lost a few months to that stuff because I started going to the bookstore on Fujo Lu and buying all books on like the origins of the most 100 common characters, and I would just read about the history, and they'd have those timelines of it used to look like this, and then the character changed to this, to this, to this, and this is what it looks like now. And I was like, oh, so cool.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's so easy, that's so fascinating.

SPEAKER_05

It really, really is. I mean, it's a it's a complicated and a challenging language, especially to read, but it's got such a long history that especially in that beginning time when I didn't know a lot, I didn't know how much I didn't know in the language. It was fun to read about it before I got into learning how to use it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So much fun. It is a slippery, slippery slope. But at least two months of my life were gone, we're just reading that stuff. It'd be so much fun. And Pleco, did you use Pleco, the uh the dictionary app?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, we use that a lot.

SPEAKER_05

That has a little bit of the history, I think, in some of the I think, I think. Hold on. I've got I think it does. Let me plug up a word. Quick, pick a word. Found it. Okay, let's see. Does it tell us? Dear listeners, if you have the Pleco app, feel free to follow along. No, it doesn't have it in this one. Wait, okay, wait, no stroke, characters. Yeah, kinda well, I guess a little bit because it breaks it down on the characters page.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

A little not quite as much of the history. Oh, that's what they need. We need to tell them that. They need uh like another column with the history and then they're showing the character. Not useful, but super, super fun. What part of the language that you ended up liking surprised you that you liked it so much?

SPEAKER_04

Well, oh, I love the like the history parts of something. Like you had the I don't remember what it's called in Chinese, but we had the four characters. You learned the what is it, changed?

SPEAKER_05

The four character idioms? Yeah. Oh my gosh, really? Holy cow.

SPEAKER_04

We learned like two, and you learned more, so not much, but you would not learn more if you would like go further. Sure. Like in the fourth course or something, but we learned two, and I was really surprised with with the like culture behind everything. And I also really enjoyed like the way that all the chapters we had in the books and stuff, it was also, I feel like I don't know a lot about Chinese culture, like outside that, but it it was there was always an element of like also teaching something about Chinese culture or Chinese history or Chinese like modern-day culture and stuff. So I really enjoyed the way that you can learn to speak the language and also learn to act at the same time in ways that could maybe be according to the culture, kind of like in in like learning about the culture at the same time. Yeah, so I really enjoyed that, and I feel like the way that I speak in Chinese because it's so much founded on that university program and and like the the books and stuff, it's very different than than the stuff that I would normally say in Finnish, maybe. Like I would Finnish language is very like uh very, very like chill and very like we we don't have a lot of like cool words and stuff. We have a lot, it's but it's very like I feel it's very straightforward in a way. Yeah, like basic. In Chinese, I do speak in a very different way, and the things that I would say, I would never say maybe in Finnish. Yeah, like I would I would never maybe say something that I have learned to say in in Chinese, in Finnish. So I really enjoyed the learning learning the language from in the like in not only translating from Finnish what I would mean to say, yeah, but also learning kind of the phrases and and expressions that you can use to maybe are more common in in China.

SPEAKER_05

For a second, there it looked like you were thinking of examples as you were doing that. Can you think of an example that you something you would say in Chinese that you would never say in Finnish?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I don't know if this is something that many Chinese people even say. Yeah, I don't know if that's something that people actually use. But oh, let me see. At least at the lessons we learn to maybe compliment people and say stuff like, oh, you're so you're so um you're doing so well and sing cooler and stuff like that's that's really good and and encouraging people. Like this is like a really nice example, I think. That's really cool. That I wouldn't have it's not like learned without Chinese, Chinese learning the language. So we would do like, oh ni han pang, ni han ni tsula nama ha, and like first thing that someone has done something really well and that's really cool and has worked hard. That's not very common in Finnish. We don't speak a lot about other people's achievements, we don't receive or give a lot of compliments, I think, generally, and if we do, it's it holds a really deep sense of significance. Like if you say something like to someone, you say like, I love you, or you're so nice, or you're so pretty, or something. If you say that in Finnish, I feel it it's really it's it has a really strong, strong meaning. Like, wow, you really think that's so so that's something something very different. I think it's because Finnish is just a small country and and with not many people and stuff like that. So so it's more about more about like uh does the the language also has something? I don't read I don't know if that's clear what I'm it's incredibly incredibly clear.

SPEAKER_05

I'm just laughing, going, oh gosh, do I admit to the Americanism that is the elephant in the room right now? Um yeah. We um notoriously overcompliment, I've heard it seems normal to me to Yeah, that's so nice. Hello. Oh, this looks like picking out something that somebody's wearing that you like, or if they look or they look relieved, like it's just sort of like saying hello to us. Um yeah, and especially in the classroom I was the teacher for a long time, constantly complimenting students and on their hard work and stuff. Yeah, is very, very, very natural to me. But I know I know, and I've been told that a lot of cultures don't do that so freely all the time.

SPEAKER_04

But that's so nice too. I really like that, and I think that's also like something that could be learned. We in Finland could learn more about these cultures that do vocalize something that someone else does well because that's so nice, and yeah, it really is encouraging.

SPEAKER_05

I do understand, like some people say that Americans do it too much, and so it seems like it's not meant. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like it seems fake. Yeah, and personally, I don't really say anything. I I would I would stop myself from saying something negative, but I wouldn't necessarily say something positive to someone just to say something. I don't know. But I understand it can come across that way.

SPEAKER_04

I think that uh that's just something that I really enjoyed that through learning a language, you can kind of adopt different ways of behaving. Yeah, like in China I could say something like sing cooler, like really great, which I wouldn't be comfortable maybe seeing saying to a Finnish person. Right in England. So I've been able to like kind of adapt different ways of behaving.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

That was what I really enjoyed. We might expand to other languages with different scripts, different written scripts in 2020. But that's not this year, that's next year. This year, I want to gather as many folks as I can who are interested in language learning stories, even if we are centered, quote unquote, only just around Mandarin Chinese. How can we do that? Word of mouth seems to be the scientifically proven best way to share podcasts. If you do not look it up. So could you please, please, please, please send this podcast to just one person that you think might enjoy it. Or if you can't think of one person, could you just please screenshot it and share it in any social media that you're in? Changing Scripts Podcast can be found anywhere and everywhere. The podcast connected to all people need is just the title of Changing Script. So a quick screenshot and I love it, or I like it, or I think you'd enjoy this would simply be the most wonderful thing you could do for this podcast. Thank you so much for spreading the word about the Changing Scripts podcast. And that's geeking out and talking about our language learning story. Early on this time around, because we lived in China before, but early on this time in the first few months, I picked up on the few words I could hear. I noticed that people were repeating them a lot. Even just me, like Dwayne Dway Dway. There I noticed that like the repetition was there, and I started to do that a ton. Whereas if I was in the US or anywhere else that where I was speaking English, I said, yes, yes, yes, it would seem like I'd be pushy. But here it just seems like naturally repeat it. And I, oh, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, and I was just like, Don't don't say it once, say it three times in a row and see what happens. And I noticed if I did that here, people would be like, uh uh, and they just continue the conversation. And I'm like, it worked. Oh my god, it worked. Whenever I said it once, they'd be like, waiting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, for sure. If I would say that, or like good, yeah. Hada ha da ha da. And they're just and if I said good, good, good to someone, they'd be like at home, they'd be like, What's wrong with you? Why is it so good? What's happening? Like, why don't you just say great? What's wrong with your vocabulary? I talk about coming into and out of languages. I don't know where I got that from. But you came to China, you had Finnish, Swedish, and English already at your disposal. When you were learning Mandarin Chinese and you were like looking for a word to say something, what language came out first?

SPEAKER_04

I think, yeah, I think in the beginning, well, the class was in English, so you would have to, if you wanted to speak as you said. But I do afterwards, I do find a lot of similarities in Swedish and Chinese. There probably nothing, nothing more, probably nothing anything actually in common. But there are some words that are almost the same. So like like something like con. It's uh it's it's it's it has different meanings in Swedish and Chinese, but they sound very similar. Yeah. So I think that's and afterwards, I have like afterwards, like that's the beginning, but I've been working in Swedish in Finland, like using Swedish as a customer, yeah, in customers. So so I had like really uh awkward moments there when you have to speak Swedish, and then I have this thing like something in China, something in Chinese comes out because it has become the stronger language in recent years.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, that's so funny. So when you had to fill the gap, Chinese came through. The brain is an amazing, amazing creature. Were you a flashcard person at all when you were first learning Chinese vocabulary? Like the words and Hanzi characters and things.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I had this like you can buy in China those. Nice flashcard things that you can write yourself. So I did do some words in the beginning when there were fewer words in the first exam. I did write them down and kind of try to learn them that way. Yeah, that's when in the very beginning. When we had more words coming at us in the second and third course, I didn't do that anymore. But in the first course, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Did you make a conscious decision to stop making them, or it's you just kind of didn't why did you stop?

SPEAKER_04

I think in the first course it was it was still manageable. You could still learn most of the words, or probably you could have learned most of the words in the second and third course also with hard work. But in the first course, it was possible to learn the words and individually and do the stuff. I felt that the changing from the first course to the second course was also a lot about in the first course, we had learned the basics and we would learn everything very carefully. And the second course, we would more so not go so deep in specific things, a longer chapter and more words, and a lot of using words that you were not maybe comfortable using yet or you didn't know that well, but they in so the the I think the flow of the language in general, like how much we were hearing and reading and how many words we had, it increased a lot. So I think that's when the time I I didn't anymore do the like it would have taken a lot more time from yourself to specifically individually like learn every word and just concentrated in learning like the uh how would you say that? Learning like larger concepts and learning a lot maybe a more surface level, but it would like go deeper during the time.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Are you still learning Chinese now?

SPEAKER_04

Well, I have not been learning. I have been listening to a couple of podcasts during the holidays. We watched uh Chinese TV uh series on this week. What show? It was the one. Do you know this Metro Garden?

SPEAKER_05

No, yeah. I'm grabbing my app. I I haven't watched any yet, but I've had some recommended to me. And I've been using, do you know Vicky Ro Rokutan? That sounds Japanese. This blue app down here. I don't know if it's coming through. This one here. It has um it's free, which is my favorite part, and it has different like TV shows and things from like Korea, China, Taiwan, and Jap Japan. Oh, that's so cool. And I've been meaning to start watching something, but every time I start, I realize how little I can understand, and I think about coming back to it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but um how are you watching it?

SPEAKER_04

Is it online or the podcasts are online and on um the podcast app and then the Meteor Garden is on Netflix? Oh, okay, okay. And what is that about? Uh it's about it's really nice. It's about the uh girl who go goes into university and then and then like manages life there. Yeah. And it's yeah, my sister had, I think it's popular around my sister's friends, like even those who haven't been in China, so she introduced us to it, and then we spent the whole holiday watching it with everyone in the family, and everyone wanted to see that thing.

SPEAKER_05

So cool. And okay, are you watching it with or without subtitles? And what language are the subtitles in if you're using the yeah?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I've been watching with subtitles. I wouldn't understand the whole like I would understand some sentences and and kind of be able to follow some of it, but wouldn't understand this the whole plot. So I have been using English subtitles for me. There wasn't even like Chinese subtitles for me, but there might be, but I just didn't use them. So I just didn't start studying yet. I would like to go, I can do at the university, I can like read Chinese as uh uh language. We have to do a language course here too, so I can do Chinese and I I'm going to I would like to begin it in like the next semester studying in August.

SPEAKER_05

Let's go back to the the one and a half year intensive program. Did you ever get any on any um social media and let me think what is it, Weibo or QQ? QQ is so older by this point, like Weibo or Were you doing anything on Chinese social media in Chinese?

SPEAKER_04

Not much. I did listen like some well, we had the WeiChat groups at school. Yeah. It was a big part of the learning stuff too, and we we were speaking Chinese there. That was the first time I I wrote in Chinese with the phone and stuff. That was most of it. I did follow some people in WeChat who were writing in in Chinese. I didn't interact a lot, I didn't write a lot in Chinese. I always felt kind of self-conscious of speaking like through text uh in Chinese, so I I didn't do a lot of that. Um, but we did, yeah, we wrote in WeChat and I used QQ music, but that's the most of it. So I didn't use much of Chinese social media. I think I was mostly introduced to it in the very like I know that some people who have been studying in Chinese universities for a longest time, they had a like a really nice range of uh apps and stuff, but I did I didn't really get into them so much. So I just had the WeChat and Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Well there there's a fair number of them, and it's and they're very active groups from what I've heard. I installed Weibo and I signed up for an account, and that's about as far as I got. I would like to at some point, but I there's so much so much to do. And what was it? UQ. I haven't even gotten on UQ. I I have gotten on QQ music.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Um yeah, but that's it. And I know there's a few, there's a lot of video sites, like really short video sites that are really popular now. Doku, I think is one of them. Is that TikTok? They're I think they're connected. I think. Oh gosh, I don't know. I keep hearing the names of them, but I just I don't know. I already have so much, I almost have like 200 podcasts in my podcast player, so I'm like, I'm a little bit right now. Yeah, and those are just the ones I'm listening to, not the ones I'm creating. So it's how about in person? Did you use the language that you learned a lot when you were out and about in Shanghai? And no judgment from me here. I barely can get a sentence out.

SPEAKER_04

So I didn't have many Chinese speaking friends, so I didn't have like like most of my friends were international, some from we would speak English. I would love to I did speak uh Chinese with in the I did want to use it in like stores, and when we used a taxi, a lot of the taxi drivers were so nice and they wanted to, they kind of wanted to speak Chinese and they they would start a conversation and and it was so nice, they were really like patient and they were more like most of the time really encouraging. Everyone was like so nice about if you were not if you were not speaking uh a lot of Chinese, but would speak something. So that's a that's a lot of the times that I had conversations in Chinese. Also, like during like we had some very nice people at the compound we were living at. Some of the people that were working there would we would have some conversations and uh start speaking Chinese. So that was mostly it. Yeah, some some like like doing daily stuff and speaking Chinese. I would I loved that, and we did a lot of that. And also some of my friends at school were also not speaking English so much, so we used Chinese as a way to communicate.

SPEAKER_05

So that that was really motivation to practice the language.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, that was that was the most and in but I didn't meet many Chinese friends in China. No, in Finland, that has been really motivating is to meet some Chinese people studying here and maybe have a word with like have a conversation with them and speak sometimes. So so that's where I've been. I think that most of the the times that I've used Chinese like in conversations has been more after I left China. In China it was more about kind of the very basic conversations and daily things.

SPEAKER_05

It's impossible to separate language and culture and place. Uh so how would you compare Shanghai to where you're living now? I really like Shanghai.

SPEAKER_04

So I'm living in Helsinki, so it's a lot smaller. There are only like it's a lot of um space, it's very spacious. There are lots of lot of nature and stuff. There are not many people, and the buildings are smaller, and and it's it's it's a really small, small place compared to any, of course, to Shanghai, but Finland is very small also. I really like the feeling in Shanghai that you could have like so many opportunities to do stuff. You could just go exit your house and go somewhere and find something fun to do. And that's something that you don't so much have in Helsinki.

SPEAKER_05

Where do you tell people when you tell them, you know, oh, we lived in China for like a year and a half? Or what did they ask you about China? Do they ask you questions about it?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think many people don't ask many questions. I think that's I don't know. I feel that's maybe a common experience. Like some people do ask about the language. Many people ask uh about how much do you speak? Like, how could you can you speak Chinese? Um, do you can you have a conversation in Chinese, or is it just like some words? And some people I really love it when people ask if you can can like speak some Chinese, if you can demonstrate something. So that's something that people sometimes ask. But it's not so many questions, I think. Many people just ask about how how well do you speak and stuff like that. Yeah. Did you get so do you do you get a lot of questions when you Noah?

SPEAKER_05

There's a really strong I haven't been back for two years this time. We've been in China most of the time that we've been back this time. But we did live in Nanjing, China, for the history of Up's Nanking, which eight years ago, I think. And when we went back after that, we went back for graduate school, and people kind of stop. Like you'd say, I just came where did you come from? I just came back from China, and they just kind of like like they didn't know what to do because it wasn't a state in the US. And they're like, I don't know what the next question is when you mention a country that I know so little about. But that was eight years ago, and there's a lot more tension between the two countries now. Yeah. Um, even though the the more I'm here, the more I see the similarities between the two places. But I don't think of a lot of Americans think of China like that right now.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_05

It's it's tricky, it's tricky. I'm kind of hoping through the language in this podcast, it's a shameless plug for look beyond the politics and look the language of people and the places and the opportunities because there's so much, as you mentioned, there's so much opportunity on so many levels here right now, and I think a lot of people don't see that because there's so much other stuff that can that gets out there in the media. Okay, shameless plug over. Oh, okay. So at the end of the interviews, I tend to ask people what questions are missing. And we had uh Lucy from Sixth Tones, she asked, What languages do you dream in? Oh, that's probably at your disposal. Yeah. So what languages do you dream in?

SPEAKER_04

I usually I think I usually dream in Finnish. I did, I remember one uh nightmare that I had when I came back to Finland. I was doing a Chinese. This is so funny. I think this must have been like before my uh entrance exams to university or something. So it was the exam-related one, and I had a dream that I didn't know how to write a story in Chinese, and I didn't remember the word Guangka or something like uh advertisement. I don't even know if that's the right word, but I had to remember that in the dream, and I just couldn't remember. So that has mostly that's when I remembered seeing some like Hansis in the dream or something like that. But mostly in dream in Finnish, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Wow. And wait, the the dream where you couldn't remember that word, was that in Finnish or in Chinese Chinese?

SPEAKER_04

I think it was in Chinese, like it has Chinese in the dream also, but really in Finnish mostly, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

When you were in China and in doing that intensive program, what link do you were you still dreaming in Finnish then? I'm not really sure.

SPEAKER_04

I think I had some dreams in English and maybe something in Chinese too. But most in Finnish. I don't remember really specifically like yeah. Wow. Do you dream in in adult like Chinese also? Or do you dream?

SPEAKER_05

I am a crazy person. I dream, I dream in languages I don't know and I don't know what they are. No, it's not. No. I'd much be able to use the language in real life, but I am a notoriously awful speaker in in every single language. And so I seriously, I have woken up from dreams in my life and been like, what language is that? And I'll try to like keep repeating some of the words I heard and like walk over to a computer and try to find it. And I just haven't had mixed success finding that. Like I'll wake up and go, that seemed like an Eastern European language. I wonder what that was, or like when I was studying Spanish, I would I would have a full-on dream where it was almost like a soap opera, the gorgeous man, and of course me, and all this stuff was happening around us, and we were talking to each other in Spanish, and I could hear part of my brain was like, What are we saying to each other? Because I didn't know what was happening. So yeah, I don't, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

That's so cool. I think I have had something like that before too. Like not understanding what's actually being said in the dream.

SPEAKER_05

It's so weird. I really, I don't think I've met anybody else, and I I really wonder what what does this mean? Like, how can that happen in my dreams? And yet in real life I can't, uh I haven't been able to really get into a language yet.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Couple more questions for you. Jeremy Tang, author and playwright and possible Bollywood star, although he probably hates that joke by now. Um he asked about the ownership that people have. Like what language do they feel they have ownership over? What language is theirs? And you have a lot of languages at your disposal. Which language do you feel is your language?

SPEAKER_04

That's really cool. That's a good question. I think like of course Finnish. Like I feel Finnish is very, it's so natural and it's it's the the thing that I feel most myself in. Like if I speak Finnish, I don't have to, yeah, it's it just comes very naturally, and I can demonstrate everything my feelings and stuff best through it. I think speaking by like speaking wise, I have, I think I most like about the foreign languages I've learned, I've most used to speaking Chinese because it was so much about using the language. English and Swedish, I'm more comfortable maybe reading and stuff because I've done a lot of that. But Chinese, I feel like I can I can speak comfort comfortably on the level that I know, which is not much, but I can still use it because the school was so much about using it and kind of getting getting to do the stuff that you you would like. Just going to the situations where you could speak and stuff. So yeah, but I don't think that I own that own that language, but I feel comfortable speaking it.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. It's funny, I just realized I haven't asked you where you were studying. Were you studying at Xiao Tong University?

SPEAKER_04

Uh no, I was actually at oh I have I know many people go there. That's really cool. I was um in Donghua University. Oh, okay, okay, okay, yeah. It has two pla like I think it has two locations in Changhai. And I was the one I don't do, maybe in Chang'ning?

SPEAKER_05

Oh, okay, okay. Because I still think in the back of my head I want to do like a one-month intensive at some point, maybe two months, because I want like a little more of a push at some point, and that's really cool. Wow, okay. Changhai is great. I would recommend it. Tanya Crossman, who wrote the book Misunderstood about TCKs, and she asked, how did you learn emotional language, like how to communicate your feelings in any except your first language?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think it was most that's really good. That's really good question. Yeah, yeah. I think it was a lot about um expressing stuff like in English and Swedish. We used to we we we were using the language at school, like it was the main language in my first grade. So we would have to express stuff that we were were doing ourselves, like we had to express things, and they would say something like, No, that's not the way you say that, you can say it this way. Yeah, and that was the way I think, but that's really hard. I think I still do struggle with that, and because there's so much that you can like communicate non-verbally, maybe, and and through like through expressions and stuff that might differ in different uh cultures, also and languages. So I think I still do struggle expressing some languages, and I also fall into this Finnish non-expressiveness thing because we I think we as the culture are not it's not a very expression expressive language, so I sometimes notice in if I'm speaking English or Chinese that I kind of have fallen into this, like I'm very happy and I'm feeling nice, but I haven't communicated it, and then it might seem right. So that's that's a really good question.

SPEAKER_05

I think that's something I have I still do sometimes struggle with and kind of yeah, expressing stuff also outwards, not just not just thinking that yeah, this is really nice, and not just yeah, especially when you're learning languages in a classroom, there isn't a lot of time usually spent on talking about your emotions in that language. Like, how do you learn that? So, future language skills. You mentioned that you wanted to uh take a course at your current university in Chinese. Do you want to add any other languages on at any other point? I mean, you've got quite a bit already.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I would really like to study some French. I have this, I've been studying in this um web web page. It's something called memorize or something like that. Oh, okay, cool. So I've been doing that and I've been learning like some French phrases, not many. So I would really like to speak that too. Yeah, I would love to do maybe uh like some time in an other country also and learn another language. That would be so nice. I would really like to do that. And also do maybe some exchange in China to kind of learn my vocal vocabulary in my like engineering vocabulary, my effort like related to my studies, so I could use it. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_05

That would be really nice. It would be so easy for you to find a language exchange partner. You'd have to interview them to make sure you got the right one, but it'd be so nice. That would be so nice. They'd be falling over to be your language exchange partner. Oh my goodness. Okay, one more from Vaughn, who's been studying uh Chinese for five years in Los Angeles. With all the technology being developed with languages, do you if you if there was the chip that we could put in with a new language just and you could speak it fluently, would you want to do that or would you want to go through the process of learning the language?

SPEAKER_04

Oh, I would really like to go through the process. I think that's so nice. You can learn, like I love the the things that you have to kind of I think it's really good to go through the process and find out all the cool things while you go and kind of kind of find out stuff and find something that you didn't know before, and then you can just new worlds are opening at the same time. So I think that's really cool. I would absolutely I would like to, of course, like in situations it would be so nice to just be able to communicate and have that ability to like express yourself in the foreign language when you're leaving, but I wouldn't give up the process, it's so nice and do you know nobody yet has said they just want the chip, not one person.

SPEAKER_05

I'm the closest that we've gotten to saying yes, I want the chip because I've said, well, if I get the information and the culture and the ability to pick from that, then maybe, but I want the ability to choose the words that I'm using, not just it coming out. Yeah. And I want that cultural bit that's attached to it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, there's something about the process.

SPEAKER_04

It's so exciting and fun and sometimes really hard and and really but the hard the difficulty is the like fun part too.

SPEAKER_05

Definitely, definitely. Well, it's now your turn. What question do you want? To add to this list.

SPEAKER_04

Thank you, Sarah. Oh, I would like to ask what kind of struggles have you overcome with learning a new language? Like maybe what has been the kind of things that you have had to push yourself to do when you're learning it? For example, like is it were you nervous to speak the language or were you nervous to write? And how did you overcome that?

SPEAKER_05

Can you answer your own question?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I I think the yeah, I have had just well, the Hanzi writing was really difficult at first. Like the the whole learning a different way to write and feeling like you already know how to write and you already know how to read text, but now you had to learn it from the very beginning. It was very hard, not really, really rewarding during the time. Also, I think the speaking part, just like being being having the courage to start a conversation and and speak, even though you have you're not sure about if you know how to say stuff. And I think that was something we learned at the school about Chinese. We just they just said, like, okay, come into the front and say something and have a dialogue or have a conversation. And that was really cool.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04

Thank you so much, too.

SPEAKER_05

Absolutely, positively wonderful. Thank you. It was really nice.

SPEAKER_04

I was so happy to have this conversation.

SPEAKER_02

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