SPEAKER_04

Welcome to the Changing Scripts Podcast. Every Sunday we'll have one of two types of episodes, all of them revolving around learning and using Mandarin Chinese. One type of episode will be my updates on what I'm learning, how I'm learning it, different quirks within the language, and sometimes information about China itself since I am living in Shanghai China right now. The second type of episode where I'm interviewing people that are either learning the language like I am, or people who grew up with Mandarin Chinese and have learned other languages. The updates used to be on a YouTube channel, but have now migrated over into the podcast. The interviews started on the YouTube channel as well, and they very quickly ended up on the podcast. So everything's been kind of going back and forth. Now having said that, the podcast is also available to listen on its own YouTube channel. Check the show notes and you can find the link to the YouTube channel there. It's just an audio form. If you are studying Mandarin Chinese, have studied Mandarin Chinese, whether it be as a child, as an adult, you're currently studying, or you're currently using the language, I would love to interview you. So please contact me. These kinds of podcasts are passion projects. They're created from a place of deep interest, and they need to find other people that have those interests. And the best way to do that is word of mouth. So you can go fill out an Apple Podcast review if you really want to, but honestly, I'd much rather you tell a few of your friends about this podcast. So thank you so much. And let's dive into the episode. I love telling the story of how I met the people I'm interviewing, because oftentimes there is a personal connection that happens way before the interview. And that is very, very true with Matt's case. Matt and I connected on YouTube months and months and months ago. And in fact, for his language card games that he's going to talk about during this interview, because he should, because it's awesome. I actually did a review for the cards a few months ago that's still on my YouTube channel. And he's come out with a few new decks for the cards since then. As a matter of fact, he's so hardworking, and they're such a really, a really amazing tool to learn Chinese while playing a game. We met on YouTube. I had got a glimpse into his level of the of of Mandarin Chinese, and I I was awestruck. I am still, even now a year and a half in, still struggling with getting basic things out of my mouth that are not just grammatically correct, but that actually get something done that convey some sort of meaning. And so I was just I was awestruck that he was so advanced that not only was he using the language functionally, but he was creating specific gaming world vocabulary games to help other people get to a very high level in a very fun way. And so I knew when I started the Tain Dance Groups podcast that he was going to be on here. I think you're gonna really, really enjoy Matt's insight and experience into learning and using and using Mandarin Chinese in China. One final audio note to make here. This interview with Matt was done a couple of months ago. This was meant to be the first episode of this season of changing scripts. Long story short, it was my first remote interview, and I made every single mistake with the technical slash audio aspect of it, and I couldn't do it by myself, and I finally reached out to Jave Jackson at theschofodcasting.com, and we finally got the audio to the point where it is listenable. I appreciate your patience with those tiny residual audio things that might come through. So thank you very much, Dave. Thank you so much for remotely being in this conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for having me. My name is Matthew Boyle, and I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. I can trace back my interest to China and Chinese to a single moment in high school when I picked up a small book of Zen parables. My father received a miniature Zen garden from a friend to keep on his desk at work, and it came with this book. So I read these parables and I got really interested in Zen and Buddhism and later Taoism. And I was reading a lot of that in high school, and when I went to university, I kept studying that kind of stuff, and I took uh a year of Chinese, and then I was planning to teach in my home state, Virginia, but when I was graduating and getting ready to start teaching there, a friend suggested, why don't you come to China? You can do the same thing over here, you know, you can teach over here for a couple years. There's no need for you to settle down sit right away. And you know, I was thinking in a similar way. I've never really gotten out before. And so I thought, why don't I try that? And I I did right after graduation, came to China, Gui Lin, Guangxi province, and I've been here ever since. Really enjoying it.

SPEAKER_04

But for our listeners that aren't that familiar with with China, can you kind of describe where that is?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, sure. Guangxi is in the south, and Gui Lin is a very popular tourist hotspot. It's uh maybe an hour and a half from a place called Yangshu, where uh uh a lot of backpackers and hikers and travelers and tourists go. They have that famous karst photography, those mountains that are very finger-like.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And they they do the bamboo rafts down the river. It's actually Yangshu is on the back of the $20 Chinese bill.

SPEAKER_05

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

Uh or the 20 the 20 UN bill. So you can see a picture of that area. It's very scenic. It's a wonderful place to go. I lived there for two years. The weather gets pretty hot, humid, a little bit unpredictable. But I actually hope maybe in the future I could move back there if I do settle down in China. I think that would be a great place to do it. That was from 2011 to 2013. I first came in 2011.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Where do you live in China now? Are you in China?

SPEAKER_01

Right now I live about two hours north of Guangzhou.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

In Guangdong province, kind of in the countryside boonies.

SPEAKER_04

Did you did you start learning Chinese in high school when you start s first started being attracted to the the Zen?

SPEAKER_01

I learned Chinese for the first time in university. I took it for one year.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01

It was actually kind of it was kind of by chance that it came about because I, you know, I went to university and I actually studied Arabic for a year.

SPEAKER_05

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

And I really enjoyed it. And then something happened with the language requirement. They kind of messed me up. And they said, you basically have a choice. You can redo the Arabic class again. You know, something with my credits was messed up. They said, you can do that again, or you can choose a new language. And I said, Well, I really loved Arabic, but I'm not going to sit through the same class for another year just to confirm my credit. So I chose Chinese at that point. So it was kind of a little bit by chance, although I was very interested in Chinese culture. I didn't expect I would be leaving the US. So I just wanted I just chose anything I wanted, basically. I wasn't thinking I would ever go to China. Uh I was kind of a false, what do they call it? A false beginner, a false starter. When I came to China, it was several years after I had taken that class. So I basically had to relearn the basics again.

SPEAKER_04

Yep. I'd like to ask you some questions about your first language. Is English your first language?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_04

Okay. Do you remember anything either in the classroom or at home or anywhere? Do you remember anything about the process or the language that kind of sticks out in your memories of your childhood?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. I always share this kind of story with my students that growing up, uh, it was very important and it was a ritual at home that my parents would read to me every night. So that probably began when I was in the womb. Let's say I think my mom was probably reading stories to me then. That I think was critical for me because it gave me a strong interest and a strong ability in vocabulary from a young age. And we had all these books in the bedroom. And, you know, after dinner I had to go to bed. I wasn't allowed to stay up and watch a lot of TV or anything. So I they they would say, after dinner, take your shower, go to your bedroom, look at some books, wait for us. And my mom and dad would take turns every day and and read me a story every single night. And as and you know, as I got a little bit older and more able, I would read to them and later to my younger brothers and sisters. So I really think that's critical to be reading stories with young ones.

SPEAKER_04

Right. Okay, the image of you reading to your parents is adorable. Oh, that is that is so cute. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, absolutely. You know, if it was if it was a very hard book, then we might, you know, we might do like I read a page, they read a page, I read a page, they read a page. Because I would insist that I want to read some. You know, some sometimes you want to be read to, but sometimes as a child you you want to be the boss and you want to read the book.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. Very true, very true. Wow. Okay, stepping into the classroom of your childhood. Do you remember any positive or challenging experience on learning any aspect of the language? It can be K through twelve, anywhere in there.

SPEAKER_01

Going off to school was a little bit hard for me. I was kind of introverted, and I wasn't really um I I wasn't that great at making friends uh in elementary school. You know, I might have had one or two in every class. I was kind of introverted, kind of shy, and I can remember I didn't want to go to school really. I had trouble with that. I used to like to do cartooning, kind of journal, write stories, write poetry. And I had a lot of teachers who did a lot of creative writing and exercises with us, and I think I always did pretty darn well in the English classes. So I I never really had a problem there. My like I said, my teachers were very creative. We had to do a variety of uh writing exercises and stuff. But I can't remember anything outstanding. You know, writing and reading was always a big part of my life, and I used to cartoon and doodle a lot during school, and I'm sure I still have some notebooks saved somewhere that can show I wasn't paying attention in that.

SPEAKER_04

Oh my gosh. I remember as a kid, because I also grew up reading heaps, and I remember as a kid when we were going over, as some some children's stuff to the classroom is, the topics aren't necessarily super interesting. So I remember like putting my book up, sort of like it's um it's standing on its instead of it being flat on the table, kind of standing it up and making my own puppet shows with my hands while we were reading stuff aloud in class because I was so bored with the content. I was like, I'm sorry, I'm bored, I'm gonna fix, I'm gonna make this better for me, you know. And of course we're like in a circle and everybody's reading their different parts, and they get to me and I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of a play over here. What are you doing? Once you have that experience of so many different things that exist in the written realm that you can read, I think it's hard to sometimes hard to Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. I definitely had a very powerful imagination. Absolutely. So, and when you come to school, what how how it often goes is you have to put aside what you're doing, thinking or feeling to learn what's required of everybody to learn. So everyone has to conform to this pattern.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01

And that's a problem I had later was um kind of reclaiming this dream I had to run a card shop. I mean, you know what I'm doing now. That was something I was into when I was young. I used to draw comic books and and make games. And as I got older, maybe teenager, late teenager, I felt like I had to finally give that up, which is totally wrong, but it must happen to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, yeah, I think it does. I think it does. And on some level, it probably I don't know if it needs to. I mean, to educate people in a group the size of most classrooms, I think it needs to happen, but I'm not sure that that's how we need to be educated anymore. But that's a whole other, whole other bag of pounds. Yeah, like some of my I'm sure some of your students in China told you this too, but I've had students tell me that they've had up to like 60 and 80 students in one class for primary school.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah, I know. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_04

And I agree. I can't even mas like when my when my language classrooms got above like 20 or 25 people, I'd be like, okay, this is really not doable anymore. So I'm like, how can and those were teenagers to adults. So I'm thinking, oh my gosh, having children like five, six, seven years old with eighty of them in one classroom, no wonder there has to be that a sense of conformity to move forward and learn stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah, you can see the extreme of it here in China for sure.

SPEAKER_04

Definitely, definitely. A question I love to ask, because I I am an avid eager, as it sounds like you are too, is um in inner formative years, a lot of people seem to fall on one side or the other of if they're more of a more drawn to reading or more drawn to writing. Did you have an affinity for one or the other, or were you pretty equally split?

SPEAKER_01

I think I was pretty equally split. Reading and writing were both very strongly encouraged by my parents, and they they got me a lot of books, and they also got me a lot of writing and drawing materials. And I can remember growing up, I just used to lay on the floor and draw and write, and I had this funny habit where I wouldn't breathe when I was doing it. So I would finish a a sentence or finish a part of the picture and then have this huge sigh and breath, and my parents used to remind me, don't forget to breathe basically.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Matthew's drawing, Matt, don't forget to breathe.

SPEAKER_04

Why why do you think you started to do that? That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Well well, I would focus on the part so intensely that I would hold my breath because I didn't want to make a little mistake on my paper, and I would just lay on the floor and just have crayons or pencils all around me.

SPEAKER_04

Oh wow. Wow, wow, wow. That's really interesting. I'm trying to think of I don't know. Wow, that's pretty much.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I think kind of kind of those were pretty fairly split. I always like to do both of those things, and I still do.

SPEAKER_04

Let's come back to when you were learning Chinese. So you said you started learning Chinese when you were at university. So can you kind of describe the the classroom setting that that was? I've got something to tell you. Are you ready? I've got a special tip today for the Americans out there thinking, planning, actually in the process of moving abroad. Can I just tell you how much stress I have alleviated by using a product called traveling mailboxes? Oh my gosh, the snafu that we got into at one point when we got audited by the IRS. If it wasn't for traveling mailbox, it would still be an ongoing issue. What they do is they give you an address in the US and you have all of your whatever's left of your paperness going there. And trust me, you think you're all digital. There's some stuff that isn't. And I am reminded of this every time I get an email from them. So what happens is they give you the address, all your mail goes there, they open it and scan it and email it to you. And then you can decide if you want it forwarded, if you want it deleted, or what have you. I've even had a couple of checks come through there and they forward it to me overseas. So I mean there's a lot of a lot of stuff you can do with this service, and it has really, really saved me time and time again. So I've got a link for you in the show notes so you can sign up with the service. And I am happy to share the information about them because this is a really useful tool. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. I was very lucky at university. I had several teachers from I had I think three teachers from China and one from Korea, and one whose parents were born in Japan, but he was born in the States. So I had a lot of teachers from Asia, and the Chinese teacher I had was a man named Carl Jung. He might still be there. Um he was from Sichuan, and he was an amazing man who could speak German, English, uh fluently as well as Chinese, and he might have been able to speak one more language, and he used to also do Tai Chi classes and teach Tai Gi in the square of the school. That class, I think we had about twenty students and it was led by him. And then the next semester I had a woman from China, I don't remember where she was from, and then a TA from China who took over for a few weeks. So that was the first year, but I ha we had about twenty students and they were the same, mostly the same people throughout the year. It was pretty typical language learning class. I mean, they would teach some content from the book, teach the vocabulary how to pronounce it, and then they would ask us to rehearse the conversations printed in the books with the person sitting next to us.

SPEAKER_04

Did you feel like it was speaking heavy, or did you feel like it was pretty uh balanced between many of the skills?

SPEAKER_01

It was pretty speaking heavy in the class. We had a writing characters workbook that we were supposed to do basically for homework. So we would write characters at home and maybe do a little review of vocabulary. And in the class, I think we we really only wrote and the class was was very little, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, I'm guessing, per class. And we would somehow when we had the tests, we would have to write down the vocabulary or short sentences. But I think we we definitely talked mostly in the class.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right, right. And now with any teachers, there are many factors that can make it difficult to manage a classroom. So I say the next question with the utmost respect for teachers in general and language teachers specifically. Was there anything that you wish they had done differently in the classroom?

SPEAKER_01

Well, you know, it's kind of hard to remember because we're talking about this this is about uh this is about ten years ago. Okay.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So I have a little trouble remembering exactly what I thought of that class. Uh honestly, I I remember loving it. I was head over heels for it, and I and I know I got an A, so I don't think I would have had any problems with the class. I loved my teachers, my classmates, and everything that happened. Um if I could have said anything, I w I probably would have said forget the tests, but that's Oh, right.

SPEAKER_04

And this is kind of digging back to that beginning time period too, and we'll move on from that. But just it do you have any memories of things coming from English into Chinese, any specific things that really were like the biggest struggles when you first switched languages?

SPEAKER_01

The biggest struggle.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Um I'll give you a really silly example that I'm just starting to get over now, about a year in, is um the spacing issue. There aren't any spaces between words in Chinese. And um with the limited vocabulary, I mean, I still like I just passed HSK too, so I'm still very, very low level. But I still sometimes, if I don't know, I can know the words around it and kind of figure out, okay, this two or three character thing is either one or two words kind of thing, or maybe it could be three words. But generally speaking, the the really short ones I know at this point. So I'm like, okay, it's probably one or two words. But at the beginning, I really, really struggled with just looking at a line with the period at the end, going, I don't know how many words the sentence is.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, isn't that interesting? Chinese doesn't have the spaces like our language does. I'll be honest, even even though I I I will admit my Chinese level is not very high, I didn't struggle very much because I loved it so much. I was fascinated with it. But the one thing I can remember that I felt a little bit intimidated by was the tone issue.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I can remember that. And I used to say when I was first learning it, I used to say, I can't remember the tones for the words. That's too much to remember. We have to remember a tone, second tone, third tone. We have to remember that for every word. That's kind of crazy. But a lot of people told me, don't worry about that now. Just get going, just get started. Don't you you know, you can you can emphasize that a little more later if you need to, but just you know, don't let that hold you back right now. So I just put that aside, and then I've just been in love with it ever since. I I never I still don't worry about tones. That's my really bad. I know that's maybe bad to say is some people think that's horrible that I don't, but I've really heard two sides to it.

SPEAKER_04

One is that you have to get the tones right from the beginning, and then I've had some really fluent folks who learned it as an adult tell me, just do everything as third tone and just speak fast. So I I've heard I've had a lot of different things, but people seem to fall on both sides. Like because they change, because the tones change depending on what's around them sometimes, right? So uh if you if you memorize it as One static creature, then you're pretty much going to mess it up later anyway. I that's encouraging to hear because I'm I'm not ignoring it because I'm trying to mimic what I'm hearing, but I'm definitely not trying to remember what they are. If I'm saying, if I'm reading it from a text, I'm trying I'm not trying to get the tones definitely right.

SPEAKER_01

Here's actually a little tip I can give about that.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And it may work for people who are getting into a kind of leaving the beginner stage, going to the intermediate stage, people who chat with Chinese people on the streets is what you can try to do is when they speak and you kind of understand what they're saying and what you're talking about, you can re when you reflect back those words, you can make sure you reflect back the same tone that they said. I mean, if you can identify the tone when they speak, then when you speak it back, you can make sure you nail it.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But otherwise you don't really remember the tone per se. But in conversation, you make sure you get it once the word's been coming up.

SPEAKER_04

Right. Definitely, definitely. And I I I'm I don't have a lot of in-person conversations as of yet because my vocabulary is still very low, but I do find with short exchanges that that works a lot better. And for me, I just I stop stressing out about the tone and I just think of how does it sound? What's the music coming out of their mouth kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01

And I try to just kind of rep- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04

Because that is much more beautiful than a symbol or a number than I'm trying to remember. Yeah, no, that's a really good, really good thing. I have often wanted to take out my phone and record my super brief conversations and then practice with that person later, but that I don't know. As of right now, that just feels weird. And I never know when exactly when it's gonna happen. So it's just like I need to be always ready with my recorder.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Well, that reminds me, one thing that I do is I like to visit the same people at the same shops and kind of build on our past conversations.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So if I find someone I really like that I think I could be friends with, I keep going to their dumpling shop or their Balza shop. Because we've already developed that kind of rapport, we can try to go a little bit further the next time or talk about a slightly different topic the next time.

SPEAKER_04

Excellent tip. Excellent tip. And once they know that you're like if you're at a somewhat beginning stage, once they know you're learning and you're trying, then I think they're much more likely to be flexible and to help you out a little bit by using easier language and that kind of thing. Like people are pretty pretty forgiving about uh mistakes and languages. Yeah. The one thing that that doesn't work with me as well is I don't know if it's like this where you live, but in Shanghai, some of the restaurants turn over so fast that by the time I go back to mods, they're gone. They're like, but that version was really nice that I wanted to go about like restaurants or stores or convenience, like anything where you're like the customer walking into something, it's like it turns over so fast.

SPEAKER_05

Mm-hmm. Too true.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. The nature of a booming economy, I suppose. You mentioned that you were basically a false beginner after that year when you moved to China. What were the things that you felt you needed to kind of review that you didn't remember or have the most experience with that you wanted to when you got here?

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's funny because like a lot of people, what you have to know how to say when you come to a country is very different than chapter one in your school textbook, right?

SPEAKER_05

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

So I had a little notebook and I still have it, and it shows all the words I had to learn right away. So the very first one in the book is Buyao Shishi. Because because, like I said, Guaylen is very touristy.

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And there was a lot of streets when you would walk down, you you would get harassed by people wanting to you to buy stuff and they would follow you around. And I'm sure I wasn't helping things by looking like a total greenhorn, you know, just just staring at everything like it was the first time they could tell I just got off the boat. So they were gonna try to cheat me or and follow me around and get me to buy stuff. So I said, How can I and I'm trying to be polite, how can I tell them I don't want this to go away?

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And and my friends told me the best thing to do is just walk away. Because when you speak to them, and especially if you speak to them in Chinese, that's gonna encourage them. They're gonna then think you can speak some Chinese and they're really gonna go after you. I said, No, no, no, but I want to be polite, I want to say politely to go away, you know, I don't want to, and they taught me Buyao Shishi, but I had this little notebook, some other things. I had to buy water because, you know, there was no clean running water to drink in the apartments. I knew I couldn't drink the water, so I had to learn, you know, I could have just gone and picked up a bottle and paid for it, but I wanted to learn how to speak, so I said, you know, I would like to buy some water or how many bottles of water. And also I was a vegetarian. I had been since high school, so I had to learn how to tell them to not put meat in my dishes. So my little notebook is full of these things.

SPEAKER_04

Hicks, Pats and Geopats, what do you do with the annoying paper mail that you get to your old addresses in your home country? For a few years I'd have all of my mail forwarded to one friend, and then I'd feel guilty for bothering them so much. So then I'd have a family member deal with my mail and so on and so forth. And I did this for about like what, 12, 13 years. And it got annoying, and let's face it, I missed some mail because people have better things to do than look after my paper correspondence. So I finally broke down and got a service from traveling mailboxes. They will literally receive your mail, you get a US address, you get to pick the city that it's in, and you receive mail, and they'll let you know when mail comes in, they'll open it, scan it for you so you can read it. If you really need to, they'll forward it to you for a fee. You can also get packages delivered as well, and so there's like a variety of different services that you can have where you don't have to keep bugging your friends and family to deal with your paper mail. So if you go to stepfucio.weebly.com, it's S T E P H F U C C I O dot Weebly, W-E-E-B-L-Y.com. If you go to the bottom, you'll see the blue ad on the right, traveling mailbox, click on that. I am now an affiliate program with them, so if you join their services, we both end up very, very happy campers, and you never have to ask your friends or family to receive your mail again. It's truly a beautiful thing. I do encounter a lot of vegetarians in China that struggle with even when they get the language component right, folks still having like a meat sauce or having like fish sauce or some sort of component that's in there, and they're like, but there isn't any meat. Did you face any of those challenges when you oh absolutely, absolutely? How did you get around?

SPEAKER_01

I I haven't well, it still happens uh occasionally. They it it is funny how culturally they don't regard the little pieces of meat as meat. So you'll encounter that from some time to time. I guess they must have regarded as a flavor or a garnish uh some in some way, but um the way the way I get around it, the way we got around it from the beginning, you know, because I had a few vegetarian friends and stuff, they they would teach me to say something like E DN Ro ye booyao. E Dien Din Ro Yeow. So even even a little bit, even a little bit.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, oh that clever, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That yeah, that seemed to help.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

But um yeah, because it's annoying if if somebody doesn't want to eat the dish thing just because it has those little bits in it. But you know what happened is I got more familiar with what the dish is and what the dish will look like and what ingredients will be in there. As as I spent more years in China, I know what's safe to order and I can avoid that. But if you're new to China or new to the restaurant, you might not know what to expect just from the name or even the picture. But I that happens to me very rarely now.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right. Do you know any place that folks can look online to see like a list of common dishes that would be just naturally vegetarian?

SPEAKER_01

Uh not off the top of my head, but I do have a couple links and documents that have a list of ingredients and their names for vegans and vegetarians.

SPEAKER_04

Okay. If I can get that from you later, because I know I there are some listeners who are vegetarian and there's someone Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I would be happy to save that and try to afford it to you.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

SPEAKER_01

I'll make a little note here.

SPEAKER_04

That'd be awesome. Great, thank you, thank you. The language from the classroom to the real life context was different. Dialect-wise, did you run into any challenges with standard versus the dialect of where you were?

SPEAKER_01

I certainly did. In Gui Lin, in Guangxi province in the south, they don't use the R sound. And the the the words are a lot smoother and kind of blend together a little bit. So I'll give you I'll give you an example. For for like uh for four and ten, they say s. So I got confused a lot between four and ten and I and and forty and fourteen. And I know that happens elsewhere in China uh too. And also the locals there in Gui Lin, they would s flip the F and the H. So a common question is for me as a young man, they would always ask me if I was married yet. So they would say ni je fun la meo. You know, marry is jiehun. So instead of saying ni jiehunl mayo or ni je hunlama, they would say ni jiefunlama. So they said it with an F sound. That was the local Gwelin, they call it, you know, Gwelin Hua. Whoa is is the local language there. So um, but I was focusing on learning Mandarin, but I think coming there first, right, my ear kind of set its default on Guaylin Hua.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

You know, the Gwelin style of pronouncing Mandarin or or not really pronouncing Mandarin, but Gwelin Hua, basically, is what my ear got settled on. But I moved around a lot. So I developed a philosophy that I should be open to any language that I'm hearing and try to learn from it. And my students used to make fun of me because they would say, just study Mandarin, just study Putong Hua. It's so silly for you to study the local languages. They they thought that was funny and ridiculous and a waste of time and something only the older people speak. But I but I became better at hearing the locals than my students or even my Chinese girlfriend in some places. Right, right.

SPEAKER_04

Because you were open to those variations. You probably found that.

SPEAKER_01

I'm open to it. My mind's open, my ears open, so I can learn it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But they don't want to learn it, so they don't because they've chosen, they've decided they don't want to.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right, right, right, right. And this happens in a lot of languages. There's a lot of cultural uh I don't want to say cultural tribalism, but there's definitely like there can be like an us them with oh, they talk funny because they don't say it like me kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. Yes. There's a stigma, a social stigma.

SPEAKER_04

Whereas I think we have less of that when we come into the language and we're like, oh, that's interesting. Like I've noticed I live very close to Panyu Lu in Shanghai. And so I've noticed like I'm on a major street and near Panyu, and I thought, oh, this is gonna be so easy to get back to my new apartment. I'll just say this intersects, and and these are two major streets. About every other taxi driver will confuse the plosive in Panyu with an F, not with an F. Now I'm gonna mess it up with a Panyu. Yeah, they do with an F sound, which is not it's not really a normal mistake to make. And so I'm sitting there going, okay, it happened once, it happened twice. The third time, I'm gonna start in my really, really broken Chinese, start asking the taxi drivers, hey, where are you from? Because I want to know what regional dialect this is that they're all coming in with. Because this is just not normally like I've I've talked to other people about Panu Lu, and that's not coming up as an F sound. So I'm like, what is happening here? Whereas I think somebody who was like, this is the way it's said would just be like, well, they're doing it wrong. But it's so interesting to s hear those differences.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, I've heard that some I I don't know if this is true. Uh so don't quote me on this, but I've heard that when you're young, sometimes you know, your ear can get set around certain sounds. And if you hadn't heard other sounds, then when you get older, it's really hard to hear them. Because I I've run into some students and friends in China who can't distinguish the different sounds that I'm saying.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Whether it be English or Chinese, they just can't even hear it, which I think is fascinating. And I'm sure it happens in the reverse with me. That's why if you can't hear a sound that your Mandarin teacher is teaching you, like when you're first starting out, if you can't hear the difference, it's gonna be very hard for you to make that sound. Some people have trouble hearing the differences in tones. Like when you say s, s, s, s. You know, some people said, What's the difference? If you can't hear if your ear can't be open to it yet, you're gonna have real, real trouble speaking that language.

SPEAKER_04

Mm-hmm. So true. So true. And I think they I've heard that also for languages that have clicks and things, like there's a certain age where after that, if you try to learn it, you're well a lot of people aren't aren't able to make those sounds because they're not just their their minds and and their sound gets or their sound ability gets stuck, but their physical mechanism, the their mouths and tongues. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah that is so fascinating.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04

Right. It really, really is. But I want to go back to the F H thing that you mentioned in Guaylen because that I really historically I'm kind of curious about that because when I lived in Japan, they for every 90% of F's they would pronounce with an H sound. Like I lived in Fuchu, F-U-C-H-U, and everybody pronounced it huchu. And even Mount Fuji was for the local, not even for locals, for Japanese people, Mal Huji. Like every F was an H. And I'm very curious if there's some overlap historically on why that happens.

SPEAKER_01

That is an interesting question. Right? I don't know, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so that's that's very, very interesting. Because it was across the board. Like some of my students, like my last name starts with an F and they would start to pronounce it like that. And I'm like, okay, okay, but this is Italian, so they actually do say it like this, kind of thing. Like, oh, okay, fine. But it was really interesting to see that F sound, because they're still writing it like an F, not like an H, even in the romanization, but it's not pronounced like that. So it was yeah. Very interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And I don't know enough Japanese to go into the historical context of why they do that, but there it is. Like in your usage of ch of Chinese now, do you find yourself speaking it a lot? Uh uh writing it a lot. I know you make the the cards, and so I imagine there's quite a bit of of writing and and drawing of the the words, but what do you find that you use the most in the language?

SPEAKER_01

As I was definitely uh listening and speaking, yeah, by far. I don't I haven't worried about writing for a long time unless it's just for fun and recreation. Because I usually type the opinion on my phone or computer.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I don't bother with learning how to write unless I want to enjoy, you know, the a kind of calligr the calligraphy of it.

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I'm some from time to time I might do that a little bit. But I think my my favorite way is to go to the local tea shop and have tea and talk. And I think that's true for a lot of language learners. I mean, from the time we're children, we we hear it first and then we learn to speak it out as babies, and then we start learning to read, and then we start learning to write. So it kind of goes in that order. I I really don't have to write anything down in my daily life, and if I need to, I can type it out on the phone and show somebody. And I know Chinese are having trouble too with forgetting how to write their own characters because people are using technology so much now to type out the characters. Um but I mostly I mostly speak and have conversations, and that's the way I like, so I just run with that.

SPEAKER_04

Sure. And I really wonder that debate is very interesting to me in English and in Chinese of, you know, we're not able to spell anymore in English, or people can't write the the characters in Chinese. And I really wonder that stuff was meant to be a representation of the language anyway. So if we can do it with technology, do we need to have it perfect in handwritten form? I don't know. I'm not fully on either side. I'm just kind of curious if how much it really matters. I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's a question they have to wrestle with. And I I know they made a TV game show where they have people, Chinese people come on and they tell them a character and see if they can write it. It's a competition.

SPEAKER_04

Do they really? Oh my god, I would actually really like to watch that. Do you know what it's called? Is it is it still on now?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. I I remember I can't remember if I read or heard about that. It might have been a couple years ago. Don't know if it's still on, but they're trying to encourage young people not to remember not to forget how to write their language.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right, right, right, right. Oh my gosh. I would uh I I will I'll I'll look that up too. That that sounds like something I would geekily like to watch. Not to make fun of them, but just I love like I often accidentally say draw the characters. I'm I am a terrible artist in the sense that my thing the things in my head don't look like things that come out of my hand, but I really, really enjoy the kind of swooshiness of the characters, and I really like drawing them. I often say accidentally draw instead of write them because it feels like calligraphy even when it's with a pencil. So it'd be fun to watch how other people are drawing them correctly or incorrectly. I think that'd be kind of fun. Anyway, so I was like, oh my god, that's cool so cool. Oh my gosh. Okay, I think we skipped a bunch of stuff. Shoot, let's go back. So you studied for a year, uh the language for a year in in uh university, and then you came to China. And did you take classes once you were here, or were you just studying by like talking to people and picking up books, or how did you continue studying then?

SPEAKER_01

Well, uh, I I chatted with my friends a lot who were ahead of me, American friends, and I always felt when I went out with them, the way they spoke Chinese, it gave me a lot of encouragement and showed me that I could do it too. And I used to mimic their phrases and they were able to, you know, teach me at the dinner tables when we were out. So that was very helpful. But I I also got tutored for I I want to say about uh I think I bought a package for 50 or 60 classes, and they were about an hour each.

SPEAKER_04

Wow. And this is an in-person tutoring session.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was one-on-one, I think. And so that lasted for just a few months, because I think I went once a day, so it was it was probably no more than two months.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I was kind of off and running after that. I really didn't want to take a class about it because um, you know, I was a teacher and I was teaching a lot, and I didn't want to go back in the classroom even from my own learning as a student, and I still don't. So I used to learn just by going out to dinners with friends and talking to local people.

SPEAKER_04

Sure. How much do you remember from those tutoring sessions?

SPEAKER_01

Like were you guys working through a book or were you just bringing in things that happened in life, or what what kind of well it was kind of funny because I was a teacher at that point and I knew a lot about teaching, and so it was it's kind of weird having to assume the role of a student in a one-on-one scenario, because I used to have my conceptions about what how we should approach it.

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So I kind of had to put that aside. But what I would do was I had a lovely teacher. I still remember her. I haven't I haven't chatted with her in a while, but I should. Her name was uh Muopei Juan, and she works in Gui Lin, and I know where she works, and I I guess she's still there. And I used to bring I used to bring what I wanted to study, basically. That's the way I did it from the beginning. That's the way I still recommend. It's not a purist approach by any means. I recommend people study what they think is interesting. So I used to bring whatever books I thought was interesting, or songs, or music. I even wrote some Chinese songs and poems with her. So that's what we would do. We'd do a little bit of textbook work, but after that we would just go off the trail and into the woods.

SPEAKER_04

That's fantastic. So it was the the content was always interesting because you were picking things that you were interested in.

SPEAKER_01

Right. She and you know, she encouraged me to do that. I think she had more fun with it that way too.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right. Oh, that's fantastic. Are you still studying now, or are you just kind of picking up little bits here and there as you uh run into it?

SPEAKER_01

I always tell people first I have not studied diligently for years. I I tell them I'm plain with Chinese. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I guess it gets to a point where you do that, right? I mean, like you have to consciously study at the beginning, especially because of the the huge difference between English and Chinese. But then after a point, I mean that sounds like the natural progression is you just Just start doing what you want with it and then learn what you need to as you go, right?

SPEAKER_01

That's putting my way in a very positive light.

SPEAKER_05

I like that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I can see it both ways because I I mean I guess it really depends on what you want and what's your motivations and what's your goals. I know for the for some of my friends who plan to use Chinese in a career, let's say, for an example, or people who know and plan to be tested in it and put the certifications on their resumes, those friends of mine, they have to diligently study certain things day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year to succeed in their endeavor.

SPEAKER_05

Sure.

SPEAKER_01

So for me, I'm not worried about using Chinese in my job or for a test. So I just study what I like when I like.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01

You know, with who I like. So I I study just off and on, I study what I want. I study poetry, I study philosophy. I like I said, I go to the teach the tea shop and I study and talk about tea topics. So what I know is very piecemeal, very random. And so it frustrates me sometimes when in a conversation I lack the words and the sentences to talk about a very basic concept that I've skipped over.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right. But I think that's true. Like in English, I have the ability to talk about certain things more than others. I think most people do. Like you know more, you have more vocabulary in the things you really enjoy doing and and talking about. So I think that's a natural progression of just getting to a high level in the language, is of course you're going to learn more in the areas that you are interested in. Do you feel that without conscious studying, you're losing a lot of the language you learned? Or you think a lot of it's coming up as you're as you're reading and doing and speaking with it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I do think I I do think I lose a lot of what I learn. Uh, but I told myself to just make your peace with that.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um I think it's because I'm gonna be in China a long time and I hear Chinese a lot every day that I just I just tell myself, Matt, there's no way you could hold it all. So if you if you encounter a word or a sentence that you really think is so cool, then just write it down or type it down really quickly in your phone or keep a little notebook with you. But besides that, don't worry if you can't remember something that came up. It'll probably come up again.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You know? And that's that's my philosophy. That that keeps me in the game because I'm the kind of person, if I made it a chore or if I beat myself with a stick, then I would give up.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So I do I adopt this philosophy to keep myself in the game.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right, right, right. No, I agree with that. It's tricky to keep going and to keep the motivation and to keep the interest, like the the content interesting all at the same time. Yeah. It's like Yes. It's like I want to progress, but I want to stay motivated.

SPEAKER_01

And if I'm if I It's endurance, it's not a sprint. You if you if you want to get it, you gotta be in it for years. So you can't you can't you you gotta think about your motivation and encouraging yourself. Of course you're gonna forget stuff.

SPEAKER_04

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And again, in our first languages, when we don't use some stuff, we'll forget it. Like all the time we'll be talking to each other and be like, what is that word? I just uh yeah. So I mean that again, that just sounds like that sounds like language.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I go home every year and I tell them part of the reason I'm coming home to be with you guys is to bring my English back.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. Do you find yourself functioning more in one language than the other on your in your daily life? Um like do you find that the things you read and listen to and and and write and those kinds of things are more in Chinese than they are in English?

SPEAKER_01

No, I think if I if I'm totally honest, it's mostly I'm still kind of living in an English bubble to some extent because a lot of my news and social media is all English. And I can only imagine if I was if I was soaking up that much Chinese every day where my Chinese would be, I think most of the what's incoming is English, and probably most of what's outgoing is English.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Um I would have to say.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's fair. I mean, it is the language that you can that you do the most in, and culturally speaking, there is a difference between news and English and news and Chinese, and there's different viewpoints and different kinds of things, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, there are there are some people out there who when they come to China, they refuse to speak in English.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, and if that works for them, that's great. I just yeah. It's right.

SPEAKER_01

They kind of they kind of uh put that restriction on themselves. So, you know, for better or worse, in you know, there's a million ways to Sunday, and some people may decide I'm only gonna watch Chinese TV, I'm only gonna watch Chinese cartoons, and they they they seriously they put some kinds of restrictions on their on what kind of input language input they have so that they can move faster. But for me, you know, it's still a lot. And I want to improve my English, actually. That's on my to-do list. So I actually study English as well.

SPEAKER_03

Well, in what way do you want to improve?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I noticed over the years teaching English in China that my English is getting worse because Language erosion is very real.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. What what did you call it?

SPEAKER_04

Language erosion.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I love that term. I'm gonna go.

SPEAKER_04

I wish I had made it up, but it's actually I don't know where I picked it up, but somewhere along the line of either teaching or studying how to teach, it it came up and I just went, oh, that that makes complete sense. Because if you're not using it, especially when you're you're in Asia, a lot of times you're teaching lower level students and you don't really use a lot of your language. And I found myself like watching and reading a lot of stuff that was much denser than I normally would, because I just needed that kind of stretch linguistically. And I was just I stopped doing like fun things in English for a while because I was just trying to kind of balance out my language usage. But um, but yeah, no, it's a it's a thing. It's definitely a thing. And it happens in any language, not just your first language, but it's definitely a thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, I think because I was so fascinated by Chinese after a few years, I started thinking, Matt, you've lost your fascination with English. Where did that go? As a youngster, I think I was so much more fascinated and had an imagination for English. So I I wanted to bring that back and keep developing, you know, especially as a teacher as a college too. And sometimes we have to do public lectures and speeches and open classes, and I felt like I still had the English of a 21-year-old or a 20-year-old. So that's crazy. I'm I'm 31 now and I've been teaching at the college for a many years, and I my English has been stagnant. So I wanted to work on it.

SPEAKER_04

I I totally understand. It's been a struggle to keep, and I think I've lost a lot, especially in what's used now. I think by living overseas also, I've kind of like I think my language has become very dated to when I la well, exactly. I've done little stints in the US and graduate school, but that language isn't actually commonly used language either. So it's like, yeah, like the everyday language that people use, I'm so, so dated as far as like when I left the US on a long-term basis. Like some of my when I was teaching at university in the US and I'd say something, and my my 19-year-old American students would look at me like, who says that anymore? And I'm like, apparently I do. They're like, teacher, that's that's still like 10 years ago. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. That's about if you're enjoying this conversation about the Chinese language and would like to participate if you're studying in the Chinese language or if you come from the Chinese language and have learned other languages, either perspective is greatly actually both perspectives are greatly appreciated on this channel. Let's have a conversation. Let's tape that sucker and let's get it into this podcast. Contact me and let's etch out the details on how to get you and your valuable language learning experience onto this podcast. All of my information is in the show notes. Also all over social media except Facebook. I am Steph Puccio, S-T-E-P-H, F-U-C-C-I-O. That includes Gmail for my email, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. So I look forward to hearing from you. Which isn't actually commonly used language either. So it's like the everyday language that people use. I'm so, so dated as far as like when I left the US on a long-term basis. Like suddenly when I was teaching at university in the US and I'd say something, and my my 19-year-old American students would look at me like, who says that anymore? And I'm like, apparently I do. They're like, teacher, that's that's still like 10 years ago. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. That's about the last time I lived in the US.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. That's the fascinating thing about how language it erodes and it grows and it changes and it shifts.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Like on some level, I think, because I really like living listening to other podcasts, and I think, okay, I'm probably gonna get some of the current slang in there, but now podcasts have gotten so polished on some level. Like the level of language in some podcasts has gone up, so it's not even like I'm getting that everyday slang either. So it's like capture that that uh that language anymore. But then again, I don't, like you, I don't really see myself going back to I don't know if I'll stay in China very long, but I don't foresee myself going back to the US anytime soon. So why do I need to?

unknown

Yes.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. It's challenging. It's challenging. Yeah, I do know a bunch of folks that are doing there's like podcasting is starting to become a thing in China. And um and podcasts in Chinese are starting to become more popular. And my initial goal was reading, because that I can take with me anywhere. I can look at it online, I can I'm much more comfortable writing than speaking anyway, so I could chat with people online, you know, by typing it in, that kind of thing. But once I heard about podcasts taking off in Chinese, I was like, oh no, now I have to add a listening goal because that sounds like a really cool medium to include in my future listening. So yeah. Going back to reading, do you ever find yourself reading the same thing in both languages? Like the same book or the same, I guess.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, that's one method I didn't mention is I really like to read children's books in Chinese. I have a collection of probably a hundred children's books, and many of them are books that I read as a child, and some of them are totally in Chinese, some of them are half uh like one page is English and it and the next page is Chinese, or else it has the English, or it may have the Chinese under the English. So I have a bunch of bilingual books. Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_04

That's so cool. How did you start doing that? Like what gave you the inspiration for that?

SPEAKER_01

Uh well, I I might have thought I I can't remember exactly when that started, but I I probably thought to myself, you know, as a child, what did you do to learn? You read books a lot with your parents, you know, I told you that story, so I probably knew I at some point needed to get some Chinese children's books. But what happened is actually one day I was in a Chinese, a big Chinese market, and of all things, there was a huge table there that day piled high with children's books out of the blue. This is a place I go to get vegetables. It's like a huge open-air vegetable market. I mean, they have some other things, but you know how China is, sometimes the most random things pop up, and so I had to have that opportunistic mindset. I knew this could not be this might not be here tomorrow or next week. And um I think I must have bought like 25 books on the spot because they were only like five Kwai a piece or something. Um so I bought a bunch and I came back every single day until she was gone, and I think I had like a hundred books by the time she would left. You know, I don't know why she didn't stay just to serve me. She probably could have made a fortune, but uh Yeah, I was pulling out books that uh I was pulling out English children's books that are from like the forties and the fifties with with the English erased and the you know, same pictures, but the English is erased and Chinese is put in its place. So like famous English children's books from England and also the States, and some from Canada, ones that my parents read to me, um, and then more recently, more modern books like uh The Giving Tree and stuff like this. Um I stocked up on those and I I do read those a lot.

SPEAKER_04

That is fantastic. I've had some people fairly recently suggest like watching movies that you know and like having the language in the language, your first language, like for me, having the language in English, like the audio language in English, but having the subtitles in Chinese, especially for me, I'm I want to read. And I was I that's one of the things that I'm hoping to start doing soon. And I feel like this is one of those things, like you said, something you enjoyed doing in your first language, start doing it in the language that you're learning. Did you notice any fun differences between the language or the cultural aspects of the books, even though the pictures were the same and the stories were basically the same? Did you pick up on any differences?

SPEAKER_01

Nothing major. Um some some, and I won't be able to think of a specific example, but sometimes things, when they do the translation, sometimes they have to put it in a way that the Chinese reader would understand. So you you look at it and you're like, well, that they didn't translate it right. And it's like, well, but no, part of translation is you have to make it understood. You have to make it understandable. So I I do notice that a lot, and I pick that up more and more as I learn the way Chinese people think about something, uh, and the way Chinese works. But for the most part, the children's books are a little more simple, and you I don't think you see a major difference. They do, I mean, the translation's pretty darn close.

SPEAKER_04

Right, right. Like I've I have tried to pick up like Chinese books for children, but I've I've found that the language was again in even before I was focusing more on reading, I was trying to do I don't know, it was just a mess. But I but I found that between the cultural differences, the stories, and the text, it was just it was too much. But I think coming from a story you know, and then doing it that way, and then the language being the only difference, I think that would be a huge bump in understanding. Yeah, that's a brilliant idea. Oh my goodness. I feel like there's a video series in there somewhere, Matt. I feel like sure.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I know some people they there's been some popular channels where p like parents, they read the books, they they have a video of themsel of the book, and you see their hand and the pages turn, and they'll read the books in Chinese and English. Um, so you can play that for your child. So your child's watching a video, but it's basically showing the turning pages of a book. So I think that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_04

I love being read too. I've always been a fan, even though I I I read a lot, I've always always been a fan of like old school like radio shows and audio, audiobooks and podcasts. Like I I can't pick between written form and audio form. It's almost impossible. And I yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's a nice bridge, isn't it? That's a cool idea.

SPEAKER_04

It's a really cool idea. Because you're seeing it, hearing it, and you've got the pictures there too. So you're not really sacrificing a ton. I mean, it's not cuddling up in somebody's lap, but as far as as far as I'm concerned, I don't I don't need that right now as an adult. So I'm okay.

SPEAKER_01

If they can find a way to put put arms on the computer or some sort of android, then that can raise your child for you.

SPEAKER_04

Hey, I'm seeing more and more giant stuffed animals in around stores in Shanghai, so I'm sure those exist in other places too. I'm seeing more and more robots too, like baby robots. I don't know what they do yet, but I keep seeing them in tech stores. Yeah, it's coming. It's so coming. Yeah. No, there's so much that people are doing with video now that if you had told me five years ago, I would have been like, oh, why would why would anybody watch that? But honestly, some of it I find myself watching and really liking. Like the study with me videos, I thought, oh my god, this is gonna be so boring to watch. And as I'm watching people study, I'm like, oh, they do that. Oh, maybe I should try that out. And I'm like, this should be the most boring thing in the world to watch. But yet I'm totally enrapped with what they're doing with highlighters and their, they're how they're like putting things in their notebooks and different kinds of things. It's just, it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01

Well, there was this a saying that I heard, an encouraging saying, that if you are interested in something, you can find other people who are too. So I think these people kind of operate under that philosophy. If I like highlighting this word or turning this book and recording the reading of a book, there's gonna be other people who want this. And they're right.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I was listening to some podcast, some uh some slate podcasts, and they were talking about they were talking about elevator videos and YouTube. Like it's just people going into different elevators and taking short videos of it, and they were laughing at it. And I thought, actually, that might be kind of interesting if it was different places around the world. That might be interesting. And they're totally making fun of it, and I'm going, actually.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I watched this now. I'm gonna drag this conversation a little bit off topic, but I recently watched a TED talk where a person um they were talking about the danger of YouTube autoplay, how parents let their children watch YouTube, and in three or four videos the child can be watching something horribly inappropriate. You know, you start with a Disney movie, and then like three audio plays later, you're in a dark realm. And uh one one thing that he um talked about was uh there's a insanely popular style of videos where people just open these toy eggs. I don't know if you've seen this, but it's it's basically they they just have these eggs with a little toy inside, and the person rips off the wrapping, opens it, shows the toy, goes to the next egg. And so there's millions of these videos, and they're taking over the world, they're taking over children's mind because children love to see someone open a present. And so the kids get addicted to these little videos. But anyway, you know, anything can get popular for any variety of reasons, but it's almost hard to predict what is the next popular thing, right?

SPEAKER_04

Anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Okay, that is one that doesn't sound like one I would watch, but but but there are so many that I would. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A right, a right if it was, oh my god. You're right. I have no bounds, I will watch anything once. Um I find myself in China, because they do a lot with glass. And in a lot of uh hotels and stuff, because I used to travel a lot last year, you'll be going up the elevator with the glass wall, and you'll start to see better, better views of the city. And I'm like, that's kind of cool. I would do that. I would make those videos and share them and stuff. So anyway, yeah, we we have we have gone off track. But it's it's part of the whole creature. I mean, this this pot to be fair, this podcast is connected to a language vlog where there are videos of ridiculous things that nobody should watch, and yet people are watching it.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, listeners, look forward to our next vlog of going upstairs in different countries.

SPEAKER_04

I did I did one where I was doing graffiti in my stairway of my apartment because I was like, I don't know what this stuff says yet, but I think it's interesting that this it's just here. Like this stairway is just Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I'm I'm sure I've showed mine at one point too. The little ad stuck in there and whatnot.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's just anything in Chinese and in Hansa right now, I will take a picture of anything. Yesterday I was in a cafe. It was one of those like beautiful, really like clean, kind of modern wood-looking, airy cafe with the the kind of spiral staircase. And I went to the bathroom and there's all this clutter in the bathroom. And in this corner are these two paint, like plastic paint containers with a used brush with dried paint on top. But there the hands of the characters were. And I didn't know what it said. I can't read painting Chinese, right? So I'm just like, oh my god, there are these characters I don't know. Quick, take a picture. That's just yeah. Anyway, it's funny to me because I'm like standing, I'm in this bathroom. I wasn't multitasking, but before I left the bathroom, I crouched down under the sink where the stuff was and took a picture of that because there was language that somebody's using to know how to paint this, that color, this, that color, this paint's for this thing, this paints for that thing.

SPEAKER_01

Maybe it said no pictures.

SPEAKER_04

Right? It could have. But it was but it was on the it was on the can itself. So I don't think they would have. Yeah. I know the irony. I imagine at some point I am taking a picture of something that says no pictures, but I can't read that yet. Well no, I I think I know no, like in sign form. But yeah, I don't know. Anyway. So future language goals, because it sounds like you're just doing things that are organically in the areas that you want to keep using the language.

SPEAKER_01

So is that Oh yeah, I'm I'm I'm all about goal setting. My I definitely want to keep improving my Mandarin and I want to get over to the tea shop more and have more conversations. And I am now I I I have a goal to learn the basics of Cantonese because I live in Guangdong Province. I live in the homeland of Cantonese food and culture and language. And when I arrived here about a year ago, I realized, wow, I I'm not in Kansas anymore. I had learned Mandarin for maybe six years, and now everybody around me is speaking Cantonese. And they they use Mandarin for transactions and for school and stuff and for meetings, maybe. But besides that, their mother tongue is Cantonese, and all my students, a lot of them, their their first language is Cantonese. So I thought this is an opportunity and it's fun. So yeah, the basics of Cantonese would be a goal of mine.

SPEAKER_04

As of right now, differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. What's striking you as the biggest?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah. I'm not I'm not worried too much about the writing. I was at first, but then I thought, Matt, you never write. It's silly to force yourself to be a good writer when you don't when you're not going to use it. That's just trying to keep up with the Joneses, with people who have different goals from you. You're not going to be writing in Chinese. You don't even want to. You're not interested in that. So don't force yourself to do that. But the that said, the care some of the characters are the same, some of them are written differently. Some of them are pronounced similarly or the same, some are pronounced differently. What I really like and what gives me a leg up is the sentence structures are the same as far as I can tell. So I just need to learn how to pronounce the words differently, but how you set up your sentences and basically have your conversation is very similar again, as far as I can tell as a beginner. So there's basically six tones. Some people will say there's nine, but I think in the in the in the recently revised system that I use, the Yutping system, they say there's really only six tones. But but again, same approach to Mandarin. I'm not going to worry too, too much about the tones. You know, and I I've gone out and I've spoken a little Cantonese and I can make myself understood. So I'm not going to let that hold me back, just the same as Mandarin. It seems a little bit more sing-song-y, a little bit more cut up than Mandarin. And when I spoke some to my parents, they said, you know, that sounds like Vietnamese to me. And I did a little research and I realized there's millions of Cantonese speakers in Vietnam. I did not know that.

SPEAKER_04

Okay, I lived in Vietnam and I didn't know that. Really?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01

So it's part of the, I guess, the Pearl River Delta Cantonese language culture that has has moved and spread out of South China, I guess, going into Vietnam. And I don't know how similar Vietnamese sounds to Cantonese, but my parents thought, are you speaking Vietnamese? So no, it's Cantonese. So it sounds a little bit more choppy, I would say, than Mandarin. But I I like it. It's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, that's awesome. That's really cool. All right. Yeah, no, I hadn't ever thought of that about that, but that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And Vietnamese is choppier. And in Minman in Pudonghwa, it is there are more like sh sounds than there are in Vietnamese. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Cool. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, well, if we're if we're, you know, emphasizing language learning, that's that is my um that's one of my jobs, is making language learning card games. I have a company called Language Card Games, languagecardgames.com. And I did that because that is one way that I like to learn and play. And I couldn't find language learning games that would satisfy me. Um there's a lot of great cards and flashcards out there, I think, for beginners and uh beginners of language learning, beginners of a language, and also for children, but I couldn't find something more complex, more intriguing, more for intermediate level gamers and language learners. So I just set about started making some games, and I've I've made uh a game for Mandarin Chinese, it's called Chinese Champions, and I've made two uh I've made two uh Chinese champions. So there's Chinese Champions 1 and Chinese Champions 2. And uh it's an intermediate level game, it's quite challenging and difficult to play. I mean, if you're a gamer, you might not think it's that bad. And I'm I'm really proud of the second one. I actually think Chinese Champions 2, if if if you're listeners or you have a chance, I think you should check it out. I'm I really feel like Chinese Champions 2 was has been my masterpiece so far of all my games because it has photography from my travels around China. So yeah, the the ph the photography is from is all my own photography through uh my travels in different provinces. So it's it's kind of chronicles my journey and uh also the words too, and I've included some stories that I wrote in Chinese with the game. So it's Chinese stories, you know, it it goes deep, and I'm really proud of it. So if if any um gamers are listening, definitely check out Chinese Champions.

SPEAKER_04

That's awesome. And they are beautiful, beautiful creatures. I told you this uh previously. I'm not a gamer, but when I when I got the one, the set that you sent me and I opened it, I was like, oh my god, like the quality of the cards and the the be like how beautiful and how structurally strong they are, and how many like the different pieces of the game and the just the case. I mean you could tell how much time and effort you put into it, and then it was a labor of love. It was just phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much. You know, I I made a big mistake because I I meant the the moment we got on the phone, I meant to say thank you so much for doing that review. I wanted to thank you in person, but we had some we had some connection difficulties right off the bat, and I forgot, but I showed your video to my family and some of my friends, and everybody loved it and they loved you and they loved your bubbly presentation of it, and we just all thought it was so great. So really thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04

No, all of that came out of a out of a genuine respect to what you had created. And it it's funny because I don't know um if you listen listened or watched the interviews I did with Phil, who's from England, who learned Chinese in China, actually outside and then in China. And he actually just he was in Shanghai for a year on an internship and he just moved back to Nanjing. And um before he left, I still had the card game you sent me, and I was like, this is like the most perfect thing ever, because he's a massive gamer and he's very much into science fiction. Yeah, he's reading science fiction in Chinese, like that's how how deep into the language he's gotten. And so when he was about to leave, I was like, wait a minute, this is perfect. It's useless for me, and it needs to live in the world. And and he was talking about all this stuff because I gave it to him through my husband because he saw him be just before he left. And apparently he was super pleased. And I I haven't checked in yet because he moved and you know, things are kind of a mess at first, but I'm definitely gonna check in and see what he's done with it, see if I can coerce him to like do it in video for you and that kind of thing. Cause yeah, but yeah, I just wanted to let you know. It's made it into into hands that will use it. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So awesome. Okay. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you doing this.

SPEAKER_01

You're welcome. Thank you for having me and keep on doing what you're doing. I wish you continuing success with your channel. I will stay tuned for sure.

SPEAKER_04

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Changing Scripts Podcast. Again, if you are learning the Chinese language or if you're coming from the Chinese language learning another language, I'd love to interview you for this podcast. Please feel free to contact me in any social media way that you see fit. Go ahead and contact me, and we will hash out how to get you on the sound creation known as the Changing Scripts podcast. A lot more is coming your way soon.

SPEAKER_02

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SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_04

Even though we're currently replaying the episodes from the first eight years of the podcast, it doesn't necessarily mean the podcast is over. And that's what I'm here for. I want to know if you want more of this stuff. In different form or same form. I don't know. I just don't feel like it's completely over. So part of redoing these episodes is in figuring out is there still a need for more? So I would love to hear from you. You can go over to Saneand Simple Podcasting.com forward slash contact. You can leave me a voice message, a text message, or you can grab my email address and send me an email. However, you want to let me know what you think about these episodes. Do you need more? Do you want more? Do you want something a little bit different? I am open. I am open to what the next season of Geopaths could be. Sane and Simple Podcasting.com. Thank you so much. Let's get back to the episode.