SPEAKER_00 0:00

Uh I'm Eric. I'm from Shanghai. Uh I work as a software engineer. And that's it.

SPEAKER_07 0:08

All right. Well, thank you, Eric, for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_07 0:11

Um, for new listeners, this podcast, Changing Scripts Podcast, is an extension of the Changing Scripts YouTube channel where I awkwardly document my very slow process in learning to read simplified Mandarin Chinese. What I've noticed over the past year and a half is that people like to talk about languages and like to compare the English language, Chinese language, and other languages in between. And I'm excited to have Eric here today because he's coming from the Chinese language into other languages. So I think he'll give us an interesting perspective on those things. Let's dive in. Okay, I need you to dig way back to your childhood when you first learned Chinese in or out of school. Is there anything that sticks out to you about how you learn a language?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Actually, I remember uh a lot of kids start to learn Chinese before the elementary school. Um we will we will learn to write the simple characters because when we uh uh enter the elementary school, and at least we need to uh know how to write our names.

SPEAKER_07 1:26

How did you go about learning though? Who taught you? How did you practice? What is that called?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Oh, my parents. Yeah, taught me.

SPEAKER_07 1:36

And Eric Strike just arrived and it looks amazing. What is that? Wow, okay. Um Do you remember learning the characters being like an enjoyable part of your childhood or a painful part or somewhere in between?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I think in the beginning is uh it was very painful.

SPEAKER_06 2:07

Why?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Because in the beginning you don't know many characters, you cannot see the patterns, the the connection between different characters. So you need to uh memorize every character. And uh the writing part I need to practice a lot. It's not like the English language, like 26 alphabet, and uh you you remember the order of the different the combination of the alphabet, but the Chinese language, the writing system, it's quite different.

SPEAKER_07 2:41

It is quite different. Yes. How did you practice them? Like I've heard some second language learners say some people coming into the Chinese language say that they sit down and write each character a hundred times.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yes, we did that.

SPEAKER_07 2:57

Oh wow, how big was that? And how bad did your hand hurt after that?

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Oh yeah. I still remember like in the in the weekend, my father will ask me to uh sit down, like write Chinese characters for uh like one hour, two hours.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Yeah. Like every character you repeat uh ten times, twenty times. It's not only need to be corrected, it also needs to be like like beautiful.

SPEAKER_08 3:28

Right, right, right. Do you think that is the best way to learn to charge Bosma?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

I s I mean until today I still think that write the Chinese character is a very important way to learn this language because I I see a lot of foreigners. They focus on the uh speaking part. Uh they probably uh try to uh recognize the characters, but uh they they don't do the writing a lot.

SPEAKER_07 4:04

Right. And what you what have you heard like when you're talking to them, what seems to be missing from their language that that you go, oh if you wrote the characters that would be better?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Uh yeah, a lot of uh characters uh consist of uh small parts. Actually uh a lot of uh the small parts um were used uh a lot uh very often.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

So it's also like a game you combine different small parts to to make a character.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

But you need to uh um if you just uh read it and like I try to recognize it, you probably will miss this part. Uh only only when you really write it on the paper, you feel the stretches.

unknown 5:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 5:01

Are you the the small parts you're talking about, are you talking about the radical?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

It's like a radical, yes.

SPEAKER_07 5:08

And I thought when I first started looking at the language last year, I did a couple of things. One is I spent a few months just on the radicals. I thought there's only 214 of them. This shouldn't be that hard.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Uh 214 Oh, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_07 5:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm I'm telling you. There's 214, because I spent a lot of time on them. But and it seemed like with only 214 of them, that that should be once you learn those, the rest should be easy. And that's not true because they they change as you put them into characters.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 5:42

They can change shape, yes, they can change sound.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 5:46

And so I thought, oh, I've got them now. I'm 242,000. And then they started to then they I started to build up to characters and then to words, and then my confidence went down again. And now it's uh it's back up, it keeps going back.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 5:59

But I think I agree with you on writing them being really key because I I just grabbed my phone because I used to use this app. I did way too many videos on this on the YouTube channel where you could practice tracing the characters recently as they're falling down. It's this kind of game. You can see it here. Like you click on it here, and I'll put the link, listeners, I'll put the link in the show notes. So you guys can see. And it turns into a game. You have to trace it correctly, and then you get points. And I did this for a while, and it was it was interesting to get the muscle memory, but because I was tracing, not writing on a blank page.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

But I think the experience is similar.

SPEAKER_07 6:43

It's similar, but I think it's even more effective if you have to write it on a doll.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 6:48

Yeah. So as much as I love Axe, I went from everything digital to paper. Nice to going back to that original method that children use.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 6:58

What about speaking? I know people coming into the Chinese languages, adults, have problems with the tones.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 7:06

It's is that taught?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Oh, my experience is kind of uh different. Because when I was a child, I live in a small town in another borrowings, out of Shanghai. Yeah. So uh Tingle Place, uh, we have um different accents. Yeah. Also my family, in my family, uh my father will speak Shanghainese to me, it's a dialect. Um my mother and the other, like my my my my grandparents, my mother's grandparents, they will speak Mandarin for me. So you can see different uh dialects, different accents. So as a child I need to um uh uh make the connection between these. So I I I'm glad that we we have uh we have Mandarin as a standard language standard accent. And use it as a baseline, I can I can notice like the the changes of the tone in different uh dialect in different accent. So it helps me to uh uh uh adapt to I'm gonna put you on the spot, Eric.

SPEAKER_07 8:28

Can you um can you think of some examples of how the tones would sound very different coming from the dialect that you grew up with to Shanghai? Well, Shanghai isn't even the same words as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

But sometimes sometimes. Sometimes we'll uh in in some dialect uh we'll probably use some kind of Asian words, but not uh usually in mannering. Uh yes.

SPEAKER_07 8:56

Can you think of an example where you where you can show our listeners the difference in sounds between a few of those dialects? I'll give you an American example for English. Sorry, Bostonians, but there's there's a very strong accent in Boston and Massachusetts in the US.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Oh, Manchester by the seed. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_07 9:17

Exactly. And so a lot of people like say the the sentence, I park the car and like something, yeah. Like it's very, very far back in the throat and it's very rah-rah. Whereas it uh like a Californian supposedly has a very flat accent. And so they would say I park the car in the something yard. I can't remember the full sentence, but it's very, very, very flat. It's very in the front of the mouth. And it's so and those are just two examples. There's a lot more. And again, sorry, Bostonians, I'm not from Boston. So I probably even did the strong accent wrong, but but there is a distinct difference between those two.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Uh-huh. Well, can't do some like uh some words or examples you want to know, like in in Chinese, in rendering how do we say this? I probably didn't say.

SPEAKER_07 10:07

Sure, sure, sure. Okay. So for example, oh, when you get in the taxi, and what does the taxi driver say? Like in Shanghai, what do they say?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Uh no ho. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 10:20

Oh, after that.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Uh after.

SPEAKER_07 10:25

Your taxi driver say hello? My never saying hello. I want new taxi drivers. I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Oh, some of us still are still polite.

SPEAKER_07 10:37

I think they're very in a hurry. I don't think they're rude. They're just in a hurry. So after hello, what did they say?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

No, I have no idea. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_07 10:45

When they're asking you where you're going.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Uh-huh. Um Mandarin or Nichunari.

SPEAKER_07 10:55

Okay. Now, in your hometown, how would they say that?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Uh no, I I I don't uh yeah, in Shahainese we say uh.

SPEAKER_07 11:06

Wow, okay, that does sound different.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah, very different.

SPEAKER_07 11:08

Okay, so that's from Pudanghma to Shanghai. And your hometown dialect is it the same as Pudang Ma or is it the prime?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Uh I mean, for me, Hong Kong is it's Shanghai now. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_07 11:20

So when did you leave, were you born?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Uh 13.

SPEAKER_07 11:26

13. Ah, I gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

But yeah, but I don't lived there from uh six to certain.

SPEAKER_07 11:34

Oh, so it's really short time.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Not short, like six, seven years.

SPEAKER_07 11:40

I'm old, six years to real is very quick.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Like a hundred years, not a long exactly.

SPEAKER_07 11:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so that's very different from sorry, listeners. Kudonghua is standard in Nandarin Chinese, and I'm sure I'm saying it wrong. How do you say Kuronghua in in Chinese? That's it. That's how you actually say it.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

And so if I reference that, that's I think this is a very good example. For example, uh we say putung.

SPEAKER_06 12:12

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

So the the word, the language, the actually uh in Mandarin is one character. Right. But in Shahainese is another word.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

But the putong part is similar, but just sounds a little bit different.

SPEAKER_07 12:32

Gotcha. Do you think someone who learns Sandarin Standard Wow, do you think someone who learns standard um Chinese can switch over to Shanghai pretty quickly?

SPEAKER_00 12:44

No. Really? Not a chance.

SPEAKER_07 12:46

Why?

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Like we discussed that the pronunciation is quite different. And also uh we use a lot of different vocabularies.

SPEAKER_07 12:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

So yeah.

SPEAKER_07 12:59

Wow. Okay. But Shanghai's uses the same characters, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yes. Okay. Same writing system.

SPEAKER_07 13:06

Same writing system, but possibly different words and different characters.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 13:09

Different words, different characters.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

I think it also uh happens to many other pilots.

SPEAKER_07 13:15

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Wow. Okay, so your first language learning experience. What about when you went into school? Was there anything I think I mentioned in our our pre-interview chats for me, because I heard mostly Italian at home, um, despite not actually remembering ever using it, when I went to school and I started to see they had those cheesy posters with the different vowel sounds, the different consonant sounds, and we played games with the sounds, and some of the sounds didn't sound like what they sounded like at home. And so I was like, what? What's that? And so I had to kind of learn that sound. Did you have any experiences?

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, we have on some. We have some exceptions. For example, in Mandarin, uh uh so winged generally if we would pronounce like a fung. But in pingy, it's like uh fun.

SPEAKER_07 14:10

Is it f u or f e?

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Uh f e and g. I'm I think there's a g. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 14:18

It could be another song.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

But but yeah. But we'll I mean in daily life, people people pronounce it like a f-o and g phone.

SPEAKER_06 14:27

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah, but not many uh examples are like this. Yeah, this one is kind of exceptional.

SPEAKER_07 14:35

People tend to, even at an early age, people tend to seem to gravitate towards one part of a language being easier and another part being harder. For example, some people find that speaking even as a child, they just kind of just talk all the time and it's super easy for them. Some people find that writing is is an easier way for them to express themselves. Or some people think just reading as a way to find out about the word. Where do where did you find yourself?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

I mean, for English, it's it's kind of different. Um of course people learn how to speak first. Um but if you can speak English, there's a good chance you you know how to at least how to write in a certain way. I mean, you probably have a lot of um mispelling.

SPEAKER_07 15:26

A lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 15:27

Yeah. Because we have a lot of loan words from other countries.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 15:31

From other languages, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

So the the the the pattern, the the the rules is kind of a lot of exception. But for example, when I say uh when I heard a boy, you you you figure it out like B O Y, or maybe you spare it like a B-O-I.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

But when you read, you see B-O-Y, you say, oh boy, this is a boy, right? But Chinese language is very different. Sometimes, no, I think that is the speaking part and the the the the writing part is is too uh too different a system.

SPEAKER_07 16:09

People keep saying this. Yes. Yeah. So do you think most people, native or non-native speakers of and users of Chinese, struggle with the writing part?

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yes, definitely. I mean, even for us uh as Chinese. Um I think the definition for us, uh the illiter uh illiterate that you can speak quite well. Right, right, right. You can use a lot of advanced words, but you probably cannot read at all. You have no idea when you see when you see a Chinese character.

SPEAKER_07 16:42

Yeah, yeah. Well, I struggle with this. As someone coming into the language, I feel like it's none of my business whether the Hanza characters stay or go. There's always debate, right? Oh, should they switch over to just pinion or not? Or you know? And I'm like, this isn't my fight. I I appreciate how they look. I think it's an interesting puzzle sometimes, and other times I want to absolutely just scream. But when in school, did you guys learn why? I know the characters have changed over time, but did you learn why this kind of system developed in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Oh.

SPEAKER_07 17:24

That's a good question, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Yeah, I mean, I I I of course I learned it, but it's just uh quite hard to explain it in English.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

I remember in the beginning, uh there are a lot of uh we discovered a lot of uh uh issuing the practice on the on the what's the um oracle boom. You know, uh people use it to record the the the fortune telling.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

So maybe they use certain kind of pattern to record uh record the the things in nature. For example, the sun, the moon, yeah, the water, the person, the the bird, all kind of the stuff.

SPEAKER_07 18:10

Yes. And some of those that you the words that you just said, some of those characters really, really look like what they represent.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yes, in the beginning. Yes. It's like uh no the Rosetta stone, the Egyptian uh characters. Probably very similar idea of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 18:30

So do you think the written language is meant to be a puzzle?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

No, it's a it's not a puzzle in the beginning. I think it was very clear. It's like uh I mean nowadays even you uh the Chinese characters are very square, right? It's not like wear around it and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 18:49

But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Um in certain kind of uh uh writing uh writing script, you still can see the see the connection between the the correct and and the and the certain things they describe. Yes, like like a sun, like a moon or person, like a working person, if you can show the picture to our listener.

SPEAKER_07 19:18

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. 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. Ugh, 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. 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. In the the word for sleep, twi ziao. For me, that has a pillow in it. The bottom left part looks like a pillow that you sleep on. So when it isn't obvious what the care what the meaning is from the look of it, my brain starts. To play with it and create one. I don't know if that's the intended appearance, but but it does it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

I think it's a very good imagination.

SPEAKER_07 22:10

I mean uh good or bad, it's what it is. Here we go. Okay. Yeah, okay. So do you see the see this looks like the second not the the this radical is uh moo uh means the eye. Oh, see that's the thing that looks like a a pillow to me. Oh listen Yeah Yeah, because even this kind of looks like a bed. If you're uh listeners, if you're looking at Shui Zhao, wait, let me get the right sound here. What am I doing? Actually, Eric, you probably say it better than the Shui Zhao. Yeah, so if you're looking at it, there's the first character and the second character. If you look at the first one, the right hand size, the middle part, Eric's saying that that is the radical for I or the left part. Oh, the left part is for I. Oh, okay. So you're watching yourself sleep on the pillow on the bed, and what's the second one? And this one's kind of like the dreams. If you look at the second character, it's a person. It's not Ren, I know that, but it looks kind of like Ren. And then he's enclosed in his dreams, and all the dreams are leaving at the top of his head. This is the crazy stuff my brain does.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

I I don't really mind. I mean, as long as it can help you.

SPEAKER_07 23:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But um anyway, but um, but that's I ah uh okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

I I I have my nose here.

SPEAKER_05 23:37

Oh, let me let me stop.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Like foreigners they make give us the imag imagination about the correct thing. A lot of uh actually are very creative, creative. Sure, sure, sure. I like that.

SPEAKER_07 23:50

But if there's something that's already in there that connects to other things that'll help me with those meetings, I think I need Yeah, I want to go back to that. Because it it is they call it the decomposition part of learning it, is when you take it apart into little bits and then learn what those bits are. And that part was really fun for me. And but I then I started to go too fast and then I lost it. But um just interesting that I is in sleep because you're like rapid eye movement and the right part uh of of the character shui actually is also also a character.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

This one no this right part, which is chui.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Um how do I put this in English? It's like the joke tongue.

SPEAKER_06 24:35

Oh sleepy is like your the eye right the eye looks come down and you're just like how do you spell chui?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Yeah, chui. C Horry, what's the English?

SPEAKER_06 24:54

No, it's not picking up C H that's really cool. So there's a whole bunch of stuff in that character that I haven't even hooked up yet.

SPEAKER_07 25:17

Okay, I have to send a message to myself to remember to start to decompose again, because that's just so cool.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Hand on, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

So when you combine these two parts, yeah, it makes sense, right?

SPEAKER_07 25:35

Everything just basically tells you itself what it is, yeah. One of the biggest challenges for me at the beginning though was seeing how the like that's how that's what that character is when it's by itself, but then it changes sound when it goes into a word.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Yeah, it changed a little bit. For example, okay, so uh let me uh start from the beginning. Okay. I actually did some homework. Uh we have Chinese character classification.

SPEAKER_06 26:07

Yes. So uh by radical or yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

No, just characters.

SPEAKER_06 26:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

So we have some kind of code uh pictograms. Uh in Chinese is Shanxin. Like we uh mean form imitation. We discussed in the beginning, for example, the sun, the the moon, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

So this uh very like those simple characters from the oracle bone.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Okay. So we also have uh a kind of it's called a uh indicative or so-called simple ideograms. Um it's um it's become it it become a little bit uh abstractor.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

For example, one, two, three. You know how to write it. Just uh horizontal scratch.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

It's similar to the Roman uh numbers, but Roman numbers they are just different oriented. Different oriented geography or horizontal. But it's not like uh it's not uh picograms for magnetic, but it's like you you still can tell. Right. Okay. Then we will combine this kind of a simple crackers into a so-called uh ideal graphic. It's uh uh in Chinese it's called Hui Yi. It means uh to join the meaning. Uh like straight. Exactly this one. Two part.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

We still have another kind that is called a significant phonetic. So maybe Trey is learned to listen to it.

SPEAKER_06 27:45

Sound components.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Sound Yes.

SPEAKER_07 27:47

So that's can I tell you how little people teach sound components? Um I keep interviewing people who are at a fairly high level of the Chinese language, and I ask them about sound components because I found out about them. I have a giant list of them, but I ha I don't feel like I can uh quite identify them yet because I'm still learning a lot.

SPEAKER_03 28:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 28:08

So I'm asking these high-level users of the Chinese language, and they have not been exposed to them yet.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yeah, because uh this part, uh significant uh phonetic, it's probably uh I mean the count of this kind of uh characters, uh probably like 90%.

SPEAKER_07 28:32

Right? That's huge.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 28:35

That's huge. I mean when you're talking about being able to look at a Hansa character and be able to say it using the sound component, 80 to 90 percent of them, that's huge.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

And the there's a very great chance um the sound, the sound part doesn't change. Like uh like 50%.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

And also uh uh uh a small part is the tone change, yeah. But the the sound itself doesn't change.

SPEAKER_07 29:05

So why do you think have have you met many foreigners who know about these sound components? Um I know this is not a normal conversation that you have with people. Hey, by the way, did you know this happens?

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Oh, you're probably the first one.

SPEAKER_07 29:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Because uh I mean I didn't I didn't do uh podcasting to me with then. True, so I have no idea.

SPEAKER_07 29:29

True. But do you think most Chinese people know about the sound components?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

We we learn this in school. Okay. Maybe different people uh we have different focus. Some people just say it in pass. But I think we'd have the basic idea here.

SPEAKER_07 29:47

Okay. So if if you can use the sound components to pronounce 80 or 90 percent of the words, why is it so hard to read them? Why is it still so hard for native Chinese speakers to read something they don't they're seeing for the first time?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Um, for example, uh when you see one of these characters, um you can read just uh I mean for the for the pronunciation, you can read the side, the so-called you just read the like left part or right part of it.

SPEAKER_06 30:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

But like I said, only in 50% the the pronunciation doesn't change.

SPEAKER_06 30:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

So which means it's like 50-50 chance.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

You will make a mistake.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

But I think it's a good mistake. Because when I was a child, I mean that that's the way I explore the the unknown correct.

SPEAKER_07 30:45

Well, 50% is much better than zero.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Then the also despite the pronunciation part, uh-huh, the meaning part, yeah, it there's a good chance you can you can give a guess, yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

So you made a mistake and then you you were correct it. Sure. That's how you make it.

SPEAKER_07 31:04

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay, I have about 300 words under my belt. So my examples are very simple. But there's okay, Chris one of them. This one.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Ah, yes.

SPEAKER_07 31:20

Oh no, wait, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Well, I can give you another sample. Yeah, ma.

SPEAKER_07 31:24

Ma z no, everybody uses ma. Let's use a different one. There there's a million different explanations of it.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Xian.

SPEAKER_07 31:33

Think. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 31:36

What about that one?

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Uh can you can you good?

SPEAKER_07 31:39

Well, I uh I'm I'm playing with this theory with Juan, because there's there's uh a one the up part is uh is is xion.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

So you can Xian. Just the the the the the difference of the tongue.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Okay, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Okay. So when you see the the up part, you can read uh followed by the the the pronunciation of the sh.

SPEAKER_07 32:09

Um are you saying X-I-A-N G? That shang?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

X-I-N- This one.

SPEAKER_06 32:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like to want or to want, yeah. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

I mean the upper part that decides uh pronunciation.

SPEAKER_07 32:23

Right. Wait, what? That's a really, really common word. I'm glad you're picking that one. Okay. What do you mean the upper part? It's uh it's third tone, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Yeah, different the tone, but the ping is the same, right?

SPEAKER_07 32:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Maybe in in some kind of a dialect they they are the same.

SPEAKER_07 32:45

Oh, you're saying wong to shang? No.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

No, shang.

SPEAKER_07 32:48

To shangs, okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

So this is the so-called uh uh phonetic part.

SPEAKER_07 32:54

Mm-hmm. So what part of that words you is the sound component? Because you've got one, two, three components in there, right? Um so you've got one, two, three components in this character.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Okay, so which part tells you? You don't need to divide this into two. You just use the entire one, like sh. It means appearance.

SPEAKER_07 33:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Okay. K is uh the heart.

SPEAKER_07 33:29

So the bottom part is the sound.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

No, the upper part is the sound.

SPEAKER_07 33:34

Oh, the upper part is the sound, the bottom part is the meaning. Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Actually, the the upper part is also hopes.

SPEAKER_07 33:42

But the main meaning is in the bottom.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah, it's about the heart.

SPEAKER_07 33:45

When you say to think, it's now we we know it's about the brain, but before we Oh yeah, and a lot of words with emotions have that symbol in them, that radical.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

So what's the meaning of the upper part? Means appearance. For example, if you if you think about someone, maybe the first uh things to your mind is their appearance. So it totally makes sense.

SPEAKER_07 34:14

Yeah. Huh. One, two, three. That's not day.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

That's I forget what the But you're right, it's three part. If you want to analyze this character, like Shan, what's the appearance? Maybe you can go deeper if to, but I I guess we should stop.

SPEAKER_07 34:32

Yeah, we should yeah, we need to get on to your your other languages, but it's just so interesting. But one more thing, if I I want to go back to one. Because there's in HSK 1 and 2, there's two different ones with two different there's one, well, and my tones are completely off, but there's one that means to play, and there's one that means to finish.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 34:55

And those are two different tones, right? So the play one, how do you actually say that one?

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Uh one.

SPEAKER_07 34:59

One, okay, and then the the finish one?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Same one.

SPEAKER_07 35:02

One. And then there's y-u-a-n that has a similar look.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Y? Yeah. Uh. Which unfortunately has so many.

SPEAKER_07 35:13

Aha, here we go. This one here.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 35:18

Oh my god. Yeah. But if you say the appearance is similar, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Um they share the same uh radical can't have it.

SPEAKER_07 35:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do. And the sound is just a little bit different.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Yes. Maybe, I mean, maybe in Asian Chinese, there's the sound that I think.

SPEAKER_07 35:43

That's what I'm thinking, is that the because the the the look of it, the the Hanza character is the same, um, and the sound is just a tiny bit off.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 35:52

Like Hong and Rong. And I cannot remember how to write any of those. But there are a few where the sound, even like the first sound is different, but the rest of the sound is the same. And the the the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Oh you mean the you mean the initial and the final.

SPEAKER_07 36:09

Yes, the initial is is different, but the final is the same and the characters are the same. And I feel like that must be some sort of historical shift.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Yeah, there's a the variation of uh of the pronunciation.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

I mean, uh my guess is no, when we standardize the the the pronunciation of the minor ring, uh it's based on the the dialect uh uh around the Beijing.

SPEAKER_05 36:37

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

But uh I think um in this process they they still uh use the I mean even even even the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect, because Beijing is a place like the people all around China they go to there. Right. So they probably contribute their accent, their pronunciation different. So you can see uh maybe that's a reason why.

SPEAKER_07 37:08

So I'm I'm wondering if one in school they use this to help teach things that have the same character. And as an adult coming into the Chinese language, if we can just say things really fast so that nobody can hear the first sound, but maybe they'll figure out what we're saying. I don't know. I'm I'm thinking because the sounds are so similar.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Yeah, I agree. I actually uh agree.

SPEAKER_07 37:34

I don't even know what I'm saying, anyway. I feel like this coincidence, which probably isn't a coincidence, could be used to be able to use more of the language quicker.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 37:47

And I'm not sure how.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

I mean sometimes uh when you meet someone who speaks uh dialect that you're not familiar with.

SPEAKER_07 37:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

That experience actually is similar to what you said.

SPEAKER_07 38:00

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and that's true in English as well.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 38:03

So let's let's use that as our bridge over into your other languages. So what other languages did you learn as an adult, or teenager or adult?

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Oh, uh English, of course. Um I started um to learn English um from junior high school. Uh it's been a while.

SPEAKER_06 38:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

I learned a little bit of Japanese. I don't really speak it very well. Uh recently is uh I'm still learning the French.

SPEAKER_07 38:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Yes. Wow.

SPEAKER_07 38:42

Okay. So when you first learned English, can you describe how that was taught? Well first how how was it taught?

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Oh, uh it was taught in a very traditional way.

SPEAKER_07 38:56

Um A lot of our listeners are outside of China, so can you describe what that traditional context would be?

SPEAKER_00 39:05

What is traditional like uh this traditional classroom? Uh teacher uh speaks a lot. Students will just listen. Uh we read, we write, but we don't we didn't have many chances to uh uh speak it as uh you know uh actually they use language.

SPEAKER_07 39:29

Okay. Did they or how many students were in the class?

SPEAKER_00 39:33

How generally was like 30, 40 students?

SPEAKER_07 39:37

Substantial amount of students, okay. How long were the classes?

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Uh last uh it lasts 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_07 39:46

And how many times a week?

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Oh, sorry?

SPEAKER_07 39:49

Was it once a week, twice a week?

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Oh no. Uh in junior high school three. English is a very important subject. Although back to that time we didn't have an idea what we can use.

SPEAKER_06 40:04

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

I think we have like four at least four classes. I mean like 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_07 40:13

Wow, a week. Four times a week. That's that is a lot.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_07 40:18

Yeah. So okay. If you remember back to your what how old were you then? 12, 13, 14 years old.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 40:26

So how how did your 13-year-old self, how did you like those fastest? You can be honest. And and let's give credit to teachers. They have a lot of a lot of things that they have to work with. There's many students in the classroom, the textbooks are often kind of awkward. Let's be honest. Everywhere, language course books are very weird. Um, there's a lot of uh pressure from the schools to do certain things, and then they have uh a lot of classes, a lot of grading. So there's a lot of things that the teachers are under pressure. So we're not here to criticize and say teachers suck. We're here to kind of deconstruct the experience so we can figure out the best language learning methods available to people. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

So I'm going to say the bad word. Okay. So that time this it was before, you know, the the reform and the open policy.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

So and also I mentioned I live in a small town.

SPEAKER_03 41:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

It's it was hard for both of us. I mean, teacher and uh students. Uh I remember my teacher told me how how he learned English, because back to that time uh most of the case we only have books.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Not even tapes.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Not without tapes.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

So he he needed to uh listen to the radio. You know, the the Chinese Central Radio station something. Right. Um like every every day, maybe not every day, uh like only half hour, you need to wait in front of the radio to listen. Uh the broadcast the English programs. And if you miss some word you you don't know, you need to remember the pronunciation and maybe go to a far place to ask someone who is better uh English speaker. So that was hard for my English teacher.

SPEAKER_07 42:39

That's incredibly hard.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 42:41

We we get I think sometimes we forget how many tools we have. Yes. Because right now I'm thinking, well, why didn't he just record it and play it over and over again? Because they didn't have that technology then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Especially in Shanghai, you walk on the street and that's a great chance. Like in half hour you meet several foreigners who speaks English so you can communicate. And in a lot of a school, even elemental school students, they have foreign teachers.

SPEAKER_07 43:10

Sure. So sure, sure. Wow. I'm I'm impressed that your teacher learned English that way. That's a really difficult way to learn the language. So at that time, as a young teenage boy sitting in a language classroom, did you look forward to the classes? Did you know that?

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Not at all.

SPEAKER_07 43:34

Why? What what was missing?

SPEAKER_00 43:36

I was terrible. I mean, my my score exam was always quite terrible. Because like I like I said, I said, I don't know what I can use.

SPEAKER_07 43:50

Right. Okay, so it's like, why am I taking this class?

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 43:54

Okay. What could have, and this is a big hypothetical question. Could have been different to keep your attention to have kept your attention on.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Um reading.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

As I said, uh back to that kind of like we we don't have we didn't have many resources.

SPEAKER_03 44:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

So even books, I mean uh I I had a lot of books, but those books are in Chinese. So I can uh I can I can learn things from from books. This this is my my hobby. So it's back to that time we have uh different kind of books in different kinds of language. Probably I can I can find my interest in these kind of things.

SPEAKER_07 44:50

Do you think those kinds of reading resources exist now for teenagers learning English?

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Yes, of course. Now uh our problem is we have too many resources.

SPEAKER_07 45:01

I could not agree more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

So we we have a certain kind of anxiety over when we choose what kind of resource uh would we should use.

SPEAKER_07 45:15

Yeah. Yeah. So and so many of them so many of them are static versions of or just replications of the course books that didn't work on in digital form.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 45:30

And I feel like there needs to be an approval process, and I feel like those need to not get approved. Because the course books the traditional course books in many languages are very similar.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 45:44

You know, they have the vocabulary, then they have the grammar section, and then they have the exercises.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 45:50

And they existed for a long time because that was the best we could do. But now we have so many other ways to teach languages. But people are still taking those things and putting them onto mobile phones and onto websites.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

But um yeah, I probably have a different opinion. Okay. I still think you know, traditional classroom way is a kind of good way. Because nowadays people have found a you know simple way. Like teacher teacher something in a month in 2150.

SPEAKER_07 46:28

No, that's just kind of so few people, if any, can learn that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

But I yeah, I I understand that there's a difference between adults and uh you know uh young young students because we have different uh I mean amount of time we can spend on that.

SPEAKER_07 46:49

Yeah. I've actually read some studies where people show that adults actually learn languages faster, but because of that time constraint, it doesn't feel like it because we don't have 24 hours a day to absorb the language for two or three years before we start using it.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Maybe we are more efficient.

SPEAKER_07 47:09

Exactly. We've learned how to learn other things.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 47:12

And uh and we don't have to our brain doesn't have to grow up as we're learning the language. We're already adults. So we can focus on doing that tasks.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

And also uh when we learn uh our first language, uh I think we learn a lot of abandonment things.

SPEAKER_07 47:32

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 47:34

There's some kind of things is not very useful. I mean useful, useful in your life, but still good to know because it's your first language, this kind of stuff. Sure. But when we when we learn our second or like third language, we're very uh we have a very clear target. Uh sometimes, maybe.

SPEAKER_07 47:56

No, I agree with you. I agree with you. I think we we know what we want to do. Well, uh I think a lot of adult language learners know what they want to do with the languages. So let let's go back to You said English and Japanese and French. What was your so English was something you had to learn for school. Yes. Was Japanese also a school subject?

SPEAKER_00 48:23

No.

SPEAKER_07 48:25

Because why did you want to learn Japanese?

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Um Japanese culture actually is very popular in China. I guess it's the same in Western countries. For example, the video games, the the cartoon.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

So yeah. As a child I liked that. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 48:48

So um when did you start tellering Japanese?

SPEAKER_00 48:56

After I graduated from university.

SPEAKER_06 48:59

So 21, 22?

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 49:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Um I learned it as a hobby.

SPEAKER_06 49:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 49:07

Did you learn it did you excuse me, did you self-study or did you go to a class?

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Yeah, I went to a class. Um because I I I mean back to webs. I I I didn't think uh learn by myself is a good choice.

SPEAKER_07 49:24

It's hard. I don't recommend it to anybody at all ever. I don't recommend classes and I don't recommend self-study, something in between.

SPEAKER_00 49:32

Yeah, I think I need to re reach a certain level, like up uh past the beginning phrase. And then I can after I can have basic knowledge of language or basic knowledge of everything, yeah, then I can uh learn by myself.

SPEAKER_06 49:48

Yeah, yeah. So what was that classroom like?

SPEAKER_00 49:53

Similar traditional way.

SPEAKER_07 49:55

Still 30 or 40 students in a class?

SPEAKER_00 49:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 49:58

Really?

SPEAKER_00 49:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 49:59

Was the the teacher Japanese or were they uh non-native speaker Japanese in Chinese?

SPEAKER_08 50:04

Chinese. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 50:06

Um were this is a few years after you were learning English. Were the books any better? Was there more listening available?

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Yes, we we we had more uh resources for uh Japanese learning. Uh and that time we already have uh faming, we already had internet.

SPEAKER_07 50:26

So you're lucky to go. That kicked in for me as I was graduating college.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 50:33

Yeah. I can only imagine how much time I would have spent in my room as a teenager if the internet was in existence. Oh my god. Because I like you am a reader. And I I was I was I spent so much time indoors reading as a child and as a teenager. And if the internet existed, oh my god. It's like books times a million, right? There's so much content. Um, how long did you study? Are you still studying? Are you using a language?

SPEAKER_00 51:02

I mean, after a while, uh I the the company I work, uh, we we had Japanese customers, so it's kind of become uh full for the word.

SPEAKER_07 51:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

So yeah, things change.

SPEAKER_07 51:19

So you're still using it in that Yeah, back to that time. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

So the company will uh um will give us training about about we have the interpreter. They would they would give us uh classes.

SPEAKER_07 51:37

Okay. Describe those classes, please.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

Uh we s we we definitely uh spoke this language more. Because we need to uh use this to do the actual communication with the real Japanese people.

SPEAKER_07 51:55

So things change. Was that a more enjoyable experience at all than the traditional classroom?

SPEAKER_00 52:05

Not really, but it's not because uh the learning part.

SPEAKER_06 52:09

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

It's because uh the Japanese part. Because because kind of we can edit. Japanese people they are kind of conservative people.

SPEAKER_06 52:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 52:20

They're not very talkative.

SPEAKER_06 52:22

That's very true.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

And also uh uh like in in formal uh conversation, you need to be very careful about the word you choose. So yeah, it's not very it was not very joyful for me.

SPEAKER_07 52:38

When I side note, when I was teaching in Japan, oh boy, the first time was the most difficult because the time difference from when I would ask a question to when they would answer. Yes. Like that space, that quiet space for, and I learned this later, for Americans, it's maybe five to ten seconds, and then we're very uncomfortable and we start to kind of blabber and say anything. For Japanese people, I believe it's 20 to 30 seconds. And I didn't know this. And I'm I'm asking questions and they're just staring at me. Very sweet, well-meaning, very motivated students, and they're staring at me, and then after 20 seconds, I'm like Japani. And I ended up speaking way too much because I didn't realize they just were used to having more of that silent time.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Well, Chinese also do that, but I mean Japanese.

SPEAKER_07 53:34

A lot, a lot more. Yeah, and I think they're more uh uncomfortable making mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 53:43

Um, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 53:48

Um because one of the scripts in Japanese okay, Japan the Japanese language has is it three or four scripts?

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Uh so was this three? Three scripts.

SPEAKER_07 54:04

One of them, the kanji? Kanji is the one that has Chinese characters, right? Did that help you learn a language faster?

SPEAKER_00 54:11

The kanji because uh you feel kind of comfortable. Like you can see you you can already s see something you know. Right. But actually there are a lot of uh uh I think we call it false friends. Yep. Yeah. So after a while, the uh it's not gonna help you.

SPEAKER_06 54:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 54:38

Well but is there any no, because it's very different. Sounds aren't if they vary different sounds in Japanese. So knowing the characters, the sound were there any instances where the sounds in Chinese were the same as the sound for the for the same character? For example.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

They have different kind of a um took two kind of a reading uh sparing message? One is uh me. Uh yeah it means the the pronunciation is similar to uh Chinese so that hopes. But they they have another kind, the kung kungyomi.

SPEAKER_03 55:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

Probably they they borrowed the Chinese character, but they still read it in a Japanese way. Yes. So that part wonderful. And also the uh how do I say it? You need to put a lot of effort on on how to how to uh how to differentiate the difference between Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_07 55:53

I don't know if this sounds like an advantage anymore. Do you know what I love, dear listeners? If anybody has studied Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese, please contact me. Because a lot of what you're describing sounds like similar challenges that I've heard people who've learned Italian and Spanish when it there's so much overlap that you think you know how to say something, but it's very different. So it sounds like similar problems. But I don't know because I don't know any of those four languages very well.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Basically is also the funny part.

SPEAKER_07 56:26

What's that? Oh, did you make any mistakes in Japanese that were funny?

SPEAKER_00 56:34

Oh I don't remember my mistakes, but we have a lot of uh uh very uh classic jokes about. For example, uh in Japanese uh letter is tengami consists of uh two uh two Chinese characters, one the hand, second is the the paper. So letter is hand paper.

SPEAKER_03 57:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

But for Chinese, it could mean uh toilet paper. So yeah. We have a joke, like a Japanese uh young man met a Chinese girl. So uh he doesn't speak Chinese, she doesn't speak Japanese. So this young man tried to write some kanji Chinese character to communicate.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

He said, I will send you to China. I mean, I will send you the letter.

SPEAKER_01 57:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

So you can imagine how confused it is.

SPEAKER_01 57:40

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

It's like we are poor, we don't have toilet paper, you send it to send to me.

SPEAKER_07 57:45

Oh my gosh. Okay. Um I'm trying to think of a clean version in English because I'm having a lot of examples come into my head. Okay, but so many of them are slightly inappropriate. But just going from British English to American English. Um Okay, I think this one is fairly okay. But pants.

SPEAKER_00 58:04

Pants, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 58:05

Okay, do you know this one? Yeah, pants in British English is underwear.

SPEAKER_00 58:08

Underwear.

SPEAKER_07 58:09

And in American English, it's just sort of like trousers, like business pants. Yeah. So the first time Americans go or talk to someone who uses British English and they talk about their pants, the Brits tend to look at them like, are you really talking? I mean, there it there's more awareness of it now than there were 10, 15, 20 years ago. But if they're if both sides are unaware, they're very awkward conversations that that ensume. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's even the same language you're talking about, different languages. Different language. Yeah. But same written.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Yeah, same written side.

SPEAKER_07 58:43

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

Because I read about the let's say uh like a hundred years ago, not very long ago.

SPEAKER_04 58:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Like we're educated Japanese, they can uh communicate with Chinese by only rights to Chinese practice. Sure. So I'm not sure how now it did happen before.

SPEAKER_07 59:04

Right, right. Um yeah, before we started the convers the the before we started recording, Eric and I were talking about uh spring festival, which is uh Westerners might call it Chinese New Year. Um and we were talking about the history of it, and Eric said it's only been around for a hundred years.

SPEAKER_00 59:22

It becomes uh like a official publication.

SPEAKER_07 59:27

Yeah, for the for only a hundred years. And I started laughing because in in an American mindset, a hundred years is almost uh more than a third of our existence. But for a Chinese history, two thousand, three thousand, five thousand year history, that's a very short period of time. So it's uh at the beginning just a very, very interesting and different period.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Mindset.

SPEAKER_07 59:49

Yeah. A hundred years feels like forever for me. But um, okay, and French, French, French, French. When did you start learning French?

SPEAKER_00 59:57

Um about six years ago.

SPEAKER_07 59:59

Okay, why?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

Uh, as a hobby. Um, because um French used but France used to be a very uh uh how'd they say very cultural country. Um they had great uh influence to Europe and to the world.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:21

So and some pretty good food.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:24

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:24

Yeah, sorry, that's nothing to do with language.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

If you can read a manual in a fancy French restaurant.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:33

There you go. So five or six years ago, and are you still studying or using the language now?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

Yeah, I still studying.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:43

Are you uh taking classes, self-study?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

In the beginning, I I took the class. I go to a school called uh uh L'Alliance Francaise.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:51

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:53

Did the French the French government response? Yeah, the Good Institute is like the German version of that. The British Council is the British version of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

What's the British version of it?

SPEAKER_07 1:01:04

The British Council.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

The British Council. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:06

And they also like the different Actually the Confucian Institute, I think what Confucius Institute is. And they're opening up more and more branches uh in many, many places around the world right now. Um Okay, so you took classes there, and what was that classroom context like?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Oh, I really like the way they they conduct this class.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:33

Yeah, well, why?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Because we have a lot of chance to uh actually speak this language. So I mean I still make a lot of mistakes in different languages. Yeah. But then you still have so many chances to to sp actually speaking. You're you're not fear of it anymore.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:53

Okay. Yeah, it it is about repetition, about making the mistakes so many times that you stop making them, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

Um you'll probably just keep making But it's okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:05

I mean But well some some you will, some you won't. Yes. But but if you never use the language, if you never get over the mistakes part that you're always stuck in.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:16

Fear of making mistakes. How many people were in those classrooms?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

Oh small class. Um in the beginning, maybe like terp territory.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:24

Yeah, that was small, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:25

And then some of them quit because French is kind of difficult language for us.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:31

Sure, sure, sure. How long were you in those classes?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

Um two years. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:40

Okay. What was your goal when you started to take part? What did you want to do after a certain amount of time?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:48

Um learn language for general purpose. Like reading uh so like speaking.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:58

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. So uh reading keeps coming up again and again and again, which makes me eternally happy because I am a reader too. What languages do you read in now?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

Uh I think I read a lot in English. It's it's like uh those are it's a standard language of the world, right? So many materials.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:26

There's a lot published in the language, yeah. Yes. Do you read anything in Japanese or French now?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:32

Yeah. I try to uh read uh Japanese and uh French news. It it will help me to uh keep a keep a sense of uh where do you read it? On the internet.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like a website, an app, uh video with transcripts.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

Japanese, for example, I read from uh NHK.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

Um French. Uh Lusikaru.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:05

I I don't know any French, so you could you could say any pronunciation, I'd be like, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:11

No, I mean it's okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:13

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

It's about the R sound, you know. I'll try to uh pretend a French accent here.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:20

I think the R sound has so many issues in so many languages.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:26

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:27

Yeah, because even just again, from British English to American English, the R sound, the rhotic R is a crazy component. And then going from English to any Northeast Asian language, the R and L are tricky. So let's put the R aside. Reading, reading, reading. Do you have you ever read any? I know you read um like fiction and things like that in English. Do you read any of that in Japanese or French?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

But for the remainder.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:54

Do you read any fiction or any novels in Japanese or French?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:01

Um French? Uh I like because I like the the book uh The Little Prince very much. So I tr I try to uh read this in French, but it's still a little bit hard for me.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:17

Okay, let's pause Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:19

Um So for any of these languages, English, Japanese, or French, coming from the Chinese language, what what were the hardest parts to get used to?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:35

Yeah, let me share. What is the hardest part? Um one is the tense especially the past the tense. I think we can notice I actually make that a lot.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:49

That is actually a question that I had right here. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

Um because in Chinese language uh Well not so emphasizing the tense. So and also it um it connects to the conjugation of verbs.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:16

English.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:17

French is actually worse.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:22

Yeah, verb inflections is when you change the verb to show the time. I know English has verb inflections like walk, waft, will waf, go that walking. I know French does that. Does Japanese do inflections or do they do time words like Chinese does?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

I mean they also have conjugation of the verb.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:44

Okay, they do.

unknown 1:06:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

But mix of uh Eastern hasn't really slow.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:56

Oh my god. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:58

So what if you were to compare well let's think of a sentence. I walked to work yesterday. In English, I walked to work yesterday, W-A-L-K-E-D. The E D is telling us it's past tense. How would you say that in French? I walked to work yesterday. For anything with a past tense verb. Like I saw a movie last night or hi a.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:24

Yes, I saw a movie. Okay. Yeah, it's uh sh uh shek day at film. Okay. Yeah, it just makes sense.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:33

Okay. And so is it the verb again, I'm I have zero French in Mango.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:37

Or should we show you a film.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:42

Damn.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:42

I'm putting you totally on the spot. I apologize. So is it the verb tense in French that change? Is it the verb that changed to shout show the time?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:52

Yeah, of course change. Also they have two different kinds of uh past the tense.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:57

What?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:57

One is like un parfait. Okay. Actually more than two, but we use anotherwise pass composé. It's like if you finish the one action. It's like anotherwise you, sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:11

I think like I have done something and I I Because we just have past perfect and past perfect continuous for different situations as well. Yeah. Okay. So in Chinese, how would you say I saw movie last night?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

You'd probably just say I s I see movie.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:27

In Chinese.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:28

Flashtag. Yes, I think. What yang kan la king.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:34

You add a small Okay, so I'm I need to use a different sentence because I actually have time words in this sentence which is cheating. So I need to take those away. So if we say I saw that movie in Chinese, how would you say that I saw that? Oh. So is it the la that tells you it's past tense?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:58

Yeah. But for us, the verb is discerning the kan.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:02

But that's not past tense.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:03

Yeah, it's not past tense. But for me, it's like uh the other verb, isn't it?

SPEAKER_07 1:09:10

What? Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

For me, I feel it's like No.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:14

Say this more because I'm struggling with law because it looks like it wears many hats. It looks like law can tell us many different things depending on the sentence that it's in, and that confuses me right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:26

But you're saying you think of it like another verb.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:29

Yeah. It's not a part of the can, the watch part.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:33

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:33

So when I say when I speak in English, generally I I don't have the sense like I need to conjugate the verb, but I could see become so.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:44

Because for me, it's like yes yesterday, uh last night is enough to tell it's it it's a it's action of the past.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:54

Right, right, right. So But in sentences like I saw that movie, there's no time words. The last night is gone. So it's I saw that movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:04

The for in English, all of the time is in that saw. But in Chinese, you're saying that time is in love.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:16

See, when I first heard that Chinese years and years ago, when Chinese and other languages, uh, other tunnel languages had time words instead of inflections, I thought, oh, that's great. And I very immaturely thought that there would be one time word for past, a different time word for present, a different one for future, and I suppose we could have one for continuous. But I thought it'd be the same word every time. But it's not, is it? Yeah, probably there are other It's more complicated than that.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:53

I mean, as a listener, you'll probably need to deal with different but when you speak, you can stick to I mean in the beginning phrase, you can't.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:01

Well, yeah, and when you're when you're speaking, you're in a conversation and there's other contextual things that will help. Yes. But the problem right now for me, if I make it very selfish, is that I'm seeing one sentence experiences. One sentence.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:15

One sentence.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:16

With no context. And so it's really important that I understand where the time is. Once it gets to bigger things like paragraphs and conversations, then I can I think I'll be okay maneuvering it.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:29

Not necessarily in producing it correctly, but I think I'll be able to understand what people are saying.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:34

But right now, with one sentence, with the context in the grammar only, it's challenging. But it's part of the process.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:45

But you can uh find out um like subject, a verb, object, remove then what that.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:52

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But but right now, la is like um like a clown with many hats. And I'm trying to figure out what hat he's wearing in that sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

Well what ha what are the other hats like because now I have no idea.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:11

What are the I think there there's a fair amount of what it does to verbs, not just with past tense.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:18

But I think it changes the time in different ways. And I can't answer you completely because I'm still confused on what it's doing. But I when I'm looking at the explanations of sentences, and I I see another another hat that it's wearing, and I go, oh, another one. And I keep doing that. It's probably simpler than I think, but more more complicated than somebody that grew up with the language things. Somewhere in between.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But okay, so so far Pleco, the d dictionary that I use the most, has one, two, three, four, five, five main things that it says the hats. We'll just stick with hats. So one of them is the completion of an action.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:06

In the past, but not necessarily. Oh yeah, sure. How could it be completed if it's not in the past? What? Okay, anyway. The second one That looks like present perfect or past perfect. The animals do it good. A change of situation or state? Here are the examples. Right here are these examples. A change of situation or state.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

It means it started to rain. It's like it rained, but it's still raining.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:48

This is very appropriate for today because it keeps starting and stopping as we're talking.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:52

Okay, so what how do you say it rained?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:54

Shayula.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:57

It's the same. So it continuing and it stopped. Is it the same thing?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:01

I think when I say when we say Shayula, it exactly means the the change of the space. Like it's it's it was not raining before, but after this exact moment it it starts to so it is raining now.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:20

How do you say it stopped raining?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:23

Uh rain stop. Oh, you can say pushai, not raining.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:34

Which which one's more common? More natural. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:46

Like a stop.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But where is the rain in that sentence? So I thought shayu is oh, there's different words for rain.

unknown 1:14:58

Ah.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:59

Okay. The point is la has different things that with the grammar explanation are clear yet, but with frequent usage will become cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:08

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like that thinking that it's a good thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but it is i it is a difference coming from both sides, from Chinese into languages that have verb inflections and coming from coming from languages like English that have a lot of time meaning in verbs to going to languages that have a more s uh a more simple way to do it, but it it's not as simple as it seems at first. Yeah, yeah. So what um so that's the verb tenses were the a big problem. When you were learning Chinese as a child, um, I've heard that pinion is used to help teach sounds to children. Do you guys write the pinion ever, or are you just looking at it in the middle?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:54

In the beginning, we need to write.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:55

We do. So does that help in writing languages like English and French and the ones that use that alphabet?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:02

It helps, but um not that much. Just get familiar with uh Roma alphabet and that's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:14

Did it because coming from that alphabet to the Hansa characters, I feel like I'm going from easy to incredibly difficult, but from boring to incredibly interesting looking. Like that's the process for me switching scripts. How did it feel going from the characters to the those letters? Yeah. Not to pinion, but to the like the English alphabet and the French alphabet. Did it feel like it was easier to write, easier to read?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:49

I think it's easier to to write. Because uh for example, the Chinese uh calligraphy. If you want to write really beautiful Chinese characters, it takes something uh a lot of time to practice.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:10

Yes. It's an art form.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:12

Yes, art form.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:13

But writing in English, I mean writing it draw my alphabet.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:20

Yes, it's it's also an art form, but it's there is calligraphy with the English language as well. It's just not just beautiful. Um was is it easier to type in English, French, Japanese, or Chinese?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:41

I think that's that's the reason Qing uh become become a very important part because when we talk about the computer, um now pinging is uh uh maybe I can say only popular way to include the Chinese for. Of course we have other different type of sure sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Ping Y is uh most important.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:11

Yeah. When I first moved to Taiwan in 2003, I kept trying to look at my coworkers as they were typing to see how they were typing. And they were using more of starting with the radical and then picking the character from there. And I didn't know enough about the language to understand what they were doing. It just looked very, very, very difficult to me. Um, is is that method for typing still used?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:41

There's another because Taiwan they probably use different systems. Traditional, yeah. Uh we we have some uh one one type called Wubi. I'm not sure how to translate in English, but you you you have the idea. Is use uh different parts of uh of the character to combine and to get uh data character.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:03

So in the early stages of the computer, uh actually a lot of people are uh were asked to learn that that way to input character because they think that that's uh better way. Right. It's faster than the thing.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:22

But now it becomes not so popular.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:26

Which one do you use the most?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:28

For me it's a ping.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:30

Why is it easy because now having played with the radicals and the characters and the words, I'm trying to think why why would it be?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:40

Because it's uh it's it's uh A to Z on the keyboards. So pinging uses A to Z. It's very natural. But for those for those uh info system use the radical, you need to remember the relationship is like A presented like several radical.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:02

B representation So the keyboard itself, well yeah, 214 radicals. You couldn't have a keyboard that big? That would be ridiculous. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:13

So yeah, so how did you if if we invented the computer, maybe we would invent a certain kind of still really?

SPEAKER_07 1:20:20

I mean, as is 26 letters, that we know the size of a normal keyboard, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:25

So how did how did people start to with that older method, how did people start to pick the radicals?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:33

You just had to know which for example, one alphabet, A, uh combined with several radical. B combined with uh other several radical.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:47

So how long would it take to type one code?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:50

Well you you need to uh type like four uh four alphabet.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

And because uh the combination will limit it in the numbers of its productive. Right. So you will have a small group of drugs to choose.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:10

But you need to memorize a lot of things.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:12

You do, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Whereas it's just a direct button, button, button, button, letter buttoned experience and um in letters that use the an alphabet.

unknown 1:21:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:29

But maybe it's just hard.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:31

I'm wondering because in I have seen some people on the subway with their phones where instead of using opinion or the traditional method, they'll start to draw I say draw, but they'll start to write the character and it'll pop up and they can pick it.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:45

I wonder if there is a keyboard that exists that has that little touchpad where people can draw and then pick. Does that exist?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:51

Yeah. We we have this kind of products with the computer keyboard. No, no, not computer. It's like a pad.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:59

You have a Oh no, no, no, no, but with a computer keyboard. So that people don't have to do the traditional method, they don't have to do the pinion, they can still practice their writing skills. Because a lot of people say they're losing their writing skills with the characters. So what if there was I keep thinking of crazy ideas as I'm learning the language. So what if there was a keyboard where instead of there being where there's a space in the middle of the keyboard, uh-huh, sort of like a touch screen, small touch screen, where they can start tracing the character and then pick from the list.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:29

Maybe.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:30

Maybe. If anybody wants to take off on that, just give me a little bit of credit. Um But I have heard a lot of people say that because of using the pinion or because of using technology, that they've forgotten how to write some of the characters.

unknown 1:22:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:45

So maybe if there was something pulled into the dictative technology to keep them writing, maybe that would help. I don't know. I don't know. I don't even know why I'm trying to solve that problem. I just think for me, when I'm I write them very, very badly, but when I'm writing them, it feels like a dance. It feels like my fingers dancing a little. When I'm typing the pinion, that doesn't happen at all. It's more like walking.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:11

And walking's fun, but dancing's more fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

But it's slow, aren't you thinking?

SPEAKER_07 1:23:17

Of course it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:18

But yeah. That's the thing. I can't think in Chinese yet. So right now, me going slow is no problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:27

But I do have experiences in English where if I'm thinking really fast, because I've typed for so long, I can type and keep up with my brain. So that would probably bug me if I got voted in Chinese. Yeah, you're right. Hello.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:42

Yeah, but this is the problem. That's why a lot of people talking about uh you know the romanization of the Chinese language. So why don't we just use pinging or what do you think about that? Not in my life, okay?

SPEAKER_06 1:24:00

Do you would you want it?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:02

No, I don't want it.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:03

No, why?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:05

I'm okay with it. I mean, yes, Chinese is a difficult language, but I handled it. And I I can handle this situation. There's so much Sometim I'm thinking about who I who actually propose this kind of uh solution, like foreigners.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:24

It I I don't know. I I I can't even imagine it not looking like it does.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:31

I mean maybe in the future, like one day, um we how do I say this we we'll become so relied on the computer, on the keyboard, and people actually don't write a character anymore, that will make sense.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:52

But but now but it sounds like the pinion input takes care of that, so we don't have to choose. See what I mean? Like even you start typing in the pinion and the characters come up, problem solved.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:05

Yeah, but a lot of uh the I mean, and at least now it will cause a lot of confusion. For example, uh do you still need the tongues on the pinyin? Even with the tongues, um a lot of words uh they have the same pronunciation. Yes So if you only use the ping-ing, it it records the confusion.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So okay, why the the street sign behind us is a perfect example.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:36

Why don't they put tones on the pinion?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:42

I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:43

Me neither. Because there's so many sounds that are repeated that it seems like you think.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:50

For Chinese, uh, we don't need anything. I mean those spelling pinging parts.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:57

Uh for following the you probably just need this uh to uh communicate.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:04

Like ring ring ying na roll, right? You just need to tell people like a ying na or whatever to pronunciation you have.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:12

Okay, but if the tones are so important, not telling people what they are.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:19

I mean, if you pronounce it in a weird tone, probably people still understand it. Or you can spell it like a Y U and No, that doesn't work at lean this way.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:29

Nope, nope, nope. I'm sorry to say the one thing that is very challenging living in in in China is that if your tones are wrong, people just don't they stop. They don't understand anything. If it's not exactly right, there's no communication.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:43

Well you say it's like you speak in English or you speak in Chinese? I think this is different. Because when you're speaking English, we you we you won't.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:57

I know what you mean. That they think we're saying English, is that it?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:00

But also a lot of people they don't speak English. So the the hard part is the English part, it's not this part.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:06

But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying when when a when an English-speaking foreigner, which is not all foreigners, but when an English-speaking foreigner tries to speak in Chinese, but the tone is wrong or not really good, yes, instead of the the person using the context to figure out which word it is, they'll just completely stop.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:28

And it's it's actually this side, uh the below below part, I think they have they don't think this is uh pining. They think this is in English.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:41

It's not English.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:44

Yeah. Who thinks that really?

unknown 1:27:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:47

Okay, road is English, right?

SPEAKER_07 1:27:49

Okay, road is, you're right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:55

What's the other way to put a ringland into English? The south of the Cloud. You d you don't have an idea, right? So it's just a certain kind of a sparing.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:09

Huh. No, you're making me think about this now. Because yeah, they do have I have to take a picture of a sign now that we're talking about it. I'll put the picture in my Instagram book so you can take a look at it. If you live in China, this is just a standard street sign, but if you don't, you probably want to see it. But yeah, because they have N for north and s for south. That's definitely in English, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:28:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:28

And then they have Yunnan Road R D. So it's an abbreviation even, not even Lu. It's not. So they've got Yunnan, which is the opinion for the characters for the sounds, but then they have road abbreviated in English.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:41

And then M for middle, which is definitely English. It's not zhong, which is middle in Chinese in the wrong town, because that's what I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:51

Uh for example, in in America, you decided to nun a strict after some foreigner, maybe a Chinese. I don't know, maybe maybe a French, or maybe some Native American. You probably will uh dismiss the the accent mark on the on the alphabet.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:22

We can use Spanish as an example because they have some accents on on some of their well, some of their letters have accents.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:29

So there are, especially in California, there are some streets that have Spanish words as their street name.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:36

And they'll have the accents. They'll have their alphabet. Yeah, because there's a lot of overlap between the English alphabet and the Spanish alphabet. They're both using the Roman alphabet. So they'll have that.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:47

But I I assume sometimes people will dismiss the accent or the tone of the marks on the No.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:57

No, they would have it in there because that's the alphabet. The thing is that I think the problem that we're encountering right now is that pinion's not an alphabet. It's a sound system, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:09

Okay. For example, Chinese character. In Chinese we call it Han Z, right? But if you check the Wikipedia, English which Wikipedia is Hans. Or Chinese character, but let's say Hans.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:27

Right. Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:32

Yes. Because it's in English.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:38

But they have keyboards, it's technology. You can import the Chinese um tones.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:46

Same for this. No?

SPEAKER_07 1:30:53

Oh my god. So the street signs are a mess, is what we're deciding.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:04

It it's uh it's not the pining, but it's a certain kind of uh sparing based on some dialect, yeah. Chinese dialect without the tone, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:31:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:22

It's so complicated.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:26

Okay, so my point is when you look at this, you you you're questioning about why Don Lei puts the tongues on it, because you you you uh you see this as a ping, but for us I think we we think this is not it's just part of the English sign.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:44

But in school you learn pinyin to learn Chinese.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:48

Yes. But you still see that as yes and no. Yes and no.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:53

What?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:56

Ping is also a kind of new things.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:59

Yes, it is. Like 50s, 1950s, 1960s, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:02

Chinese people learn Chinese for a long time without pinky. That's true.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:07

That's true, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:08

Well, when I look at one character, I don't know how to pronounce it. I probably can ask a teacher. He knows. He told me like this is yin na, this is just by mouse.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:22

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:26

It has its limitation. Because you need to ask someone. You you you cannot always so ping is is something to help us to uh like search the dictionary.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:41

Like you can pronounce the correct without the hope of others, without the the hope of like apps on the mobile phone, this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:50

So what you're saying is I need to interview people who learn Chinese before pinyon. I really need to up my language skills to do that. Because that would be an interesting conversation to have is to talk to people who learned but they still be alive. People that learned Chinese before the pinyin was there versus people that learned it after the pinion was there.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:13

But that is a long time. I I learned Chinese before pinging, but not before pinging was there. It's before ping was in my life. I mean, like I learned one, two, three, ER S.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:26

I have no idea what pinyin is. I just one, two, three, ER S.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:29

So when did you learn pinyin then?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:31

Uh uh when I went to elementary school.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:34

Okay. Still f fairly early in your education though.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:37

But I mean But back to that time I can speak a lot of Chinese. Right. Right. I can read a lot of Chinese.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:43

Right. So just the characters themselves, not the pin. Right. Of course you wouldn't be reading in pinyon. See, that's the problem. There's also in people learning to read Chinese, there is this question we have of is pinyin making it easier or harder? Because we use it for a while and then we take it away. Uh and there's that pain of it being gone. Whereas if we just started and had the pain at the beginning, if we just started with the characters and stayed with the characters, then would it be easier? I don't know the answer.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:19

I don't know. But that would be. I actually admit a lot of people can speak a word well in daily conversation.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:26

And uh some of them they they know bulking, but some of them they have they're really bad at it being.

SPEAKER_07 1:34:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:35

But they can speak.

SPEAKER_07 1:34:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think what you said about the the spoken form and the written form being very different is incredibly true.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:34:44

It's true on some level for every language, but I think with language that with the script as complex as this, I think it's even more even more of a split um between the two. Okay. Let's wrap up by uh writing. Do you talk about writing? Do you do what languages do you write in?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:04

Most are in Chinese.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:06

Have you ever written for communication purposes in Japanese, French, or English?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:13

Um Yeah, in in Japanese, in English. Uh yeah, I I I wrote a re vote for communication. I could write for communication. I could write write uh write a write a letter or on the uh instant message.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:30

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Any any form is is fine. What would you say was the biggest adjustment coming from writing in Chinese in that platform, like in Zoom Messaging, for example? Um what is the biggest difference?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:45

Um choose the word. It's it's hard for me.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:52

Not just typing it, but actually choosing choose choose the word.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:57

Um because the frequency of the uh of the um the usage of of a of a word. Right. It's a lot of a dictionary they won't tell you. So um in school we learned a lot of big words, but you have no idea this is not happening in uh daily life, right? But you will uh like use it anyway. So it will make your your phrase very strange.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:33

A lot of textbooks, not just in English, but in many languages, a lot of language textbooks use words that aren't used that frequently, and they used old-fashioned words.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:45

And I don't know, I don't know why this pulp's happening. In 2018, I don't know why this still exists, but it's very true. Like I've met a lot of people who speak in what I would think would be language we used in the 1970s, 1980s. It's not wrong, it's understandable, but it does kind of stand out like, huh. That's like things my parents would be saying, not things that people say now. It's interesting, the frequency of language.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:16

But do you think it's it is because the language nowadays changes too fast?

SPEAKER_07 1:37:21

I wouldn't say too fast, language always changes.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:24

Yeah, but before, like before we have the internet and people they live in a small tribe, a small community. So the the communication, the the the exchange of the like new words is not so fast. So it helps to re reserve the I have a few theories.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:50

One of which is that when people make materials for language learning, they think of when they learn language.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:57

And that's already going back 20, 30 years. Yes. So they're in the language frequency clock, they're already going backwards.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:06

Right. And what they were taught was probably what their teacher was taught when they were a kid. So I think part of it is sort of like a language um uh nostalgia or something, where they're picking up language from before because that's what they think should be taught first. The other thing is I just I think a lot of resources use other resources to start making their own materials. And so they're perpetuating the old-fashioned language in a new way. There are people that have started to use frequency in their course books.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:43

Uh thank goodness. They're based, um, there's also some really interesting websites in English that take giant uh uh bits of like, for example, for newspapers, uh Brigham Young University, BYU, in in uh Utah, in the US, they are doing some very interesting things with used language, frequent language.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:07

And so they've got some uh different technologies that they use to make corpora. So basically giant lists of frequently used languages. For example, they'll take, I'm gonna get geeky for a second, sorry. They'll take many, many newspapers and they'll literally count all of the words. And then they'll have a list of the top freak, like it's top hundred frequent words, those kinds of things. So they'll take things from a certain medium. They have corpora from TV, from newspapers, from magazines, from academic articles, and they'll make lists of frequent words within those areas. And they have some for spoken English too. Oh, Coca, contemporary something, something, corpus of contemporary American English. Okay. C-O-C-A. That's a giant list of, I believe that one's from television shows. It's a giant list of frequency, uh frequently used words. But this is still fairly new.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:40:06

And what happens in research doesn't always get into what happens in the classroom. There's a huge disconnect there. But it exists and it's starting to happen. But it's just when does that go into the classroom? When does that become accessible for somebody who wants to start learning at home with a mobile phone? You know, it's just there's that. Anyway, sorry, I had to go from because that that's an exciting part of what could be language learning. But it hasn't really happened yet. When you were learning Chinese for the first time, and you were a child, so I doubt you knew this, but the words that you were learning first were they frequently used words?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:56

Oh, you can say horrible. The words I learned first were they frequently used.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:05

Did you did you hear them a lot outside of the classroom? Did you read them a lot in the things you were reading in school?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:14

I think there's a difference. Because uh it's uh it's a written language and it's a speaking language. So it's not always the case.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:32

Why is it so d yeah. And then it gets complicated because the internet has in English fostered this non-spoken, non-written language. Like blobs and things are written in an informal manner, but not completely informal.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:51

They're in this in-between era.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:53

Does that exist in Chinese too?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:55

I think so.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:56

Huh. So what do we call that?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:03

There's also a lot of slangs, right?

SPEAKER_07 1:42:06

Yeah. Yeah. But not like in in spoken language, you'll abbreviate some words, you'll have really quirky phrases or things like that. But it in blogs, it's not completely like spoken, but it's not formal like written, it's sort of in between both of I think it depends on the style of the author. That's true, yeah, that's true too. But it's a much in English anyway, it's a much uh a much less formal way to write.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:43

Yes. Uh for example, a lot of uh authors they come from uh transitional media but they they open their own blog. For then it's a place they can uh they can write in a more uh more uh cultural way.

SPEAKER_08 1:43:09

So what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:13

When for example when you write an article for for a newspaper or for a journal, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:18

It's uh there's a layer of approval that needs to happen before it gets published, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:25

And also you need to write in a very formal way.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:29

It's not like you talk to someone. If you write like you talk, a blogger is is like your own product, you have the liberty to choose the style. You can still write in a formal way. Yeah. But you can like lose it a little bit.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:49

Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I think that's very similar in English too. Um you can you can go back and forth on how formal and how casual you are within the same piece.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:03

Are you so you uh you're saying a lot of older people are writing blogs? Oh people were you just saying a lot of older people are writing next?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:11

I mean those those people who work for the traditional media, like a newspaper.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:15

Oh, okay. Are they still working for traditional media as their net families come off, or they're they've finished being a journalist?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:23

They can I think it's possible for them to build the blows.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:26

Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:27

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:28

A blogger is just a personal I know that, but you know, in the West we have ideas about how we're we're a little confused on how censored the media is in China. And if they're working for as a journalist in China, coming from a Western mindset, I automatically think anything they do online would be watched.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:52

Okay. I mean, even though um I mean a blogger is a different thing. It doesn't necessarily connect to uh the work. You can you can write something like personal stuff or different topic.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:10

So see that no, that's really good to know because I would still have a certain kind of liberty here.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:17

Yeah, no, but these are the you know how it is, the the farther away countries are, the more you hear only the extreme news. Uh-huh. And uh yeah. So there's just yeah. I'll leave it at that. I don't want to get too political, but there are freedoms on the internet that people uh to fetch might surprise people from outside of China, it sounds like.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:44

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:45

Can they write about anything they want?

SPEAKER_00 1:45:49

Probably not anything. I mean, it's it's not all happened in the US, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:54

So they are brandalized. You cannot.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:01

Even in the US, it's not as free as some people think. So it sounds like in China it's more free there's more freedom of expression than some people think, and in the US there's less than some people would think. There's misconceptions on both sides, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:16

But you cannot only learn the knowledge of a far, far country from the media.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:24

That's very true. And thank goodness for the internet for that, because now we have access to other things that can tell us about those play, those.