Steph:

Welcome to the Changing Scripts podcast. I have been documenting my experience learning simplified Mandarin Chinese on a YouTube channel for the past year and a half offline. I've been having conversations with anybody that would discuss language with me, and I want to get some of those conversations on this podcast. There are some really interesting viewpoints about the Chinese language, about learning the Chinese language, about language learning in general, that I really, really, really want to capture and share with you. My main focus on this podcast is going to be twofold. I want to capture both perspectives. What are those perspectives? One is other people going through what I'm going through, probably further along the line of learning the Chinese language. So I'm going to interview people who are either in the process of learning or in the process of using the Chinese language. Coming from outside of the Chinese language, from a language. It could be English, but it could be other language. Don't worry, the interviews are going to be in English because I have that linguistic limitation myself. But they could be coming from any language to the Chinese language. Okay, so the second perspective is people who come from within the Chinese language to another language. Yes. I'm going to interview Chinese people on their experiences learning languages after their first language. And that is the conversation that is often missed when we talk about the Chinese language, getting the perspective from within to outside. So I want to go in and out of the Chinese language from different perspectives, from people from different languages and those experiences. We'll talk about methods, we'll talk about in and outside of the classroom. We'll talk about usage. Inevitably, we'll talk about pronunciation, reading, writing, whatever people that I'm interviewing are most interested in, about their language learning experiences or about the languages that we're talking about. So there's a whole lot of content that we're talking about here. So these podcasts are going to get long. All of my information are in the show notes and I welcome your feedback and ideas. And if you are learning the Chinese language or come from the Chinese language and have learned other languages, I'd like to interview you. Contact me and we'll hash that out. Let's dive into these conversations about the Chinese language, because that is the point.

Good evening. This is the first time I've had a three person conversation about language learning and I'm super excited and slightly nervous. So let's just go around real quick and introduce ourselves. I suppose I'll start. I'm Stephanie. This is an extension of The Changing Scripts YouTube channel. This is the interview version that is now in podcast form. I have been learning simplified Mandarin Chinese for, let's just say a year to keep it simple. Incredibly slow. Just took HSK2 and most likely failed it, but still progressing.

Yifei:

Hi, guys. I'm Wang Yife. I'm a college student studying here in Shanghai, majored in pharmaceutical engineering. Though I am a student in engineering, I'm quite keen on languages and cultures. I got to know a lot of people by Couchsurfing and also going to those language exchange events. And these have been unforgettable memories of mine. Thanks. Hi, guys.

Phil:

My name is Phil. I've lived in China 4 1/2 years. Originally, I'm from England and I've got like a good level of Chinese. I'm currently a master's student and my courses are all in Chinese, and I didn't know any other languages before, so Chinese is my second language.

Steph:

Awesome. So one of the reasons I wanted to have both of you here is that I've done some interviews of people just learning Chinese, and I've just been learning Chinese. But I've also taught second language learners who come from China both just general English, academic English and writing. But I've never had a conversation with someone who's learned English. And so I thought it'd be fun to get both sides. Coming from speaking English to learning Chinese, and coming from speaking Chinese to learning English. So having said that, Yves, what was your first recollection of learning English? Your first memory of being taught the language or hearing the language or.

Yifei:

I see. So just like most Chinese students, I started to learn English when I was in grade three, I guess, if I remember correctly. So as I was roughly 8 years old, I guess. Yeah. And, well, I don't really like, like that kind of pattern. So when I really get to learn this language by myself, it's when I was around, like 12 years old, I.

Steph:

Guess, in the time that I was in elementary school, we explicitly learned grammar. We like, underlined and diagrammed out sentences and did stuff like that. But I'm told even in Evan's, my husband's generation, that they didn't do that. And I've heard in the UK that there isn't real explicit teaching of grammar. Is that true?

Phil:

Yes, that's true. There's like, none of that. And actually, just yesterday, I had a colleague ask a colleague, he's Chinese and he's learning English, and he asked me an English question, and it was kind of like a grammatical question. And he asked me, do you say, how long have you been learning Chinese? Or how long have you Been learning Chinese for. And I thought about it, and I was like, well, both are okay. Maybe four is more grammatically correct, but basically, I don't know, either's okay. And so he asked, like, what did you learn in school? And so I was explaining to him just yesterday, we didn't learn any of that. Like, our English classes were like poetry, Shakespeare, things like this.

Yifei:

We.

Phil:

We never did, like, when to use an adverb or anything, anything like that. And a lot of the grammatical, like, terms and linguistic terms I've picked up from teaching English in China or via learning Chinese.

Steph:

So would you say. Are you saying that you started learning the grammatical terms when you started to learn Chinese or when you first moved to China, or is that the same time period?

Phil:

It's not. It's not really. When I first came to China, I was teaching English, and I would say there sometimes my Chinese students would ask me, you know, how do I use this in like a. In like the adverb form or something like that? So there was, like, a certain basic amount of vocabulary I just, like, started using and thus, like, you know, got used to using. But I would say really was more. That really got drilled home. And I learned much more, I expanded much more when it came to learning Chinese, for example, like, where do you put the predicate? And, like, I had no idea what a predicate was until about two years ago. And yeah.

Steph:

In third grade, when you started to learn English, did they start by. Do you remember? Did they start by teaching the grammar? Was it more spoken focused? Like, what. How was it taught?

Yifei:

I think it was more about vocabulary. So they just teach you a bunch. They just give you a bunch of memory work. You're gonna have to memorize all the words every day repeatedly. And I still remember I was forced by my dad to remember all those words, and I didn't want to because for a kid, you don't really. I did not really have that much interest in learning English yet. And grammar, they teach you a little bit, but it's not that advanced. It's not like something you have to learn in junior high about speaking? No, I don't think so. Because in my school, in my primary school, that school was located in a very small town. So we don't have that many resources like foreign teachers and all that to just practice speaking with. So I don't think speaking was one of those things.

Steph:

This is gonna dig probably further back than grade three for you. How is Chinese taught to children or to your. To your class?

Yifei:

Okay, so Chinese, there is A lot of memory work for that as well. Because we know for Chinese learning, you have to learn how to do the strokes, and you're gonna have to connect the characters to the sounds and to the meaning. So it's like a three element system, and you're gonna have to get quite familiar with that. So that needs a lot of practice. But you. You practice it in. In various ways. Like, you see the character first and then you pronounce it, and then you use it to make a sentence. And that's one way. And the other way is. Let me see. So you. You compose it an essay using the recently learned words. Okay. So you have some words that can be used to establish a sentence, and they're scattered apart on the paper, and you're gonna have to pick them out and then connect them using one line, something like that.

Steph:

How is this done in a classroom setting when there's 20 or 30 students in a class?

Yifei:

Oh, we have 60, actually.

Steph:

60 students in one class.

Yifei:

Yeah. That's normal, actually.

Steph:

That's quite a big class.

Yifei:

I know, right?

Steph:

How are these things done? Like you said, there's the sound and then the writing. Certainly every student can do that, no matter how big the classroom. But how do they practice pronouncing the words if there's that many students?

Yifei:

Probably the teacher is just gonna ask you to stand up, and then you. Okay, so you pronounce this word. Okay, I'm just gonna pronounce it. And if it's correct, and then you will let you sit down and nod, and then you are gonna have you punished slightly.

Steph:

A slightly unfair comparison, but let's do it anyway. Phil, how did you learn? You took classes in China, right?

Phil:

I took classes at university. Yeah. So I studied one semester at Nanjing University. I just paid for that. And during that time, I found out that there was a chance to get a scholarship to the masters, but I had to have a certain level of Chinese. And you had to be able to demonstrate that you. You were ready, basically. So I applied for that. I was able to get it. And they provided a year. A year's worth of Chinese tuition, sort of first. And then if your Chinese is good enough, then you start the masters. So I did three semesters in total of Chinese class.

Steph:

You did three semesters and then you had the level to get into a master's program in Chinese?

Phil:

Yeah, I can go through how we were taught, but, like, no disrespect to the teachers or anything.

Steph:

Sure, sure.

Phil:

But I wouldn't say it was taught like, in a Very effective way. I learned much more in my spare time really. Or having language partners.

Steph:

Teachers have a lot of variables kind of set up against them with class size and resources and curriculum and deadlines that are ridiculous and all that kind of stuff. So I understand those parameters. But what were the things that you think they could have done in the classroom that we're in?

Phil:

I really enjoyed my first semester and I learned a lot in my first semester because that was when I was going from pretty beginner and I got to like sort of lower intermediate. I think that's where in learning a language the classroom has the most value in those kind of levels. To answer your question, I really don't think given certain constraints there was anything a teacher could do because I, I just naturally the way I learn is I, I study for like 25 minutes and then I need to get up and walk around. I need, I need that kind of physical movement. I can't really pay attention to just one person talking all the time. If they're addressing 20 or 30 students, I would want like a small group, for example, and I want to be able to contribute. I can't listen for too long unless I'm really into the subject. Or I can, I could do for one day for a conference, but I won't want to every day. And that'd be the equivalent of like a full time job is like listening. So these kinds of things, like how many students per class when we have break times, aren't things that are obviously controlled by a teacher. So under the constraints they were that the classes were held under.

Yifei:

I really.

Phil:

Don'T think there's anything they could do.

Steph:

Are any of these problems similar to what happened in your elementary school when you were learning English?

Phil:

Everyone's different and the way they learn. But the way I learn, I need to get up, move around, be a bit more physical. I also need to talk or interact in some way and not just listen. And so when I'm in that environment, it's not the best environment for me to learn anything. I do switch off, I do get distracted. I just. And then everyone's wasting their time. So I guess it was that.

Yifei:

Okay. My primary school, I think it's just the opposite of what Phil wants. Feel I was depressed. Well, for all the courses it's the same way. You have to complete a certain amount of tasks within a day and that's, that's something you have to do. And in a class, you usually. One class will last for like 45 minutes. You're gonna have to Sit there, put. You cannot move your arms, you cannot gaze at other people. You're just gonna have to gaze at the teacher, listen to her or him talking for 45 minutes. No matter how sleepy you are, no matter how uninterested you are, you're just gonna have to pay attention because the class is, you know, it's connected with your score and the teachers and parents are all focusing on that.

Steph:

So a lot of pressure. So it actually sounds like the language classroom was very similar, even though it was teaching children English, teaching adults Chinese.

Phil:

Well, it would be, I think, because you're talking, you're talking about the lower grade education in China and then learning Chinese in a Chinese university. So it's the same educational institute. It's the same. Like it's not a setting. Right. It's Chinese education.

Yifei:

Okay.

Steph:

So if I may, I will throw in my. Some of my language attempted language learning in the US at university level. Well, I can throw in high school, but that feels like it's too similar to these contexts anyway because high school is very, very rigid in the US Extremely similar to your elementary school. Yeah, it's really, really. At least. It varies. It varies. It's a big place. But my high school was extremely strict. But in my university, I took Italian for one or two semesters, in Spanish for one semester. And still, still I feel like I relate to what you guys are talking about in the language classroom. I feel like it was a lot more listening to them talking about the language or using some of the language. But maybe for me, or in general, very fast or very much so. Exactly. Like it's in the book where you didn't really need the teacher to do it. You could have gone home with the. At that point, this wouldn't even have been a cd, probably would have been a tape at that point. But that's not the. So it was a lot of listening. Instead of using it to communicate or to interact like you were talking about.

Phil:

That's the idea of what a class is, is so ingrained in people's minds. I think just generally around the world, if you were to ask someone to draw a scene of a classroom, they would put a board at the front, they would put a teacher in front of that. They'd probably put maybe a teacher's desk and then they would put many desks with 30 to 60 students sat there listening like we. It's not, it's not like one country's idea or anything or cultural thing.

Yifei:

It's.

Phil:

It's just the way people think of Education it is.

Steph:

So if we could reconstruct the language classroom only into a way that would be useful, what would that look like?

Phil:

I have opinions.

Steph:

Yes, yes. And feel free to build off each other.

Phil:

If I was the educational institution, I can do what I want, then the first thing I'd like to throw at is you can't control the outcome. If the students are not interested, they're not motivated, this won't get great results, but neither would anything else. What would be best is, I think, to replicate the kind of scenario that a child has. So the environment a child has is a fact that they grew up with their mother and father. And your mother and father, as well as being your role models, are also your language teachers. So they only speak to you in one language normally, and that will be your mother tongue. And they accompany you everywhere. Pretty much. You spend all day with them. They always speak to you in this language. And they tone, they tone the language down to your level. So if you don't speak any words, they will constantly be repeating. I'll say things to you that are really simple. As you get better, they just like will bring that level up.

Yifei:

Right.

Phil:

So that if I could, if I had the money to pay two people I get along with to, I know, accompany me just like everywhere. And maybe like one of them takes me one day, one of them takes me another day. So I get like two different personalities and talk about two different things.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

Let's say it's Chinese. Even so, like my Chinese is okay, but there's a lot of room for improvement. So they started speaking to me at a level just above where I am now. And when I'm, you know, going into really deep stuff, they're going into really deep stuff with me and still using vocabulary the higher. So I'm not constantly like learning. And if it was a completely new language, then they don't speak to me in English at all. And they start with the words for like friend, teacher, I guess is the equivalent of like mama. But here in this scenario, in that in the target language and we work up from there.

Steph:

So sort of like a language learning nanny kind of.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

When you think about your parents, that's basically what they're doing.

Steph:

Right.

Phil:

So that's why kids, when they go into primary school, they already have like a pretty decent grasp of the language. And there's certain mistakes that no child makes in their mother tongue.

Steph:

Right.

Phil:

And there's lots of mistakes they mind. They might learn new words, more appropriate words, but general sentence structure, like really quickly they have it like perfect.

Steph:

Well, it's not really quick. They have about two to two and a half years of no output at all or just sounds, but no actual words.

Phil:

Sorry. Yes. And I do know that when I said really quickly, I was more thinking.

Steph:

When they start to produce the language.

Phil:

Yeah, I was thinking the rate of improvement is.

Steph:

Yeah, no, indefinitely. I like the idea of language learning. I need so much throw in more writing for me though. I want someone to sit down and play with the writing. What would your ideal scenario be?

Yifei:

Okay, from my experience, I think the classroom setting can be helpful as well, because when it comes to questions about grammar, I think the knowledge I gained at classroom is really helpful. I was helping a guy from Switzerland to understand some Chinese sentences. Those sentences are not to be found in some general books like novels and. Or in some. Or on some TV drama programs. So you need to speak to. So he needed to speak to me. I could just use the knowledge about subject, verb, various forms of verbs and objects to explain the structure of sentences to him. That way he could just understand the sentence better. So I think it's helpful in that way. And about speaking, I think we need to get out of the classrooms. Because how I approached Speken was by speaking to tons of people from different countries. I was basically just searching for people online from different countries. There's the software popular in China, which is called QQ. I started to use it when I was in 12, and then I moved on to some other softwares and. And then I explored websites like Facebook and all that. So the more people I talk to, the more confident I felt. And I think a better approach to help yourself learn speaking better is by typing to people first. Because typing allows you to think or ponder on certain grammatical rules or sentences for a while, and then you type them down and you can correct their mistakes. You can just incorporate what you learned about grammar into your writing and speaking. Well, speaking is like a step forward. But I want to stress the difference between speaking and typing. When you speak to somebody, you tend to think very fast. You cannot just say, okay, let me think for a while. I want to make this sentence real, perfect. You can't. You just need to drag whatever is on your mind out of your mind and to express that. So I think, okay, I have some other ideas about speaking as well. So to establish a better environment for speaking, maybe online classroom can be helpful. That way you can get to communicate with people from different cultures. That's one way stimulating the way I learned English, I think. Yeah, so that's basically my deal.

Steph:

So it sounds like you're saying that speaking, it's more important to keep going in the conversation with speaking, whereas with writing the grammar might be more important and going back and fixing it.

Yifei:

Yes.

Steph:

Is that about right?

Steph:

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 this Chinese language and have learned other languages, either perspective is greatly. Actually both perspectives are greatly appreciated on this channel. Let's have a conversation, let's tape that sucker and let's get it into this podcast. Contact me and let's etch out the details on how to get you and your valuable language learning experience onto this podcast. All of my information is in the show notes also all over social media except Facebook. I am Stephen Fuccio. 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.

Phil:

I definitely agree that typing is to like a native speaker is really useful for practicing the grammar points. And that's probably where like you're gonna, without realizing it, practice like 50 times saying this thing and then you just, you just know it and like feels effortless. But what, what would you do if you were me and in Chinese, the rate of my like learning has slowed down a lot. And it's not because things are particularly hard because it's, it's because there isn't really difficulty at this point.

Steph:

It's simply you've gotten to such a high level.

Phil:

Well, the problem I have is all the things I learn now can't really be used in like daily life context so easily. Or for example, if it's like a particular grammar point or a certain phrase or something, it's just going to be very unnatural to just drop that in all the time. So I was just trying to think of one. I was thinking of like, you know, like an adjective plus so you could.

Yifei:

Be like I see.

Steph:

And what does that mean?

Phil:

It's just like extremely and then the so extremely good instead of like especially good.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

So like because it's such a, it's, it's natural that first you learn like hunha. That's very normal to learn and you can use that all the time. And then Toby ah is like a little more advanced than hun because it's the degree you use it less often, but you do still use it all the time. Same with like Fei Chong, you use it all the time. But then, like, I don't hear people saying Qila that much. I don't see it written so much. I do see it written, but like, not nowhere near as often. And so I don't think to use it or like, when I think, oh, I can use it here, I kind of think, is this gonna sound a bit like, exaggerated? Like, it's not really like, how to. It's just like, really, it's just like, ha. But like, there's this conflict of like, do I want to sound like a normal person or do I want to actually practice Scrangpoint? So what would you suggest in that sense for like, all these different things that are not so common, but you still want to practice them?

Yifei:

When communicating, I just say, force yourself to speak to the local people whenever possible. Because I think the environment really matters. Since now you're in China, you can maybe in this. Okay, it's not a good idea. I was thinking maybe going in the subway and then just grab somebody and talk to. But maybe on campus and also some language exchange events. Is it easy for you to find any Chinese language partner on those language exchange events?

Phil:

It's really easy to find language partners. I think Shanghai is a bit different because I work full time and it's a very big city, so I can find someone. But we often they've been at different ends in the city. So to go and meet, we've met in the middle, to be fair. And I finish work at 6:30. I meet the person at 7:30. We do like an hour of English, an hour of Chinese. So the one problem is, like, it's very tiring. And the second thing is it's a lot of effort to just get one hour of Chinese in, because one hour of Chinese is not going to help me now. There were times when after one hour of speaking Chinese, I would feel really tired, but I felt really good because I got to really try to work out my brain. Now I feel like an hour in 20. It. I'm really getting into my real level. You know, it's almost like the warm up takes that long to switch now. So there's that. But then also, like, even though you, like, speak to a lot of native speakers again, this thing of like, all these things I'm trying to learn now that are slipping from my memory really easily, they're not commonly used by native speakers.

Steph:

Okay. The English teacher wants to come in.

Yifei:

Yes.

Phil:

How do I.

Steph:

There is. Oh, I don't. I don't have an answer for you. I have a story. So when I Taught English in a number of different countries, not just in China. There were various textbooks that did a similar breakdown of what grammar they would teach at what level. At elementary, you taught present simple. At elementary level, you would teach present simple. You teach present continuous, usually in that order. And then when we got up to like an intermediate level, we teach present perfect. And then when you got really advanced, we teach really, really not often used, not commonly used grammar. And inevitably what would happen is that when people got to the intermediate level, especially in places where it wasn't that common for people to be very fluent in English, when they got to the intermediate level and they started to learn these grammar points like present perfect, which we use, but we don't leave use as much as people wanted to practice. So what happened is after that class when we'd use present perfect. And I try to draw timelines and give context of when you would use it.

Steph:

Now what?

Steph:

Have you ever been to Zara store? Headway Intermediate for all the English teachers listening, if there are any. Sorry. There was a whole chapter of have you ever been to a Zara store? And the students would want to answer in present perfect for the entire conversation. But you wouldn't. You'd say, I have. And then you go into present past simple. And you'd say, I went there when I was 20, or I went there last week. But they want to stay in present perfect because they wanted to practice the lesser used grammar point the whole way through the lesson. But it's not natural. It's not what people, how people speak. So I don't have a solution to your problem, Phil.

Phil:

One solution would be I just knew.

Steph:

Yeah.

Steph:

If it's not used that much, do you need a lot of practice using it? I guess it's more of the question.

Phil:

Yes, because it's. It's not really. It doesn't matter how often it's used or not. That doesn't change how much. How many times. I need iterations. I need to practice for it to stay in my memory. Let's say it's like twin ends true. And it's the same I same 20 times. To learn something like mayo, which is used all the time. So you're gonna, you know, or something like tilo, you know, so the times when those two things are gonna come up naturally in a conversation, obviously mayo. I learn in a day, you know, and dealer, it can take like months. And it's annoying because I'll. I'll hear it two or three times. I'll use it one time in a week. And then. And that's three times. And then it's not used for three weeks and then it's kind of slipped in my memory and it's this. I feel like there's this comment. This is often thing of like there is not a concentrated week, say where I'm always using it and I could obviously just speak a bit weird Chinese and do this. The problem with that is that after that week, if I don't use it for like six months, it's still gonna just go. Yeah, like, so how? Like being able to. That's just one point.

Steph:

It sounds like a time space, repetition kind of moment where you need to consciously bring it into your life whether it happens in conversation or not.

Phil:

Yeah. And the crux of it is that for it to just naturally occur, like come into my memory and just be like, oh, I'll use this.

Steph:

Oh, no, I mean you consciously studying those things those 20 times until it happens, but that studying, not just using. And you're at the point where you're just using a language. So that probably feels awkward.

Phil:

It feels awkward and it definitely feels slowed down because it's 20 times for one point.

Steph:

Right.

Phil:

There's a few hundred things.

Steph:

Right.

Steph:

Remember, is there anything in English that you find is the same? Like you know it but you keep forgetting it because you can't. You. You don't use it a lot.

Yifei:

Yeah, that happens a lot. Since recently I've been preparing for the GRE task and those words, I don't use them often at all. So of course if I, if passed the test, I would just forget all those words, probably.

Phil:

What test is it?

Yifei:

Gre.

Steph:

The graduate test for American universities. Yeah. The English language vocabulary on there is insane. The vast majority of it is really unusual, not unusable, very, very rare, even in academic English.

Phil:

I've seen toefl. TOEFL vocabulary.

Steph:

No, this isn't, this isn't for language learners. This is just the graduate test.

Phil:

I know. It's just like saying that reminded me of the time when I saw a TOEFL vocabulary list and I was like, half the words I didn't know.

Yifei:

I still want to get back to the question you just raised. It though is the crux of your concern is that you can worry about how you will perform when you use those words you want to use. Is it just about that you are kind of worried about your performance?

Phil:

It's not that. It's having a beginner at an intermediate stage, having learned something and then thinking like, oh, this is really cool. This is really useful. I'll use this now is great. Being at the advanced stage and being told all these things or find or reading a book or like now I just read, like, books and magazines in Chinese. So like, every article I read, there'll be like a few things and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And now like, I was reading a finance magazine the other day and I can't. I can't even remember what it is now that I read, but it was. It was cool. It was like dividend. Dividend. The word in. No, I can't remember what it is. It's like, if you. It's like the payout for. I think it's that. I think it's junction, but something like that. I'm not going to use that word. So I know that now it's kind of on the edge. I've almost forgotten it and in a few days it's probably gone. So it's an. Imagine that. But for a thousand or two thousand words and grammar points and all this kind of stuff. So this is all the stuff that when it's in my active vocabulary, my Chinese is going to be great. I can talk about finance and talk about AI, whatever, but because they're not common terms, unless I was specifically trying to find someone to talk about finance.

Yifei:

Or something, maybe establish that kind of environment for yourself. Read as much. Read as many books like that as possible.

Phil:

That's true. So, like, stick to one topic.

Steph:

Yes. In that specific area, there's an amazing.

Phil:

Podcast of a guy who. He actually tries to help. Help. You'd probably be interested in this. He tries to help people learn English. Finance English. Like style English. Because he reads the Economist. An article in the Economist.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

And he goes through it in Chinese and then he goes. It says it in English and he goes through. And he translates all the key, like, finance words.

Steph:

Wow.

Phil:

And I love it because I. It's the. It's reverse engineering for me. Like, I hear it all in Chinese and then I hear it in English and I hear the key terms. So that's really great for me, actually. So, yeah, listen to that. And then mix with just finance things for a month maybe is.

Steph:

Yeah.

Yifei:

Maybe also use those words to maybe write a lot. Maybe some trays on Italki. Like I can create like a dialogue or a discussion, and then people are just gonna follow up with a lot of comments and then you can reply to those comments using those words you just learned. Really?

Steph:

Yeah, that's a really good point. Like creating that community to use that language.

Yifei:

Also maybe you can try to use Chinese to explain certain questions to other people. You can just say, okay, I want to help you with your English. And then you can just talk with him or her. Using Chinese all the time. I mean, it's not like something you're trying to take advantage of. It's more like, okay, using Chinese, it can actually help him or her understand the things I want to express better. And that way you get to practice this language as well.

Phil:

That's true. Maybe I should just teach English. But I'm gonna be like, okay, teach.

Steph:

Very low level learners. And you'll have to use a lot of Chinese.

Phil:

Yeah, there you go. Because often, like you have the Chinese teacher and you have the foreign teacher and the Chinese teacher is just doing that.

Steph:

You could be both of those. Exactly. Or you could charge double.

Phil:

I don't think they get paid the same, so I don't think it's double.

Steph:

Yeah, but yeah, no, that's, that's a really good point. Or forums or I don't know the Chinese equivalent. But there's a lot of websites like Quora Q U O R A which are very topic based and people ask questions and then they'll answer and stuff. And they're talking about that category.

Yifei:

Yeah, they really answer questions. Seriously?

Steph:

Yeah. So is there a Chinese equivalent to that? Kind of.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Steph:

Okay.

Yifei:

So do you know that I'm not advertising for them?

Steph:

No. Oh no, no, no. We have no funding. Don't. Okay, we're fine.

Phil:

Yeah, I use droohoo quite a lot. Yeah, yeah, it's useful. So I do do that. I actually do the reverse quite often. Like if I need to find something or if I need to like see a Chinese word. If I'm actually on a laptop as opposed to just at home on my phone. Yeah, I'll use dribble because I'll like get the, the explanation in Chinese. And then that's what we've seen in fact, for any language. Like using the dictionary in the target language is like super cool.

Steph:

I've heard that. I look forward to that level. To be fair though, language erosion is a real thing. Yeah. It's not just for your additional languages. It happens in our own language too when we don't use. I mean, you can grow up talking about something and if you don't talk about it for years and years and years, you go, what's that again? You know, you have, you've had those moments probably in Chinese too, where you forget a word for something or a category of something or the name of a TV show or a person or something. If you don't use language, it like a muscle kind of deteriorates, but you can keep it by doing little workouts. That's.

Phil:

I was probably answering my own question, but it requires motivation. But the other thing I thought of is I should really start like a blog that's purely Chinese and then write about what I read this week.

Yifei:

Okay.

Steph:

Would you do it in two languages or just in Chinese?

Phil:

I guess. I guess just in Chinese. Yeah, I guess just in Chinese. Because I wouldn't be doing it. I'd be doing it for me. I wouldn't be doing it for an audience.

Yifei:

Right. Also, you can just write, you know, WeChat moments every day. And if you have a lot of WeChat people are just gonna comment on. And I, because I have a few friends who have been learning Chinese and they, they do this frequently. Like there's this guy from Germany and wow, he's amazing. He's been just reading a lot of Chinese books, though they are kind of childish, but you get to learn the basic Mandarin Chinese. And then he just used the words he learned to create a sentences to post something. And he also just retrieved, let's say, just obtain the information he gained in daily life. And then he memorized them and then he put them into his composition.

Phil:

That's a really good idea. I hate social media, so I would do a blog.

Steph:

Okay, wait, isn't blog kind of a social media.

Phil:

No, because it's like long form. I have to spend hours on it. I post out. And the thing is I wouldn't care about the reaction.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

Whereas social media.

Yifei:

The money to be.

Steph:

A dog and not a word doc.

Yifei:

But how are you gonna interact with those other users if you're gonna have to.

Phil:

I don't know if that would be. I don't know if I would care. The reason our word doc is because I would like to have it online somewhere so I can just go to anytime or show people.

Steph:

Fair enough. Okay.

Phil:

Yeah, but like something like updating moments.

Steph:

It'S just, it's too short for what you're talking about.

Phil:

It's too short. And also people, like, people would naturally, like, comment and that means I'm. I have to spend more time on my phone and I don't know.

Yifei:

Okay.

Steph:

Okay. Yeah, but the longer form would force you to use the language.

Phil:

Yeah, I prefer just sitting. I mean, the best, the absolute best would be to write out the whole thing with a pen and paper and then somehow scan it in. Because like writing characters is fun. And that gets eroded as well. If you're just.

Steph:

I've never seen a block like that. That would be interesting. You could just take a picture of it and upload.

Yifei:

No, for real. I guess.

Speaker E

Yeah.

Steph:

That would be so cool. No, I've never seen a blog like that in any language. I've never seen somebody like, handwrite and then post that. That would be really cool.

Phil:

Trademark for Lip Nintendo.

Steph:

There you go. But yeah, if that helps you remember more, then that sounds like a good way to go.

Phil:

Well, I have to take the HSK6 before I graduate.

Steph:

Oh, my God.

Speaker E

Which.

Phil:

No, like, I mean, the big thing about the HSK6 is that I hear the reading part is really the most troublesome because it's. I just use the word troublesome.

Speaker E

I've been into it.

Steph:

It dives into literature and poetry, doesn't it? That's what I've heard recently.

Yifei:

Really? Poetry?

Steph:

Wow.

Phil:

I don't know about poetry. I've just heard that. I mean, there are like 100ish chungus you need to know. Oh, sorry. Idioms. Four character idioms.

Steph:

Okay.

Phil:

Which, like, you could have an hour long debate as to how, like, often idioms are used. Really? Some people say they use it all the time. But certainly, like, they're just things. You just have to learn the meaning for these hundred.

Steph:

Sure.

Phil:

Because they will come up and they'll be tested on.

Yifei:

That's fair.

Steph:

But.

Phil:

But reading is my strongest skill, so I'm not so worried about that. The hardest thing is gonna be the writing section because it's so easy. I took exams last year and they're just like, you get your paper and you write out during my master's course. And everyone around me is just writing because all my. All my classmates are Chinese. And I would get stuck on like a character like, like xue sheng de shang or something like that.

Yifei:

You just use Pinyin.

Phil:

Oh, God. Like, I just can.

Steph:

You do?

Yifei:

I think so sometimes when I forget something, I just do that.

Phil:

So they're all. But they're all like in a course.

Steph:

And you send it in like that.

Yifei:

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

Phil:

Because Chinese people really rarely are gonna forget how to write. Especially like university students won't because they're just used to writing all these papers. So I'd sit there, I'd be like, God damn it. And I'd lose like three minutes trying to remember the simplest character.

Steph:

I forget how to spell stuff in English. Do you ever forget how to write a character that you're thinking of?

Yifei:

I do sometimes when I Look at a character. I don't even know how to pronounce it anymore. It's like staring at something that is so alien.

Steph:

Yeah. So I don't. I like the idea of handwriting it and taking a picture and putting it on the blog, but this is your creation, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think you may have answered your own question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, when you re listen to it, you can make a note of all the suggestions and things from there. Let me save this one.

Phil:

And then motivation.

Steph:

If you're enjoying this conversation about the Chinese language and would like to participate. If you're studying in the Chinese language or if you come from the Chinese language and have learned other languages, either perspective is greatly. Actually, both perspectives are greatly appreciated on this channel. Let's have a conversation. Let's tape that sucker and let's get it into this podcast. Contact me and let's etch out the details on how to get you and your valuable language learning experience onto this podcast. All of my information is in the show notes also all over social media except Facebook. I am Steph Fuccio. 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.

Steph:

Motiv is absolutely, positively the biggest thing ever.

Phil:

But you can hack motivation by just forming habits.

Steph:

You can. And trackers. Having a tracking system. For me, having a tracking system and noticing that I did it this many days, this many hours, this many words that keeps with numbers, that keeps me going. For me, everybody zip it to.

Phil:

You know about bullet journals, right?

Steph:

Yeah.

Yifei:

What is that?

Phil:

It is like keeping a diary, but it's designed to be a diary that helps you to be really productive and form habits. So it's kind of an amalgamation of the two. It's a diary and it's also what Steph was talking about. Where you track for like a month, you make a little table and it's like these on the rows are like different things you want to do. And then each column is a day and you tick off the days you did it in the next where you didn't.

Steph:

It's very individual. Here are some visuals. People have so many different ways of doing it. There's a lot of color that people use, a lot of charts, a lot of lists, a lot of. I've watched videos on people doing their bullet journals.

Yifei:

This is like a learning method, basically.

Steph:

But like a whole book of different tracking. Tracking methods. Yeah. For me, it's too confined. I need Loose papers. Because my ideas change too quickly. And so when I see people doing it in a, in a solid book that they keep going in the same book for a month or two months, I get my commitment phobia just goes crazy. And I'm like, I can't do that. I would rip out that page and then the whole book is ruined. And to commit to that color for that thing on that day, I can't because then the next day I want it to be green instead of pink. And yeah, it's. It works for a lot of people.

Phil:

Yeah, it doesn't work for me either. No, I tried it for a solid three weeks and I was just like.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

Because it feels like more admin work than just to do the damn things.

Steph:

I do the organization, but I do it on loose paper. And then I put them together very non committally with like a binder clip. Ah, the binder clip, the binder clip. They're together, but they're not committed. Now it's the, in the other room. But they're not committed to being in the same book the whole time. Like I can't, I can't do that very well. Yeah, things change too much too often. What do you guys do to keep yourselves motivated in learning languages? Sorry, we haven't even gone past English. What other languages have you dabbled in?

Yifei:

Espanol, Deutsch and a little bit of pork. Portuguese. Actually all of the languages I mentioned. I just know a little bit about them. Probably a little bit more about German.

Steph:

Yeah. What did you find the hardest going from at that point? You had. Had Chinese and English and then German. In that order?

Yifei:

Yeah.

Steph:

Okay, so what was the hardest part to go into German from those two languages?

Yifei:

I wouldn't say phonetics. Phonetics really a lot of fun. Grammar. Okay. Yeah. Grammar is not something. Okay. I really, I really hate about those things about and such grammatical terminologies and you have to learn how to, how to apply them into your daily usage. I don't have that much time for that. It's not like primary school. I can just practice them every day. I'm now in college, so I have a lot of schoolwork, so I cannot stick to my plan. And once you cannot stick to your plan, you're just gonna feel quite disappointed.

Steph:

So how, going back to motivation, how do you guys keep motivated? What do you do to keep going forward with your languages?

Yifei:

I may answer this question first. Go for it. Sure. How I keep myself motivated. Okay. So whenever I talk with foreigners, I just feel. I just feel really excited and happy because I feel like I'm, you know, communicating with people from another culture because I think it's relevant, it's related to my childhood. I'm from a really small town, so we don't get to. We don't get to see a lot of foreigners there. So I really wanted to see what's outside. And that is. That is one of the reasons why I chose to come to Shanghai to study. And now I'm here and I met so many people, and I feel like, wow, this is amazing. I want to explore what's outside of this country. So that's why I decided to go abroad to study.

Steph:

Sorry, where are you from?

Steph:

What town?

Yifei:

You mean Province? City.

Steph:

City then. Province, sure.

Yifei:

Hanzhong. Shaanxi, China. Oh, wow.

Steph:

Okay.

Yifei:

Yeah. And. Well, that's close to Xi', an, by the way. Xi'. An. Xi'. An, where the terracotta warriors are.

Steph:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shanxi profit today.

Yifei:

Yeah. And amazing, amazing food. Yeah, really like that. Okay. I just think it's too greasy. And whenever I think about my friends, because I have friends from different countries, I just picture the moment when I can sit around the table with them, maybe dining together. I will definitely make that happen someday. And I also want to travel to their hometown to meet them in person. And I also did couch surfing for the first time ever lasted winter. So that was quite exciting. So I want to keep going with that in the future to explore other cultures. So during the whole experience, languages function as tools for me to get to know other people and, you know, explore different cultures. So the more languages I know, I feel like I'm armed better with more knowledge. And that fulfills my goal of becoming more cosmopolitan.

Steph:

What keeps you going?

Phil:

The thing that keeps me motivated, the biggest thing has been to depersonalize it.

Yifei:

Wow.

Steph:

That is completely opposite. And this is what I love about language learning, is that it's so different.

Phil:

So, like, this, this is for Chinese, but it's for, like, everything. So like I said, I wake up before I go to work. I code for two hours in the morning, then I work, then I go home and I work out. Then I do yoga, then I study Chinese. And the way I. The way I've built up, like, each thing is like, I tried a lot of different methods and I was just trying for a long time to be more productive in a day. And I'm really happy where I've got to now. But I did it by. The biggest revelation was that it's not like motivation is not something I have it's something that just happens if I follow a series of steps, and I. If I didn't follow these certain steps, which I know what they are now, I would stop doing those things and I would go back to watching YouTube or just whatever. And if anyone else followed those steps, they would get the same result. So completely taking the whole idea of motivation and realizing that it's not. Not anything specific to me, it's not something I have. It's something that, like, exists in my life because I follow certain steps. That's it. And it's like that determines how quote, unquote, motivated I would be. So, yeah, that's.

Yifei:

That's really it.

Steph:

I am smacked up in the middle of both of you. My motivation is to. To read, to get into people's thoughts after they've refined them. So it's kind of the communicative thing, but after everything's all cleaned up and super organized. But I need steps to get me there, because to read at that level in another language takes a really. Especially with the Huns of characters, takes a really, really, really long time. So I need mini steps to get me there, like, two or three years from now.

Yifei:

And that's not. That's not something I'm good at. I'm not good at, know, keeping with the paces.

Steph:

But you've got that motivation to communicate with people, and people are everywhere. Yeah, it feels like on this side of the fence, it feels easier to have your motivation than mine, but the grass is always greener. Coming from English to Chinese, what was the hardest bit for you? And I think we talked about this in a previous interview, but, yeah, I.

Phil:

Don'T know if I said the same thing. Like, okay, nothing really difficult. Like, I don't. Again, like, with difficulty. It's a similar sort of thing of, like, I used to think that, like, in terms of hard and difficult, Hard and easy things, and now that I'm actually doing the things I always wanted to do, part of getting to this stage was realizing that, like, easy and difficult, like, they're. It's gonna sound very cliche, but they're just labels. Like. But what I mean is they're very.

Steph:

Like.

Phil:

They'Re very shallow labels. They don't really mean anything. Like, the best definition of difficult I find is, like, something that people call difficult would require many steps before achieving it. And something that's easy requires very few steps.

Yifei:

Right.

Phil:

So, like, for you, reading a Chinese book would be very difficult because you would have to go through, like, all this, like, learn all this vocabulary that would require all these steps. And reading one sentence would be easier because maybe there's several words you don't know, but you just have to learn several words. But then it's just a matter of scope.

Yifei:

Right?

Phil:

So, like, if you would, like, read a book and then just zoom in a little to see every step and then go down into one of those steps, there comes a point where it's. It's. This difficult task is just a bunch of easy tasks. And it can be really easy tasks. It depends, like, how, like, on your scope and how, like, deep you want to go and how much you want to zoom in. Because ultimately, like, reading it's again, gonna sound like a cliche, but like reading an entire book in Chinese, if you zoom down to the lowest level is, I guess, learning one character at a time. And how easy. Or is it to learn, like, one character? It might take a beginner 15, 20 minutes or like two days? Like 20 minutes one day, refresh the next day for 10 minutes, but two days, 30 minutes there they've got that character.

Steph:

Okay.

Phil:

And it's basically just going from that. So wait, what was the question?

Steph:

What is. What was the hardest thing? Going from English to Chinese, what was the hardest thing for you? It sounds like from what you said before, it might have been the. The ability to use the less commonly used stuff might be the hardest thing.

Phil:

The. So the hardest thing. Yes, that. That's the problem I'm having now. I'd say, like, what would have made it easier? Easier. This goes back to, like, what would my perfect learning environment be like? Having someone around me always to correct me and to, you know, chat with whenever I wanted to about a range of topics. So that was the hardest thing. That's not specific, like English or Chinese, because if I learn another language, I'd like the same thing. But that's not, you know. Yeah, that's not an inherently difficult part of the language. That's just like the thing that was. That took the most time was finding people. That's an environmental factor. So if you can fix that.

Yifei:

You'Re.

Phil:

Gonna learn really quickly, I think.

Steph:

Well, that is a big factor in language learning, is finding the right teachers, whether they be one on one or classroom or online or what have you. Finding that right connection to learn the way you need to is a big factor. Yeah, yeah. Going from Chinese to English. Do you remember? Because it was quite a long time ago, or even where you are now with the language other than the gre, because that stuff is great.

Yifei:

Can you give me a few Specific points to talk about.

Steph:

For me, because I'm concerned with reading and writing in Chinese, the lack of spaces between words is monumental. It's been over a year, and I still curse every time I don't recognize something because I don't know how to look it up, because I don't know if it's one, two, or three, or even four characters in one word.

Phil:

I can. Can I just put in and say, like, you definitely get to a point where you master that.

Steph:

That's. That's very awesome. But for me, at this point, that is by far the biggest thing coming from English where there is spaces between words, to Chinese, where there isn't. That's still. I can't wait to get past, actually.

Yifei:

They becoming similar sizes.

Steph:

What's that?

Yifei:

You mean the Chinese characters, Right? It's hard to separate them apart. Yes, but they come in, you know, similar sizes.

Steph:

The characters do, but the words don't. Like, you have one line with four or five words and no spaces.

Yifei:

Okay.

Steph:

Because a word can be one character, two characters, three characters, maybe even four. Are there more than four at HSK3 we haven't got.

Yifei:

Are you talking about radical?

Steph:

No.

Yifei:

Characters. Character is just like. And then two strokes forming a character A. And then the two strokes are radical. No, actually, there's only one radical.

Phil:

Not at the stroke level. She means it like the word level. So, like.

Steph:

So, Daisy.

Yifei:

Jen.

Steph:

Zai. Zai is its own word or can be. Right? My tones are completely awful.

Yifei:

Wait, what are you talking about?

Steph:

Zai.

Yifei:

Zai.

Steph:

Like, I am here. Zai.

Yifei:

Okay.

Steph:

I'm still. I still remember you saying to go deep down in my throat when I say wo, because I can't say word. Zai. Zai can be its own word. Right, but then gm.

Yifei:

A word. Word. A what word?

Steph:

A word.

Yifei:

No, there. There is one word word in between. You just said I. I am here.

Phil:

Yeah.

Steph:

Okay, so wo Tsai. Can you say it correctly?

Phil:

Wozai.

Steph:

That.

Yifei:

Oh, that's right.

Steph:

It can be. Yeah. So I. Whatever. M Here.

Yifei:

Whatever.

Steph:

I. That's one word. Zai is one word, right?

Yifei:

Yes.

Steph:

But then is that the same Zai Xianzai. Yeah. Yes is a word. But it has zai in it.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

Oh.

Yifei:

Oh, I think I know what you're talking about.

Steph:

So. But there wouldn't be so many. It could be its own word, or it could be connected to the things around it. And without spaces. It's a big block for me. Coming from English, where there are spaces between words, punctuation at the end of the sentence. This is me coming from English to Chinese. Do you remember anything when you started learning English or even now when you're reading or speaking that really. That you're constantly to going. Going, oh, I did that again. Like, that you. You're struggling with at all.

Yifei:

Okay, so before, I don't really think I had any trouble learning English because I mostly just really enjoy it. But right now, since I'm, you know, getting. Getting to know or getting used to those academic materials, they can be a little bit troublesome. Sometimes the sentences are quite complexly structured, and you need to read one sentence over and over again, and that's frustrating. And sometimes you cannot even understand what it means even if you read it multiple times.

Steph:

Is it the vocabulary in the sentence or how the sentence is formed, or that it's so stinking long with 20 commas or.

Yifei:

I think that's the problem the, that the longer it gets, you tend to forget what was said previously, and it's harder to form the intact idea of the whole sentence. It's not like Chinese sentences tend to come into pieces, but English sentences.

Steph:

What does that.

Steph:

What does that mean?

Yifei:

Like, I can give you an example. No, I can't, actually.

Steph:

Are they usually shorter?

Yifei:

Yes, that's what I meant.

Phil:

Okay, I. I'm feeling so good about this because I'm having the exact same problem in Chinese. It's really nice to hear, like, because for me, obviously, like, reading English, I'm like, I know it can be done. I know you can read everything in English, and it just makes sense. So hearing someone who's not quite there but on the way really gives me hope for my Chinese, because I know, like, for you it's the same. Like reading Chinese, it is possible to get to a level of Chinese where it's like, everything just makes sense, really. And someone learning Chinese has the same problem that you just mentioned. So how it comes across in Chinese is you can read, like, every character in the sentence. You know what every character means, but you don't know what their sentence means. It's the same sort of thing, really.

Yifei:

Is the causal factor the same as mine?

Phil:

I'd say with. So it's a slightly different. Because that's. Say, with yours, it's more like Chinese grammar is a bit simpler maybe, and maybe, like, how things. I. I have seen some weird, like, completely correct but strange, like, English sentences which I would listen to or read and I think makes sense. But then a student would ask, but why isn't it this. And they would have this different interpretation of the sentence. Yeah, that I would never think of. But I'm like. But when it comes to, like, why is it my interpretation and not theirs? It's really difficult sometimes to. To know why. Because I'm like, yeah, you could read it like that. It still kind of does. Like, there is a logic there. So I think in English, like, because of the grammar structures, maybe in just certain sentences, there's maybe two or three kinds of logic you could take and get two or three different interpretations. And for someone learning English, even at a high level, it's, like, hard to know which one exactly. They mean, like, who's the subject? Or something like that.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

Whereas in Chinese, the problem is.

Steph:

You.

Phil:

Know, all the characters, but two characters together form this word you've not seen before. Or like, these four characters are chengyu or something like that. Or like, this is the name of a company or something like that. So you read it and you're like, I don't know what's going on. And then you find out the end. The end four characters are chengyu and Chinese idiom. And three characters are like a company name.

Steph:

So it's more vocabulary than length of the sentence.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

If you recognized. Usually. Yeah, I'd say 90% of the time. Yeah. And then there's 10% of the time where it's like, you actually know every. You could translate the thing into English. Okay. So, yeah, this happened, like, two days ago. I could translate the whole thing into English, not a problem. But I was like, what are they actually saying? Yeah, and it was like, if you order rice, it was on element. I was ordering to go. If you order a rice. No, if you order. If you order, like, a meal, you can only order a maximum of 2 rice. I read it, but, like, I just didn't think that that's what they would mean because it seems like a weird thing. And so I asked my colleague, who's Chinese, and he was like, are you excited said that? And I was like, oh. And as soon as he said it, I was like, oh, of course. That's exactly what that says.

Steph:

What was it in Chinese? Do you remember what it said?

Phil:

Something like. Something like that. But the thing is, I'm simply. What I'm doing is I'm not telling you exactly what it was. I'm definitely trying, like, in my head, coming up with something that makes sense in the way my level of Chinese, what they said was, like, all the same characters, just a slightly different way. And it really, like, threw me because I was like, I just.

Yifei:

Wait, by way, you mean the way they pronounce them, like the stress and the tones.

Phil:

No, no, it's because. No, because this was text. It was text. I could read every character. They were all using the same characters I just used. It was just like, in that moment, my brain couldn't quite get to, like, that's what they mean. I guess because I just didn't expect that that's what they mean.

Yifei:

Have you encountered the similar wording before? No. Okay, I think that's the factor. I'm gonna raise an example question to you to see if you understand it. Okay, wait here.

Phil:

That's really interesting. So if I was to translate that, even though that's all like simple characters, say it once more. Like something like you went once.

Yifei:

Didn't.

Phil:

Didn't you know, they like, he or she was real.

Yifei:

And what if you. You perfect. You try to make it more. More perfect and you interpret it into English. What does it mean to you?

Phil:

Oh, like, so the scenario, like, the scenario, the overaround scenario I would have would be something like you met. You met someone on like a hookup app, and you were going to meet them, and then they weren't like, and then they weren't real. And then you came home and then your friend said to you, like, oh, no, you've already.

Yifei:

You've.

Phil:

You've. You've been to meet them. Like, I don't know, like, it would be something like, like they were lying about their appearance or something like, in what way are they, like, real? So, like, wow, those two meetings are super different. Yeah. I don't know. Something like, you, you went and met them. You've already been to meet them. Didn't you know they were real? I don't know.

Steph:

What does it.

Yifei:

Actually, it's a way of asking in reply. What? Asking in reply. Like, you don't have to answer the question. I already stated what I meant. I already implied what I meant. So you notice that there's this word in their sentence, right? So this sentence is actually equal to. Does that make sense to you right now? Right.

Phil:

So that makes way more sense. If you, if you go and try, you'll just. You'll know whether or not they're real.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Steph:

So.

Yifei:

So I think it's about some idiom usage.

Phil:

And again, that's gonna be less common. So that's why I know the second wording more than the first wording. It comes up less. So then I really should learn that. But then, like, trying to use it. Maybe trying to use it. I could use it. But, like, the amount of times. I'm gonna see it in a month or something.

Steph:

Right.

Yifei:

Interesting.

Steph:

Oh, language is so complex.

Steph:

It's amazing.

Steph:

So sometimes that communication happens at all.

Phil:

I really want to find the example now. Yeah, you. I mean, I'm gonna think a really random example, but you see an advert on, like, I don't know, an app, maybe.

Yifei:

Let me replace the first verb with more with a better one.

Phil:

Right. So I'm selling you this phone and it's only 5,000 kuai. And you're like, like, oh, 500 kuai kuai. And you're like.

Yifei:

Actually, it's not a bad. Selling something maybe like, just try though, right? Yeah.

Phil:

So like.

Yifei:

So try to see if the thing is really as it stated.

Phil:

Yeah. So if I was like selling you a phone. I was trying to sell you a phone, it's like Wu Bai Kuai Kwai King. And then I, the sales guy could.

Yifei:

Say.

Phil:

That's really weird. Oh, it's weird because, like, the thing is with Buu.

Yifei:

Why weird?

Phil:

Because Buu has got such a. Like, it's so stuck in my head. It's like so freaking. Like, it's got such a.

Yifei:

Where does that come from?

Phil:

The way you learn Chinese. So like HSK1, like the very beginning you learn is like, no or not or negative. Same as mei mei. So when you're now using it in a way that doesn't have. Yeah. That doesn't have a negative spin. It's like really hard to pull to, like, not hear the ball and be like, okay, the next thing is going to, like, be, like, negated, basically. So that's the thing.

Speaker E

It's.

Phil:

I think that's the main thing. It's like the thing that will trip someone up, like me or like anyone learning Chinese is these things, words that you learn really early, really common words, and they definitely mean this one thing. And they just mean this, like, one thing or like, not, you know, something really common. And then you get advanced and you're like, oh, that bull.

Yifei:

Yeah, yeah.

Phil:

It can also be used here. And it doesn't mean that thing. That's. That's the trick.

Yifei:

It's actually a question raised by my friend today and I try to explain to him that way. Yeah, it's a bit tricky.

Phil:

I'm definitely gonna save this on my phone. Oh, I can order for the next three minutes from this place, but I don't want to. I really hope I don't click order. I have to pay anyway, so I won't. But I just wanna. I just wanted to see If. Right. Qing Qing just means like deer.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

It doesn't say me fan, but it's like for the me fan, so it's okay.

Yifei:

Yeah. What? Oh, okay.

Steph:

Where are you. Where are you pointing to?

Yifei:

Sorry.

Phil:

So it's the. The mifan. It's got this like.

Steph:

Right.

Phil:

It's not a name, it's just saying like. So it's saying like if you order for every vet, if you order a vegetable, you can only order two rice. But I guess because it doesn't include the word. I don't know, there's something about.

Yifei:

It's something. Let me check it out.

Phil:

I think it was the. Was like, like I expected like.

Yifei:

Yeah, I think that's more natural. I think it's ill structured.

Phil:

Right. Okay.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

But it's still like okay. I mean, it's still okay Chinese, right?

Yifei:

Well, because most of the words are correct.

Phil:

Yeah.

Yifei:

That one shouldn't be here.

Phil:

I think so. I don't know, is it my Chinese or is it their Chinese? Like, like. But yeah, so that really all those characters are super simple. I can, I can tell you, like words for all of them. It's. So it was.

Yifei:

It can be said this way or.

Phil:

Both of those I can totally understand.

Steph:

Right. So is it. Were they restricted to a certain amount of characters for that app or something? Or was there some sort of constraint where they couldn't write all of that?

Steph:

Maybe.

Phil:

I don't think so.

Steph:

I don't know.

Phil:

They just want to see every character. Yeah.

Steph:

Oh, it's more characters than any.

Phil:

Just where they use xian. Xian is like xian driven. It's like to control.

Yifei:

I think it's about there being lack of knowledge about the right usage of Chinese.

Steph:

Sometimes mistakes happen. Just because you're a native Phil:oesn't mean you're perfect in the language.

Phil:

So just so we're clear, my Chinese is fine and the Chinese person wrote bad Chinese and that's where I got confused.

Steph:

But it can happen to anyone, anytime. The next number of errors I've seen. Yeah. Anyway, are you. You should be. Yeah. I was confused because it's confusing.

Phil:

Yeah, I was. Because it's not a hard thing. I was like, wow. When. When I got told what it was.

Yifei:

I was like, maybe that guy is just too lazy to correct it.

Phil:

And sorry, what was the grammar point? Right.

Steph:

Now the trick is you have to let them know that that's wrong. You have to like send them a message on WeChat.

Phil:

They're gonna get some L. Smart ass LI. Be like, excuse me, do you not.

Steph:

Have a Chinese name on your WeChat yet?

Yifei:

I do.

Steph:

Well, then he won't know.

Phil:

I also have, like, a foreign face and a name.

Yifei:

Phil.

Steph:

Ah, okay.

Speaker E

That's.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

And also, like, it's a.

Yifei:

It's a very.

Phil:

Like. Even for a Chinese person to do, it's very arcy, I think.

Steph:

Yeah. But if it's causing confusion. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, final thoughts on anything we've talked.

Yifei:

About something about reading. So I'm not a good reader. I never enjoyed reading books, actually. So I want to know. I especially have this problem when I read some passages. I just cannot go on naturally. I tend to go back to previous things very often. Even if I'm reading Chinese. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe I have dyslexia.

Steph:

For me, I write all over what I'm reading if I can. If it's on a paper form, I'll write questions. I'll circle things. I'll underline things. I'll highlight a specific word here and there to keep me focused. The more boring something is, the more I've written on it.

Yifei:

Oh.

Steph:

Actually, the more boring something is and the more exciting something is. I'll have writing stuff in between. I'll just read and not remember. But, yeah, I try to interact with it. And that might work for you, since you're very communicative verbally, maybe viewing the text as somebody to talk to. Do you know what I mean? Like, asking it questions. When you hit a point and you're like, that was confusing. Like, write a question about it.

Yifei:

Yeah, I would do that.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

I think for reading, there's two. You can go. There's two different moods or two different modes you will, like, be in. If you're anything like me, which is.

Yifei:

Kind of.

Phil:

What would the word be? Like, sometimes I read broadly, sometimes I read deeply. And the difference is that if I read broadly and I'm in the mood where I just, like, want to read an article or something, so I just read it and I have, like, a pen or a paper, and I always like to do this. I always like to buy magazines because they're cheap and they're paper, so I can write on them and stuff. And when I come across what I don't know or something that was confusing or, like, interesting, I'll just underline it. But that's all I'll do. I won't do anything else. And I'll just keep reading because I'm reading just to like, read more. I just want to read the whole thing.

Yifei:

But that's not going to help you build your vocabulary, right?

Phil:

So maybe on a day, different day, maybe after that, or maybe on a different day when I'm in the right mood to go deep, I go back to the thing, and I'm not. I don't really read the passage again at all. I ignore the passage. I just, like, look at the underlying things, and then I, like, add them to a word list or write the translation or something like that. Like, I'm focusing just on these, like, words that I've, like, seen. And I am very, very rarely, if ever, like, in both moods. I either if. Because before I would. I would do that. I would go through a passage slowly by, like, underline a word and then, like, write what it means or write something or write it in my notebook. And I just got frustrated because I wasn't doing either of the two things I would want to do. Like, neither was. Neither was satisfied because oftentimes it was more. I wanted to read broadly. And I'm like, God, like, I need to understand. Underline, like, two words every sentence. So I'm like, no, my speed's really slow. And I found that out later on. Like, I can read, like, the whole article in 30 minutes and enjoy it and keep. Keep with it. And then later on, like, I do have a time when I'm like. It's almost like sometimes I feel like one's less mental efforts. Other times I feel like the other's less mental.

Yifei:

Did it happen to you when you initially entered college? I mean, in college, I bat. There are a lot of words you didn't understand English as well, right? No.

Steph:

Are you really gonna say no? What did you say at university?

Phil:

I'm gonna say that because I know.

Yifei:

In American universities, students are asked to do intensive reading every week, like, hundreds of pages.

Steph:

Material depends on your disposition.

Phil:

This is. This is perfect. You've set me up perfectly. I'm gonna say that British universities in general are much easier than American universities in general.

Steph:

But you guys dive in deeper into your subject sooner.

Phil:

Yes, but that doesn't matter. I mean, I was. I never, in a single word, read a book, say. And I hear that, like, a lot of even standard courses, you would sometimes read a book or two or something like that.

Steph:

Tons of reading every week in every subject. Yeah, yeah, but how. How you read them would vary depending on the subject, the task, how many other things you had to do in your classes, and how things you read as a person in general. And how much you liked it. So there was a. There are a lot of things to consider. Before you did that specific reading for that class. Did you grow up reading for pleasure?

Yifei:

For pleasure. Pure pleasure.

Steph:

Look at this.

Steph:

Look at his face.

Yifei:

I just told you I'm not a good reader. I don't know why. I just don't really have that much interest in reading.

Steph:

Awful reader.

Phil:

I love reading math.

Steph:

Awful. Awful.

Yifei:

Smile.

Steph:

Slow, easily confused. I'm slightly dyslexic, but I love the worlds in the books that I read.

Yifei:

I have the kind of feeling. But it's hard. It's quite hard for you to, you know, jump into one book you're not familiar with.

Steph:

Yeah, but after the first few chapters, it gets easier.

Phil:

Now I'm reading. I'm actually kind of getting bored of it. But I'm reading Santi, which is like a sci fi novel and it's three books long.

Steph:

You read it in Chinese, right?

Yifei:

Yeah.

Steph:

Ever since the Internet came, I'm reading in book form a lot less and listening to a lot more content.

Phil:

The reason I brought this up was to go back to like British university education.

Steph:

Yeah, yeah.

Phil:

Way easier. Way easier. Because if I.

Steph:

We read entire books every single year in high school and wrote essays for our tests and. And term papers. I went to a very weird high school.

Yifei:

I think GRE is just designed for you guys.

Steph:

This could explain my score.

Phil:

If I could whistle, then I would. I would whistle rather aptly though.

Steph:

You can't whistle. Oh my God. We're learning so much about you right now. Do you think there is one language learning method that works for everybody or do you think that it is very individualistic?

Yifei:

I think it's more like a repto where you can choose from like, I have a lot of equipment and you're gonna have to pick the specific one. Suitbook for you. Like for me, I prefer speaking more. So I combine Internet with my English. Learning more. And if you prefer reading, then probably more books in the library.

Phil:

I think it depends on your goal. So like, if you want to learn to speak, then the thing I mentioned before, having like a native Yifei:lways around who is paid or somehow coerced in to like constantly helping you, giving you all the attention you want. You're gonna be fine. It's the environment more than anything else, I think is the thing. It's not like something you do.

Steph:

The environment more than the method.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Steph:

Is there a difference between the two?

Phil:

Yes. Because the method, for example, could be. Let me think. I'm sure there's a really bad way. Yeah. So like just increasing your vocabulary by not applying it, but by simply like trying to memorize a dictionary. That is, I presume, not a good way. You would, like, learn meanings of words, but you wouldn't see them in context. You wouldn't see any grammar. So that's a terrible way. Really. If that's a bad way, then there has to be a good way. Right. So.

Steph:

But is there one way for everybody?

Phil:

I think so. This is the thing. If you split it into like reading and you split it into speaking. Okay, speaking. Anyone who wants to get good at speaking, I would say would benefit from the environment of having a native speaker who also help them. Because it doesn't matter like, like when you make mistakes or if you make more mistakes than the other learner. The point is you are just gonna both learn really quickly. For reading graded readers, start off with reading something at the beginner level and work your way from there. So English, there's a lot of resources, and also Chinese, there's quite a few, like different books.

Speaker E

You can.

Steph:

There's not until you hit 3, not until you hit HSK 3. There's a lot of stuff at 3 and above before that it is really boring or not really graded.

Phil:

Ah, yeah, corrected.

Steph:

Yeah.

Steph:

So sorry, but that was a painful thing to learn. But it's also a niche in the market in case anybody's interested in making materials for Chinese language learners.

Steph:

If you're enjoying this conversation about the Chinese language and would like to participate. If you're studying in the Chinese language or if you come from the Chinese language and have learned other languages, either perspective is greatly. Actually, both perspectives are greatly appreciated on this channel. Let's have a conversation. Let's tape that sucker and let's get it into this podcast. Contact me and let's etch out the details on how to get you and your valuable language learning experience onto this podcast. All of my information is in the show notes also all over social media except Facebook. I am Steph Fuccio. 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.

Yifei:

I think the idea of creating English vocabulary tends to. You guys really tend to group up meanings a lot like san, froid or minuscule. Such words that you don't use often, but there's this nuance in between. They mean different things, but that's also what's beautiful about them. You group up, let's say A, B and C, these three elements, you use them to form one word. Okay. So this time I choose A and B to form the word, the word 1, and BC the word 2. And next time, AC word 3. So that causes the nuance. And in Chinese, I think we tend to use long sentences and line expressions to express that kind of complex ideas.

Steph:

Are you saying it's the word order?

Yifei:

Not word order. It's like I'm trying to explain why there are so many English words. I think way more than Chinese characters or Chinese words. Do you think so?

Steph:

From what I understand. Oh, are you raising your hand? Let me say one thing before you do that. And we might overlap here. From what I understand, because of the history of the English language, a large portion of our grammar comes from German and our vocabulary comes from French. So a lot of English words aren't technically English, but we've taken them and used them. And now we have a lot of other loan words as well, but they.

Yifei:

Can mean different things, and that's what matters. I think.

Steph:

Some can, some can't. Depends on the word. But that's true in Chinese, too.

Phil:

There are.

Steph:

There are words that have multiple meanings. Oh, so many.

Yifei:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Phil:

So I'll step in here. I think in general, it's. What you're saying is. Well, you're asking. So I think that generally, English does have, like, more words that are really similar and just have small nuances that are different than Chinese, but Chinese does. And for words that are not in English. So the only example I can think of, I can't actually remember both words, but replace is one word in English, and it really just. We just use the word replace. But in Chinese, there's. I'm gonna. Is it zhanti or dai. Ti. And then there is another way. Right. So they're both. If you look in a dictionary, they both mean replace. And I remember the, like, nuance difference. It's very blissful.

Steph:

Nuanced.

Yifei:

Yeah. There's nuance in between.

Phil:

Exactly. So what is the difference between those two? They both translate to replace, but what's the difference? Thank you. Yes.

Yifei:

I think it's about when you use them. Yes. I cannot really tell the difference in between, actually.

Steph:

Okay. I replaced my phone. Which one would you use for that sentence?

Yifei:

I replaced my phone. I think what I told. No, you can't. You cannot replace your. You cannot be used to replace your phone.

Phil:

No, no. Like, maybe you had a phone and then it got lost, so you needed a replacement phone, so you went to replace your phone.

Yifei:

Okay.

Phil:

But that's a very English sentence. You wouldn't really say that. No, because you're saying replace. What you mean is buy.

Yifei:

Really?

Phil:

Right?

Yifei:

Yeah. I would just say, what about.

Phil:

I know that you guys keep going because I know the answer, so you guys keep going.

Steph:

I don't even know these two words in Chinese, so I'm not even a participant in this one. But I'm trying to think of something that we would replace. So you wouldn't replace the car, you wouldn't replace your clothes, you wouldn't replace. What would you replace?

Yifei:

The cane's been replaced by someone else. Cane.

Steph:

The cane.

Phil:

Strong.

Steph:

Wait, did you ask the question that you were going to answer?

Phil:

Well, it's because I. I thought of it and I wanted to see if you know the difference. Because it's like this example of nuanced Chinese words. Thai is used to be like is. Oh, now I've gotten the English word. But like dai go go is to buy, right? So if you're a daigo, you're the. You're the person who goes somewhere to, like, to Japan, say you'll buy something for someone and bring it back for them. Okay. You're called it a daigo.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

So it's like in place of some. Something else or in place of someone else. Okay, so dai tea means to replace, but it means when you. It refers to the result. The difference is the result. So when you replace and use dai tea, it means you're replacing something for something else to act on behalf of the original thing. So dai tea you would use if, like you need to go to a meeting but you can't make it. You're sick or you're ill or you can't make it that. So you can say like to me, like can. Like there. You would use dai T to replace because I'm fulfilling your function. Whereas if it's something like we don't have this object, we can use something else. It doesn't have the same function, but it's kind of like the next best option. Or it's something. It has like a slight. It's kind of different in some way. That's when you'd use the other one to. That would be the other case of the thing you're replacing doesn't necessarily have the same. Same function. It's not meant to act the same as the thing that's been replaced. It's just like swapping out.

Steph:

See, from an outsider's point of view, what I'm seeing here is that you guys are picking up on interesting parts of the language that you're learning that people who just grew up with it wouldn't notice. And you've both done that with the other language. And that's very, very interesting because you're. I think you're talking about. When you were talking about the word more words, do you mean, like, more syllables within a word, more sounds within the language, or do you mean more words in general?

Phil:

No, I think what he's talking about is this. Just the opposite. So, like, there's more cases of this in English where you have three English words translating into Chinese, just one Chinese word. So for someone learning English, you're like, what's the difference between these three words? They all mean the same thing in Chinese, and there's these nuanced small differences.

Steph:

So in English, is it that we use the specific vocabulary? In Chinese, they use something else within the sentence to be that specific.

Phil:

It's that in English, more often, we have words that pretty much mean the same thing.

Steph:

Right.

Phil:

But as native speakers, we just know when to use one instead of the other.

Yifei:

In Chinese, it's the same.

Steph:

Yeah.

Yifei:

Sometimes when I try to explain why. Okay. Some people are just gonna ask me, why don't you use this word here? I'm like, I. I don't know. But we just don't use that here. It's just about you.

Phil:

So is that. That wasn't what you meant with English more words? Because I thought that's what you were going for.

Yifei:

I think so. I think. I mean. I mean, like, this phenomenon happens in English. English as well.

Phil:

I think that's what I was going for with the new ones then. That made me think, like. Because in Chinese, you. You sometimes can flip it, like we did just then.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

But it's. It's kind of less common. Like, more. More. Yeah, there's. There's more, like, nuanced words, I think, in English.

Steph:

So what is in. How does it, the Chinese language, deal with that kind of nuance? Does it have anything within the sentence to get that specific meaning?

Phil:

Yeah, well, the context. Or like I just mentioned, like, if there's two words that mean replace.

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

A native speaker just knows how to use it.

Steph:

But we're talking about within the sentence, what is there. You're saying in English, it's the word itself. It could be this word or this word or this word, and we know the difference between. But in Chinese, if there's less words to be that specific, it's the characters.

Phil:

Right. So they mean replace if you translate them into English. But the way that you can know the difference if you're learning the language is by the key. Is the dai there what dai actually means when you use that dai, it's.

Yifei:

Like maybe something like this. So in English, there's only one word replace, but in Chinese, there are two words. So what causes this amount difference? Like.

Steph:

But we do have substitute, not to throw a wrench in it, but substitutes basically replace, isn't it?

Yifei:

Yeah, or maybe. Why? Okay, so there is this nuance between. And there is. There are some other types of nuance between the synonyms in English. Why are the nuances different?

Phil:

Oh, it's just because the ideas. So, like culture? Well, all words just. Yeah, it's just all the words. Any words in any language, they are trying to express some idea. And so obviously two cultures never, like, not connected for thousands of years, will not have perfectly aligned ideas and concepts they're trying to get across. So that's. That's why.

Yifei:

Yeah. Perhaps this is also why it makes it harder to. Sometimes it translates something.

Steph:

Yeah, definitely. Because if you don't have the concept for it, how do you put words to it?

Phil:

Here's a perfect example. Yeah, painful. Like is really, like, pretty commonly used. It kind of means like. Well, the translation into English sounds really weird because it's like admire is the best. It's. The translation is admirer, and we never say I really admire him.

Yifei:

To me, I would just translate it that way.

Phil:

That's how. That's the correct translation. But I think someone who's like a professional translator would probably would not use the word admire and would use a much more colloquial. Much more like native sounding way. And so they're like. There's this thing of like, that's definitely like, the concept is different. Like, that concept in English is very protected and very rarely used. Whereas in Chinese, the. The idea is slightly different and the.

Steph:

Words just HSK3 Tai Tai is in there. My tones are off again. How it is defined in my vocab list versus how I hear people use it is totally different. How would tai tai. How would you explain tai tai?

Yifei:

Perfect.

Steph:

Thank you.

Yifei:

Another. Perfect.

Phil:

So tai tai just means wife, Right?

Steph:

Does it.

Phil:

Wait, here's the thing. We only have the word wife in English.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Phil:

And in Chinese, you have like, lao po and tai Thai.

Steph:

Okay. I don't know.

Phil:

Yeah. One's more formal, one's less formal.

Steph:

Okay.

Phil:

So you don't really say tai Thai.

Speaker E

Okay.

Phil:

Because it's. It just sounds really formal. You say lao po. And so that is. That's a perfect Example, okay. One word in English, two words in Chinese.

Steph:

I've also.

Yifei:

Tie.

Steph:

Tie in multiple contexts. Not just one person with them referring to it. Like, in English, we would say. At least in American English, we say, like, women who lunch, like a very. Like, housewives that have. Whose husbands have a very good job, so they go and do, like, charity events. They go to lunch with their friends. They have a very comfortable financial existence. They might have a driver.

Speaker F

They might.

Steph:

You know, they're very comfortable. Well, I've heard Tai. Tai being used that.

Yifei:

Yeah. More richer.

Steph:

Yeah.

Steph:

Yeah. I don't know. Is that.

Yifei:

I think so. That word does give me that kind of sense.

Steph:

It does, yeah. Okay. But that's not what's in my HSK book. So I saw that. Wait a minute. That's one of those instances where it's that. That nuance. And why isn't that taught is because it's only a certain part of China that that's thought of like that or a certain economic class. When people say that, I don't know.

Speaker E

I don't know.

Yifei:

Probably maybe in some TV series, they tend to use that kind of language a lot. And when they use that kind of language, that the appearance of a rich woman appears, and then you tend to connect these two things together. That's a suggestion. I don't know.

Steph:

And how long does it take take for that to happen? For that to reach the learning materials and to change the meaning? Right.

Yifei:

So, yeah, some statistical work.

Phil:

I can throw another, like, absolute curveball in here also, like, set phrases.

Speaker E

Yeah.

Phil:

And just. So I just thought of one which is like, whenever you have a meeting or anything, it's really just the way that everyone is gonna, like, start the meeting for a lot of things as well. Not just meetings, conferences.

Yifei:

It's.

Phil:

They're gonna say, go away.

Yifei:

How?

Phil:

And it means like, hi, everyone. Because it's like. Yeah, it's just like, hi, everyone. But, like, in English, you would probably. If you're in a conference or anything like that, you are in a meeting, you'd probably say hello, and you probably wouldn't say everyone. Because saying hi, everyone just for some reason, it. It could be okay, but, like, often just sounds a little like. You just don't need to. You just say hi. So there. There's like. That's a. That's a simple translation. But, like, what. What the hell?

Steph:

I have another one.

Steph:

I have another one. So I don't remember the Chinese, but I was reading a book, Little Soldiers, written by a journalist who was from. Her parents were Chinese. But she grew up in the US and she came here, she put her children in kindergarten in China. And so she was watching them go through the Chinese education system. And there was a competition at the school and the local Chinese parents during the competition were really like cheering for their kids and they were saying the equivalent of add oil.

Yifei:

Yeah.

Steph:

Yeah. And that struck me is very funny because we would just say go, go, go, go or something like that. Like very obvious, we want you to do this, so go. But instead here it was add oil, which is a very different.

Phil:

Yeah, yeah. So when that's the thing, like if you're in a class or if you're translating between these two, do you say like when someone asks you what does jayo mean? If they. If do you say add oil?

Steph:

Yeah.

Phil:

Which is just meaningless. English doesn't ridiculous. Or you say like go, but it does not mean, like chew.

Steph:

Not directly translated mean go. But that's what. When you would use it.

Phil:

Yeah, I mean it's all sorts of.

Steph:

Except for if you were actually cooking and you meant add oil.

Phil:

Yeah, I've made that joke before. It's a really like, bad joke. Like I've been cooking with Chinese people. I've been like, oh, okay.

Steph:

And they're like, wait, that's a totally different context. That's not even funny. Did they find it funny?

Phil:

I don't think anyone finds it funny because it's just such an obvious joke. Yeah, like, I'm sure like 2 year olds or 5. Well, data counts. Being 5 year olds would like say that and think they're hilarious.

Steph:

But it feels like you know something when you know that.

Yifei:

Right.

Steph:

If you can remember it like you remembered it.

Yifei:

Now I think you go.

Steph:

Gentlemen, thank you so much much for coming and doing this tonight.

Yifei:

Thanks for inviting me.

Steph:

It's been super interesting.

Steph:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Changing Scripts podcast. Again, this is a sister project with my own language learning vlogging on YouTube, also called changing Scripts. So come on over and take a peek at that again. If you are learning the Chinese language or if you're coming from the Chinese language, learning another language. I'd love to interview you for this podcast. Please feel free to contact me in any social media way that you see fit. Go ahead and contact me and we will hash out how to get you on the sound creation known as the Changing Scripts podcast. A lot more is coming your way soon.

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