Chinese American in China on Cantonese, Mandarin, and the Emotions of Language Learning: S7E1

Liv is in an interesting language experience right now. She grew in New York City using Cantonese with her Southern Chinese mother and some Mandarin Chinese with her Taiwanese father. She then picked up Spanish and English in her diverse NYC environment. She has traveled extensively and has learned a few more languages along the way. But it is now, while living and working in Shanghai, China, that she is faced with a myriad of language AND cultural obstacles that she feels the most challenged by.

Original publication date: June 16, 2018

More: https://linktr.ee/stephfuccio

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:05

Welcome to the end of the documentary. I've been having a conversation with anybody with me. I want to get some conversation. If you are learning the Chinese language or come from the Chinese language and have learned other languages, I'd like to interview you. Let's dive into these conversations about the Chinese language because of that. So thank you, Liz, for joining us today for this conversation about language learning and the Chinese language. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_08 2:35

Sure. My name is Olivia. I am from New York City and also from California, but also all over the world. Spent some time, about two years in India, took a year off, went and traveled, started doing a travel blog. And then now I am in Shanghai, China. I am an international school teacher, also teaching yoga. I love words, I love to write. That's huge to me. And I've learned languages all my life.

SPEAKER_07 3:12

Well, let's dig into that. What is your language learning background? Like what would you consider your first or your your first language or your first language is?

SPEAKER_08 3:21

Sure. So my mother tongue growing up was Cantonese. And the reason for that was because my mom didn't speak English. She immigrated to the US when she was in her 30s, and she met my dad, who was from Taiwan, who knew Mandarin. And so growing up I spent most of my time with my mom and I grew up speaking Cantonese. In school, I was learning Spanish before I even knew English.

SPEAKER_09 3:53

Awesome.

SPEAKER_08 3:54

Yeah, because I lived in a very um awesome neighborhood of Brooklyn in the 80s. And yeah, I was learning Spanish before I even knew English. Taking my mom to the grocery stores, showing her labels and um kind of being a translator for her in the world. And then from there I ended up learning Spanish in a little bit when I was in New York, but also a little bit in middle school. I studied about three years of Spanish, loved it. I especially loved hearing the accents, that was my favorite part. Despite being, you know, the only Asian kid in my class full of, you know, white kids and Spanish learners and also other kids who already knew Spanish. I had the most perfect accent out of everyone, and I loved it. I just, I don't know. It was great. And then from there I went back to New York City and I studied Mandarin for about three years. Ended up going to college and studied Mandarin there as well. I always kind of encountered roadblocks and felt like I didn't push myself to where I needed to be with Mandarin. I think part of the reason why is because I was comparing my language learning experience of Chinese to Spanish. And Spanish for me just flowed. Whereas Chinese didn't, and I wasn't as interested in it. Um I guess maybe because it's not like a Latin-based language.

SPEAKER_07 5:34

I have just a passing familiarity with the differences between Cantonese and Pudonghua. But was there any interference when you went from Cantonese to Mandarin? Is that possibly one of the roadblocks?

SPEAKER_08 5:51

Um I think the grammar between Cantonese and Mandarin is quite similar. Okay. Uh when I was learning Mandarin, all my teachers often said to me that I had sort of a Cantonese um twang or a Cantonese flavor to the way I spoke Mandarin.

SPEAKER_07 6:12

Well that makes sense. You came from the Cantonese language into Mandarin, so Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 6:17

But I really loved it. I really loved that it was like slightly different from other other people's Mandarin.

SPEAKER_07 6:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well let's let's dig into so is that all the is is that all I have one is that all the languages we're talking about? Is Cantonese, Spanish, uh English, and Mandarin?

SPEAKER_08 6:32

Um I also lived on an remote island for about six weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and at that point I'd been dating someone who's Portuguese. Yeah. So I knew a little bit of Portuguese and I ended up learning Tetan on the island of Atauro in Timor Leste and having Tetan lessons, which is wonderful too.

SPEAKER_07 6:51

Tet how the heck do you spell Tetan?

SPEAKER_08 6:54

T-E-T-U-N.

SPEAKER_07 6:56

Awesome.

SPEAKER_08 6:57

Okay, yeah. Beautiful language. Wow. Really cool people.

SPEAKER_07 7:01

Yeah. So you definitely have an affinity towards learning languages. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 7:05

Everywhere I go when I travel and try and learn a little bit. I think it makes a difference with the locals, but it makes a difference with yourself too, in terms of like how you see your world and how like comfortable you want to get into it. And you make a decision to learn a language or to attempt to learn a language, you're really just stepping in there.

SPEAKER_07 7:29

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, let's let's dig into them in chronological order as best we can. Um, Cantonese was mostly spoken in the home, correct? So how do you have any memories of learning or using a language as a child? Yes. Is there anything that stuck out as a part of a language that you like to play with or a part of the language that you struggled with?

SPEAKER_08 7:51

Cantonese is the language that I use with my friends and family growing up. It's the only way I could communicate with my grandma and my grandparents. Um it's the language that I hear in the background when there are soap operas happening as my aunt was watching them. Um it was like the only window that my mom could see through because she didn't know any English. Um I just remember at one point when I was an adolescent, I noticed that my cousins around me, when they would speak to my grandma, she would speak in Cantonese and they would always respond back in English. And at a certain point I was noticing that they were losing their ability to speak to her about anything deeper than what I call eat, sleep, drink Cantonese. Yeah. So at that point I kind of made a decision in myself, recognizing that that could be me. That I could lose that language, it'd be so easy to. I decided that I would just work on learning Cantonese or only speak to uh my parents and my grandparents in Cantonese. And then as I started learning Mandarin, because I would learn Mandarin formally in school, I would get vocabulary words. So now even when I speak to my dad, who's a Mandarin speaker, I will mix in Mandarin and Cantonese when speaking to both my mom and my dad on Skype. Yeah. It's really, it's really it's really cool. And sometimes some English too, because my dad knows some English and he likes wordplay as well.

SPEAKER_07 9:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, nice. Because Cantonese is your first language, it was your home language, so that you don't remember learning it at any point, right? Because I mean you grew up with it.

SPEAKER_08 9:58

Yeah. No, Cantonese has a ton of tones. I think like maybe some people say eight tones, some people say fourteen, some people have sixteen. So it's it's really yeah. Oh my gosh. It's it's not something that is easy to pick up unless you just kind of grow up hearing it. Um so I don't remember formally studying it. Uh I remember my mom the way I remember learning it was being a kid in a high chair and having my mom try and feed uh the bear on the high chair next to me, and then trying to feed me and trying to like trick me into eating. Sure. Um but I do remember when I went to college, there was a Cantonese speaker in the lab typing up a paper as well, and I remember saying something like to him, like, I like to eat shrimp. And I remember saying, Oh what's on you say, ha ha. And he just started laughing at me, busting out laughing. I was like, Why are you laughing at me? Like, you know, Cantonese is terrible, it's shit. But he just laughed because he said, You speak Cantonese like a child. And I it's true. I didn't realize that. Because in Mandarin, you know, sha is you know, shrimp. So it would be like saying, Well, she wants sha-sha. Like, I like shrimp shrimp. Okay. So I would like double double certain things. Yeah, yeah. So I think uh even though I grew up as an adult, my language didn't necessarily evolve. But I love that about about my cantonese.

SPEAKER_07 11:36

I'm having vague memories of a book that I read. I'm not gonna remember the name of it. I'll put it in the show notes for for listeners. But it was um a woman that grew up in the US, her parents were from Iran, but they left. And so she grew up in the US and she went back to Tehran as an adult, and she thought she was fluent in the language, and she was to a degree, she kept calling it like she had like kitchen varsi under at her disposal, and she kept saying, you know, I can talk to people at home, but as soon as she went out and talked to people about things other than what you were saying, the eat, sleep, whatever, like those, those topics, she's like she would just completely fall off of the language and be like, Oh my gosh, I thought I was a fluent speaker. You know, she was like out of her depth, so she had to formally study a language she thought she grew up with her whole life. Yes. And so, and a lot of people commented, she said, and this is what just reminded me of what you just said. A lot of people commented, they're like, Wow, your your first year is very, very, very childlike. So it reminds me a lot. I'll I'll find the name of the book and send it to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 12:46

Totally. I totally had that experience traveling in Hong Kong. You're like, oh yeah, I can order things for dim sum, but you know, it's it's just as good as about like pointing to certain dishes and being able to say the foods, you know? So it's definitely eat, sleep, drink, canton's.

SPEAKER_07 13:04

Yeah. Can you after that was pointed out to you for the first time, were you able to hear the difference between how you were saying things and how adults? So I'm kind of doing air quotes right now on how adults were saying cantons.

SPEAKER_08 13:19

I only really felt it until I went to Hong Kong. Yeah. I didn't feel it with my own family. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, because the topics that we my fa I would have been able to access with my family as a you know, first gen ABC are very different than probably the topics of conversation that people in Hong Kong talk about shooting around uh dim sum table. You know, businessmen talking and laughing and poking each other on the street about some something that happened, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 13:59

So let's talk about Spanish. You said you learned Spanish before English, so did you learn that in the in the neighborhood or did you learn it in school as well?

SPEAKER_08 14:10

I learned it in school, but I also just grew up kind of hearing it and getting uh getting a love for just the way the words sounded. Um Yeah, I don't remember a whole lot more. I just like saying carro. Can't even do it anymore. You have to practice this. Carro. You know?

SPEAKER_07 14:36

Um Yeah. So it sounds like it was a more playful experience with the language.

SPEAKER_08 14:47

It was it was, it was because of the way I was learning it in school. You know, the teacher Senora Weilman would set us up in three rows, one, two, and three, and then have uh each kid go up to the whiteboard from your team to write down you know vocabulary words when she was describing either the content of the word or like full sentences. And I remember this phrase that we used to say in middle school Yo tengo un gato in mis pantalones. You know what that means? I have a cat with pants? No, it was it's I missed the rough for the sentence. I have a cat in my pants. In my cat. In my pants. Okay. I don't know why things like that from middle school like really stick in your head. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 15:38

Well that's funny, and as a kid, I think even as an adult it would stick because that's not a standard super boring basic sentence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 15:47

Yeah. You're just like putting words together and doing it in a in in with games. Yeah. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_07 15:55

That sounds like a fun teacher.

SPEAKER_08 15:57

What else did she do? She she was very strict, but also very fun. Yeah. Um, I don't know. I think she she sometimes had us like make games, like do things that were very hands-on. She cold called us, which is basically a term in teaching, right? You call on someone who doesn't know you know, doesn't have their hand raised to kind of keep everyone engaged and keep them on their toes. Yeah. Um I don't remember a lot, you know. Oh, she also had the taco parties.

unknown 16:30

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_08 16:31

The taco parties are amazing. So at the end of every semester, you know, team one, two, and three, like one team who was the winner, they wouldn't have to do anything. But then, you know, team two and team three would have to prepare the things for the taco party. So I just have memories of going to the grocery store and getting, you know, the the cut-up ground beef, and like one person, another person in the class would be in charge of the the seasoning, and someone would be in charge of the tortilla flour.

SPEAKER_09 17:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 17:06

And it just, those are good memories, you know. You're you're learning language, but you also kind of have this communal space where you know you're gonna celebrate each other's successes at the end of the end of the semester. So that's yeah, so that's I'm always gonna remember the taco parties. Taco parties.

SPEAKER_07 17:28

So the the classes that you're teaching now, are you teaching language or are you teaching a subject? Uh I used to be like a sort of more homeroom-based teacher, but now I'm teaching mostly English. When I taught language, I found myself kind of pulling things that I liked from teachers that I had a warm, fuzzy feeling from when I was in their classroom. I got I found myself pulling some of their things into my own teaching methods. Do you do any of that?

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Um I don't think I have to do that.

SPEAKER_08 17:59

I my teaching is mostly pulled from my own experiences growing up. Like growing up, I didn't have a lot, and I actually didn't grow up with my parents for some time when I was growing up in California, and so my teachers ended up being like my family in a way, like really looking out for me, like really aware of my situation and knowing that I was different from the other kids. So I ended up I actually started teaching in Harlem in New York City, and uh I I drew my inspiration from my students, and um I was I was I I I don't even know how to describe it, like I was powerful, and I drew my power from them and from uh my experiences and just believing in them and wanting to them to like be the greatness that I know all of them, knew all of them could be. Um so I think that that's there's of course teaching methods which I learned through Teach for America and other things that I did, but I think it's more about a way of being. It's it's like a good language teacher believes in you even when you don't believe in yourself, even when you're first learning.

SPEAKER_07 19:26

That's so beautiful. I'm writing that down. A year and a half ago when I started the YouTube channel connected to this podcast, I was convinced I was going to I left a PhD program. I was convinced we're gonna move back to China, we're gonna make some money, and I'm gonna scale up, I'm gonna make mobile apps I've been wanting to make for forever to help the students in mass, not just in one classroom. And I found I've gone completely, I wouldn't say off track, in a different direction. I've gone from wanting to teach a certain thing that disrupts communication, like inflections and verb tenses, and creating an app to help that, to motivation. I found that motivation and language learning seems to be a gigantic, gigantic issue. And what you just said just absolutely uh strikes a chord with that in such a huge way.

SPEAKER_08 20:18

It's about fear, right? And a lot of the time you'll come to, I don't know, mostly Asian countries, and people who are learning English will say, Oh, my English is not good. Um one thing that one teacher said to me when I was not learning language, but just in general. No, actually, I was watching a colleague teach, and she said to the kids, and I always use this phrase every year at some point in the year, especially when like motivation is swaining, is hey, listen, you raise your hand, you answer the question, what's the worst thing that could happen? Oh, you get the answer wrong, and then what happens? You learn, everyone else learns in the classroom, and I bet you know, even the teacher learns. Yeah. So I I think it's motivation, it's it's willingness to try. And you know, maybe it's just a cultural thing. You know, I am American-born Chinese, so I have some American qualities. I've been told that I'm very direct sometimes too, which I didn't realize was an American thing, apparently.

SPEAKER_07 21:34

I always blame that on my on my New York nest night, my eight years in that state. Yeah. But by blame I also mean compliments that I think that East Coasters in the US can be more direct. But I also think that can be an honest, reliable trait too, where we won't bullshit in a way that some other folks might.

SPEAKER_08 21:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 21:56

But yeah.

SPEAKER_08 21:57

I just want to tell people like, just try. Yeah. Um you can learn one new vocabulary word a day and that's that. Like today I went I'm about to study Chinese at um Jia Tong University here and there was the uh security woman standing in the front and I had asked her, you know, where do I go? And when I left I just started speaking to her in Chinese. She of course gave me the standard complimenting on Chinese and she mentioned how her her English was not good and I say, hey listen, every day I come by school, I'll teach you a new vocabulary word. And she's like, Oh, I don't know. And I just I sh I was like, just asked her what vocabulary word do you want to learn today, and you know, every day just learn a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 22:42

We're talking about language, which inevitably involves culture, which inevitably involves different lenses that are coming into the link into and out of and through the languages through all these different things. So I mean it's it's not a linear path. Okay, which is part of the frustration for me, because I want it to be A, B, C, B, okay, I'm done.

unknown 23:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 23:01

Like my students used to say to me, like, we'd have an ex a speaking exercise with like partners, and they'd do it once and they go, Okay, teacher, I'm done. I'm like, have you really talked about everything about that entire conversation? Have you exploited everything you can? They're like, oh yeah. So I tweaked it just a tiny bit and I'd go, have you talked about this? And they'd go, oh no. And then they'd turn and do it again just with that little bit. And so it's just, but that's not language. It's messier than all of that. Oh yeah, definitely. If you're enjoying this conversation about the Chinese language, I would like to participate if you're studying the Chinese language or if you come from the Chinese language and learn the language. So I look forward to hearing from you.

SPEAKER_08 24:20

And I think the longer you teach, the more you you kind of pick up on things. And uh you can't just teach vocabulary, it's not memorization, it's uh being able to hear it, being able to say it, being able to say it in a sentence. Being able to hear it in many different kinds of sentences. Many different accents. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 24:45

Practicing with people in your class. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of different things. It isn't memorization, but it is but memorization is a part of it. Especially when you're talking about because I just took my HSK I get my HSK2 results on Tuesday. I just took it last month. And I rushed way too fast through two. Through one, I took my time, I was like, oh I'm building, I'm building, this is getting better, this is getting better. Two, I whipped through, and there's so much I have to go back and review. But in one I felt really confident because there's 150 words. There's only so much you can confuse two words when there's 150 words. Now I've got the extra 150 from HSK2, and I'm building up like another 100 right now with HSK3, and so my confusion on words that look similar is crazy. And I need to go back to writing them over and over and over and over to see the differences, to feel the differences. And that process is so slow and consuming and yet interesting but frustrating, but it is kind of like a body memorization.

SPEAKER_08 25:50

That is what I love about Chinese.

SPEAKER_07 25:51

What's up? Huh?

SPEAKER_08 25:55

The thing that I love about Chinese that's different than Spanish or any other language is that you kind of get into this meditation when you're writing the characters. Yes! Yes. Left to right, top to bottom. There's a method, there's a way. And you really you really can get better and you can see the difference. It's the care that you put towards constructing this symbol of meaning.

SPEAKER_07 26:26

So I cannot agree more. I accidentally say draw the characters, draw the words more than I say write them. Because to me it feels like they're an art form. And I'm frustrated because I want to communicate already, but I really enjoy and do feel like it's a meditative thing when I write them. Yeah. So that's it's like lots of time. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 26:48

Yeah. That's like wrapped in with culture and how some of my fourth graders were trying to study English. But I wasn't giving them that, I was giving them the more sort of like creative, goofy English teacher side.

SPEAKER_07 27:02

Oh, that they were trying to do the the methodical re repetitive kind of thing. And the piece of feedback that I got from parents was like, can you make it more like a drill? Yes. Oh, I was just talking about this the other day. I was teaching um adults in San Francisco. Um, was there some Korean uh students and some Japanese students in this particular advanced level conversation class, and I actually got a complaint that they said, and my my boss uh he said, Okay, look, this is this is the information. He said, they've said that there's too much conversation and they need to learn more. And I he's like, take that for what you will, but if you can adjust it culturally and otherwise so that they feel like they're learning more, then they great. And I was like, okay, I get that, because I had lived in Northeast Asia and I kind of understood that there's a different idea of what learning is. Yes. And I did feedback. I did, you know, collect information as they were talking, we set up things, we did new vocabulary, like I did all of that, but that wasn't enough. They wanted more of the, like I think more of the struggle and more of the new. And I was coming from the thing of, well, it's like you can learn seven new words a day and then you'll max out and oof, that would be exhausting. And they're like, no, bring it on. Huh. It's very different. Yeah, it's very, very different. Do you think that American language learners are lazy? And that's a huge general request for generalization, but there it is. I don't think they're lazy.

SPEAKER_08 28:45

I think they don't have exposure the way people in European countries do. If your neighbor just along your border can speak a different language and you're mixing and coming in and out of each other's countries, and your space is that close, it's part of the culture to be able to speak different languages. Um for Americans, it's not. I think like only 10% of Americans have a passport. And of those 10% that have a passport, I think 10% of those, meaning 1%, actually venture anywhere beyond the bounds of what a cruise ship would provide for you. Um and that's not an opportunity to learn language. That's not, you know, the problem with the way the US is right now is because we're not talking to each other. Left, right. We're not people of different colors, of different races, different thinking. We're not talking to each other.

SPEAKER_07 29:56

Yeah. We're driving up hard. We're definitely doing that.

SPEAKER_08 30:02

But but that doesn't make Americans lazy, it just makes them fearful. Maybe a little bit ignorant, but I I get I guess I couldn't say. You know, I don't know what's going on through another person's mind. Uh I think they also get a lot of um how do I say this? They also get a lot of points for just trying and doing the dancing there, especially in China. If you just say a couple of words. Your Chinese is so good! Oh, that frustrates me. Like. No, it's not. Um, and so then maybe some people feel like it's good enough. Um but then there you have some people who who actually whose Chinese is amazing. Um so maybe it just depends on what stage of life you're in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 31:04

Fair enough. Let's move on to English. When did you start learning slash using English?

SPEAKER_08 31:11

I learned English through Sesame Street.

SPEAKER_06 31:14

Awesome!

SPEAKER_07 31:15

Yeah. Interview done. The best way ever. What how did you feel about that experience?

SPEAKER_08 31:23

I mean, I think when I when I was a kid, I was just processing everything, processing my role through grocery store labels, um, other things as well. Um I really grew a love for English, I think in middle school when I started working on the yearbook. And um I got inspiration from other teachers and from uh a teacher who you know ran around the classroom with a rubber chicken and like slammed the rubber chicken on people's desks. He made me memorize poems. And you know, a poem to this day which I can still recite. Like I hold that within myself now. Um which poem? Uh Lord Byron, she walks in beauty. Oh, would you give us a few lines?

SPEAKER_03 32:12

Oh, maybe, you know, maybe something that I can as fired.

SPEAKER_08 32:18

She walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climbs and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright, be in her aspect and in her eyes. The smell o' to that tender light, which heaven to Gody Day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impaired that nameless grace, which waves in every raven tress.

SPEAKER_07 32:44

Okay, thank you! Oh man. It's amazing what shapes us in the classroom and what we remember later. Really, really, truly is.

SPEAKER_08 32:55

Um, words, I love words, and I think that that's what those experiences in middle school gave me. Yeah, and I also think expression is something that didn't always come easy to me, still doesn't in a lot of way. I think it's part partially cultural because I grew up, you know, American, but also very much in a home that had like lots of Chinese traditional ideas in it, where children were not as like heard as they were seen.

SPEAKER_07 33:33

Trying to think of what to say that wouldn't insult um family. No, I'm just I know I hmm I grew up in a somewhat I don't know if traditional is the way to say it, but a very you're more important when you're in an adult kind of European mindset. Where children are you can go play over there but don't really interrupt the adults right now kind of thing. So I I get that. And and what children said wasn't really uh I wouldn't say valued because it wasn't that bad, but um not really encouraged. Yeah. Some people have an affinity when they're growing up and and and liking words, have an affinity towards either speaking or reading and writing. Do you do you fall into one of those or did it just kind of encompass everything?

SPEAKER_08 34:28

Uh I love speaking, but I don't do it as often as I do writing. And the best thing is when I can combine those two things together, when I can perform my spoken word push.

SPEAKER_07 34:46

Exactly. I was gonna say you're you're just such you just I can see you being a spoken you are a spoken word performer.

SPEAKER_08 34:52

I guess you can I'd self-identify as that. Have you have you done that? I have, yeah, I have, and I love doing it in places where you know no one. Yeah. Like I did it in Costa Rica once. Yeah. They had an open mic night, and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_07 35:12

You did it in Spanish.

SPEAKER_08 35:14

Uh I did it, I did it in English. Yeah. Um, of course, people there, it was uh Montezuma, Costa Rica, a place where people there were travelers passing through, and you know, it's an economy based around tourism. So um yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. Yeah, and and I have some on my website as well and some other projects around it, but I want to do more of that, you know. I want to go to a cafe in Shanghai and just start start doing that. But my problem is that I find it very hard sometimes to uh sit in those emotions and to make eye contact with the crowd. And so even as I was just you know reciting that poem to Lord Byron, I used to like close my eyes because it's something that you have to work on to have your words resonate. And same thing when you're learning a language, you can speak the words, but can you feel the words and have someone else feel those things too?

SPEAKER_07 36:29

Yeah. Oh, that's so true. That's so true. I was just thinking, I saw, I try the name of the I saw it wasn't a spoken word thing so much as it was like a narrative kind of performance by about three or four different folks in one evening. Concrete is the name of the organization. Um and I love that kind of thing. But I just I don't know. What do you mean by that kind of thing? That telling a story live in person. Because I I agree with you, like this medium is very comfortable for me. I can create it in this bubble and I can put it into the world, and I can interact with people if they so choose about it afterwards. But for me, people live people in front of me as anything is happening, uh, even rehearsed, unrehearsed, anything, it performance-wise, it distracts me a little. Yeah, yeah, and I feel like I I would lean towards doing things to not just to get their reaction, but I would involve too much of their feedback in it that it would morph the narrative. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

SPEAKER_08 37:36

Yeah, whatever happens at that moment is happening and it's done. Whatever feedback you receive, whatever you give out into that space, and it's done. But there's something very noble I find about performing it. And there's also overperforming it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a lot happening in the interplay of performance words. So true.

SPEAKER_07 38:02

I just realized how much like of a control freak I just sound like. Like it would be rude if there were people there. But then when there was but I like giving presentations, and I definitely feed off of what people are how they're reacting to the information that's going out to them, and I can easily morph that, and that's a fun experience for me. But for some reason, when it's a story, I feel a little more of a control, like I said, Is it because it's your own personal story? I think so. I think so. And I've I haven't actually, to be fair, I've only done the spoken word thing or the narrative thing in public in my head. I haven't done it in person yet, but I've done as as I'm watching people do it, I'm envisioning the different things that I could do like they're doing only in my way, and so that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_04 38:47

You should do it.

SPEAKER_07 38:48

Oh I I applied for they had they have one like every month, and I applied for the last one, but too late. Yeah. Miss the death. But um, but I will I'll can I'm gonna keep doing it. Because I want I want to do it.

SPEAKER_08 39:00

Oh, so that you can also be inspired by it.

SPEAKER_07 39:02

Yeah, yeah. Oh, insanely inspiring. Like I was taking notes during some of the stories. I was like, oh my god, that's amazing. That's that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. That's that passion. Stories are inspiring, words are inspiring, how people use them are inspiring. Cantonese, Spanish, and English have very, very different sounds in them, and you said you were a speaking-oriented, or you lean more towards speaking than the other ones. How would you describe the differences in the sounds of those languages to you?

SPEAKER_08 39:36

I'm also very inclined towards music. I think with English it's a lot more alliteration. Um to me it's about where you choose to pass. Like a lot of my writing when I write isn't necessarily how uh you would write a formal letter to someone. But my writing sounds like I'm speaking to someone. Yeah. But it works somehow. Um I think Mandarin, when I hear it as an outsider, and I still believe I'm very much an outsider to it, um can be like a song if it doesn't have a certain Biaudrin standard Beijing accents. Um I've also got a little bit of discrimination happening there because you know Cantonese and Paiwanese don't always like that accent. Um I think Cantonese to me sounds like home. It feels like home. Like when I went to go visit my mom's hometown where she grew up and see the the house where she lived and the fields where she used to play. I stepped out the taxi and now all of a sudden someone said, Oh, are you Tai's daughter? And I just felt like I was home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 41:14

Was that someone that knew you were coming? Or did they just recognize it?

SPEAKER_08 41:18

I actually didn't know if I would find my mom's place because all the time I'd ask, like, where are you from? Where are you from? She'd say like Taishan, which is this this big, big place, or she would say Guangdong, which is even bigger than Tai Shan. Um, she finally gave me the address, and um I was she was like, it's next this place is next to a banyan tree. And there's a well next to the house. I was like, really? There's no way in hell I'm gonna find this place. Like this place has probably been all bulldozed and turned into like you know, skyscrapers or something else. Like that's China. Things changed. But then I got off and uh there was this Ai, and she was just Are you Tai's daughter? No, I think she was playing things behind the scenes, and she called one of her friends in New York City whose sister was living there, and that's how they knew. But at that exact moment to come off the cab and have that happen, it was and legit. Yeah, I gotta the Banyan tree was there.

SPEAKER_07 42:32

It was still there, the well was there?

SPEAKER_08 42:35

Wow, yeah, it was it was crazy, it was insane.

SPEAKER_07 42:39

Wow, wow, wow.

SPEAKER_08 42:40

So Cantonese to me feels like home.

SPEAKER_07 42:43

Yeah. Do any of the those languages feel softer or do any of them feel rougher is not really the right word. Choppier or I don't know.

SPEAKER_08 42:57

Cantonese feels warmer. Um even though stereotypically the the stereotype of the loud uh Chinese man comes from Cantonese, but to me it feels warmer, especially um I find when it's spoken by women or s or people who sing pop songs. Like I oftentimes I'll find even my friends from China they love singing Cantonese songs because they feel like it's that language is more romantic somehow. Uh Mandarin to me is like a song, like a bird song. But uh, you know, not all bird songs will resonate with you, right?

SPEAKER_07 43:44

I gotta there are some bird sounds I like hearing and some that I'm like, seriously, I'd rather have construction.

SPEAKER_08 43:50

So I get a for English, I feel like it depends on who's speaking it. Sometimes it can be stuffy for no reason. Uh Spanish? I just want somebody to talk to me in Spanish all day. All day, baby.

SPEAKER_07 44:11

What is it? Because I learned German in high school. No, I didn't. I was supposed to learn German in high school. I I tried to learn Italian as an adult and it failed miserably. And I tried to learn Spanish a little bit at university, but it wasn't until I went down to Latin America and I was surrounded by the Spanish language that I just that it hit me like a ton of bricks. And that playful like yes thing that you're talking about hit me big and it's never left. What is it about the Spanish language that's so Spanish language slash culture? Because how can you really separate the two? That's well, is yours attached to a place, a region or a country or people?

SPEAKER_08 45:02

I don't think I've had that yet, but I think I had that a little bit because I grew up in Southern California, so I was hearing it around to me from people, and a lot of my friends were Spanish, native Spanish speakers. My next door neighbor lives. Uh I had that experience in China when I came to study abroad. Two days before I was supposed to come to China. I got into an accident. I was on my bike in New York City. It broke my collarbone. Didn't know if I would be able to study abroad. My parents begged me to stay. And I was like, no, this is this is my chance to go abroad. I I don't know when I'll get this again. You know, Brooklyn kid um from the 80s, like you know, I was never supposed to be abroad, I was never supposed to graduate from college or study um abroad. So basically I broke my collarbone, didn't even know if I'd needed surgery, I got on the plane and uh I had an eight-finger sling around me on the plane, got special assistance from the flight attendants, got off the plane, and after studying Chinese for five years, I couldn't even manage to find the words to say, having packed up my whole life, you know, my whole what I thought, all the things I thought I needed in like four huge giant suitcases. To say, can someone can can I get some help with my bags to to the porters around me? Yeah. Um, so I think language, like you said, like it gets those playful elements not only when you're studying them with other people, but when bad shit happens to you too. Or uh or like when you're going to the hospital when you're like living your life, like you know, I learned all the words for surgery and broken bone. Yeah. When my first in my first few months in China, because I had to, right? I had to take the buses and do all that stuff.

SPEAKER_07 47:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 47:16

Wow. So did you go to the hospital as soon as you got to yeah, pretty much got there next day, just like what's going on with my bone, doctor? Do I need surgery or not?

SPEAKER_06 47:28

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_08 47:30

Did I I don't regret that decision? Um it helped it it's a big part of the reason why I'm living the life I am.

SPEAKER_07 47:37

Yeah, you're a brave, brave person. Nothing's gonna stop me.

SPEAKER_08 47:42

Or or just reckless.

SPEAKER_07 47:44

No, no, because it's not like you you flew and then ignored the pain and just let it get worse. I mean you took care of the decision there. So if you're enjoying this conversation about the Chinese language, I would like to study the Chinese language. I look forward to hearing from you. What is that?

SPEAKER_08 48:53

Um I didn't grow up in a family with a lot. Um my mom still works. My mom used to work in it. My mom used to work in a factory, you know, sewing clothes for pennies, pennies on the dime. Uh my dad was a waiter in like, you know, Midtown. And neither of them had graduated from college, so I was like the first person in my family to go to college. Travel didn't really seem like a possibility. Um I didn't know how or when I would travel. Besides, you know, maybe going to see my grandma in Taiwan when I was, you know, four years old, a little kid. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you look at people with my story with my statistics as she would say it and I'm not I'm not supposed to have graduated from college. I'm not supposed to like have then gone on to get my master's or to like live the life that I I was I'm I I shouldn't have been able to take a gap year.

SPEAKER_07 50:20

I want to kick back a little bit on this idea. Yeah. Do you think because I uh uh similar aspects of my background, my parents didn't even graduate high school. They came to the US as immigrants and they just worked. And they worked and they worked and they worked, and I don't even know all of the jobs that they did. Um all I know is that somehow they raised three children and eventually moved us to the suburbs where we had a ridiculously good educational system that I didn't even appreciate until like years later when I was in college and could do way more than the people around me because of the high school that I went to. It wasn't even a private high school.

SPEAKER_08 51:01

And so Yeah, that's like similar to me because I had I not had a good education in California, I wouldn't have had a good education in high school and then so forth.

SPEAKER_07 51:14

But this makes me this makes me think. This makes me think about language, Liz. This makes me think because there's this split online. I'm obsessed with language learning online because there's so much interesting things, so many interesting things happening with languages online. Not instead of the language learning classroom, probably in addition to in some regards, but kind of a parallel life. And there are a number of polyglots that are doing their thing, and there are a number of language learners that are doing their thing, and there are people watching who are kind of hesitantly thinking about learning languages. And the polyglots seem to be very confident with what they're doing, and they seem to come from a background where they were expected to do many things, and so they did that, and some of them aren't, but I'm I'm generalizing, of course. And then you have the language learners, which is which is a much bigger spectrum of people, and they might be learning one language, they might be learning multiple ones, but then you have the viewers who are super hesitant and they have that fear that you're talking about with with language and with making mistakes, and they're thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it, and some of them cross over and start learning a language and some of them don't, and they just watch for a while, and that's cool. I watch cooking shows and I don't cook, so I get that. But is language learning isn't it a finity thing? Is it is it a privileged thing for some folks? Is it a a badge of wealth? Because for a large part of the world it isn't, it's just how you function in the world is you have to learn these languages. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 52:54

Well for me I had a window. You know, as much as I was a window for my mom, I had a window into Cantonese, and because I had that, I saw how it was able to shape my my concepts, my world. So I think I have an edge, had an edge in that way into language. And then later on, like through college courses, I learned, oh yeah, that's like actually a really positive thing to to learn language from a young age, to have that, to be flexible. Uh so maybe it's uh about flexibility on one hand. I think part of it in the US is that it's cultural. But but I don't know. I I think it's cultural. Something something has to either happen to you in your life as a result of your circumstances, or some experience abroad, maybe, or maybe a person who touches you in your life. So you were talking about motivation earlier, right?

SPEAKER_06 54:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 54:14

Um maybe a place you want to visit or want to go. You gotta build up this idea in your head.

SPEAKER_09 54:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 54:23

That maybe you associate with language in order to I I can only speak for myself. Of course, of course, of course. I can only speak for myself.

SPEAKER_07 54:32

I'm just wondering if at some level I feel like there's this expectation of I need to do all of this before I start learning language for some folks. Like there's this I'm not ready yet. I don't know, that's the thing. I don't I don't get it, because I usually, like as as much as I suck and have never gotten to a high level yet, I keep trying because I'm stubborn and I like culture. So even if I don't get there, I'll learn stuff about the culture as I'm trying to get there. But I know a lot of people are much more careful about what they do, and I part of me is kind of trying to tease out what is the carefulness with language?

SPEAKER_08 55:15

I think it's about resilience and about grit. Um, I know that's like a big buzzword right now, but like Americans are so used to at least for a long time, they were so used to being thought of as having good education systems or being good or being confident. And I actually I am really surprised why, despite being a country that's known for its confidence and some of its overconfidence, why we don't have more language learners. Maybe again it's exposure, it's being willing to talk to people who are different than you.

SPEAKER_07 56:01

Yeah, yeah. And letting go of it being perfect the first time.

SPEAKER_08 56:06

That fear of Yeah, what's incorrect? Who wants to be perfect? That's just so boring.

SPEAKER_07 56:13

A lot of people want in in language, a lot of people want to be perfect. Like mistakes mean so much more than just mistakes.

SPEAKER_08 56:22

Or maybe it's like remember I had told you that phrase in Spanish that I thought was funny. Yeah. Like my favorite phrase in Chinese was when I had a Chinese class, we were talking and they said, What would you do if there was a an apocalypse? You know, world apocalypse zombie invasion, whatever. Like that to me was fun, and I had to use a sentence structure, and so I said, uh, if there was an apocalypse, I I would take off all my clothes and I would run the streets amok. That's what I said. You know, like maybe just being able to feel that you can express your true self, yeah, or your ch like ideas in language. Maybe that's that's what it is. Maybe when you first start off you're not able to express those things.

SPEAKER_07 57:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, your identity is very much so wrapped up in how you can say the things you want to say.

SPEAKER_08 57:27

Yeah. Even now, my gosh. Like, so I'm worried. I'm about to go take this one-month course, and I'm like, oh gosh, there's so many ways to express it's overwhelming.

SPEAKER_07 57:39

It's overwhelming. Yeah. No, it is. It is. I'm I'm barely just forming some sentences, very, very basic, not even functional sentences.

SPEAKER_08 57:48

Um, but I'm excited because it also helps, I think it helps with your own native language too, and how you express yourself. You become more aware of the words that you use when you um Portuguese for six weeks.

SPEAKER_07 58:05

Oh, did you have any Spanish language interference when you did that?

SPEAKER_08 58:12

Um, not really, it just kind of helped. It made it made me remember like words that I used to like. Um mostly it was important to talk to my host family. So I think host family makes a huge difference too. And you don't have the option to opt out. Yeah. Same thing, like when I was in Beijing, I had host family. I'm not gonna ask my old little old lady making dumplings for me, vegetarian ones at that, like to speak English with me. She didn't know anything. So yeah.

SPEAKER_07 58:50

You mentioned a a bias against the Beijing dialect earlier. Can you dig into that a little bit?

SPEAKER_08 58:55

I purposely don't add the R at the end of like certain words. Yeah. H. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Horror. Uh I just don't think it sounds that beautiful. But uh it is beautiful. The language, the sounds, in its own way. It's just not something that I can uh pretend to carry in my identity. Um people often say like I speak when I'm in Taiwan they say I speak like uh Beijing and they find it disgusting. When I'm in China, they say I speak like I'm from Taiwan or I speak like I'm from Hong Kong. So people people want people want hear language the way they want to hear it, or maybe the way they think you should be able to say it.

SPEAKER_06 59:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 59:58

So yeah, there's so many dialects in the world. It's cool.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:02

There's so much wrapped up in language, there's so much. Like I I love the ideal of language's communication. Full stop. Done. Just done. D meaning get conveyed. I wanted to order this, I wanted to talk to this person about this subject, we communicated, we understood each other, done. But there it never really is that innocent. There's always other things happening with the language, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:00:32

And that isn't that what makes it interesting?

SPEAKER_07 1:00:34

It is, then it isn't. Like it is when it's positive or informative or those kinds of lovely things. And then when it gets discriminatory or condescending, or any of those, then it's not. And it could go either way, and it's usually a mix of good and bad at the same time. But it's so complex.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:03

It's mixed in with emotions, yeah. It's mixed in with uh attitudes too. Like this morning, when I got run into but with the scooter, right? Yeah, his his attitude was like, Oh, where were you looking where you're going? Like, let's figure out who to blame. And I just said to him, I am not blaming you. I'm in pain. Do you see me right now? This is priority one right now. Yeah, yeah. But but the fact that I was able to express that was great, but I wasn't able to express much more than that. And I wonder that guy, you know, rolling away on his scooter on the sidewalk. Like what what did he think after that interaction? If it sh if it struck him.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:50

The way that we're kind of like talking about language and how it's wrapped up in other things.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:56

Yeah. And is he mentioning that to someone else and having maybe regrets that he hit you at some point, or is he just like, oh I can't believe she jumped in front of me? Kind of like changing the story or something? Yeah, like what level do you want to reach in your communicating with other people? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe it's those complexities that are things that like if it wasn't hard, Stephanie, if it wasn't hard, would you still want to do it? If there was a language chip that was available today, I would gladly put it in my head and still practice the characters by hand. Yeah. I wouldn't stop practicing, but I definitely, for communication purposes and for reading purposes, if I could read in any language with no effort, that is a version of the ultimate world. Do you like nuances? Hmm. Depending on the context. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:01

Do you feel free to express those nuances when you're learning? I know you're learning online, so it's probably a little bit different.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:12

I don't think I've ever gotten to a high enough level yet to do that. I can identify differences in languages. I think that's something I can say I'm good at, but usually from outside. I haven't been able to do that from with inside yet, and I hope as time goes on I can do that with with Mandarin, but but I I have never gotten to nuance. Are you kidding in Spanish? I was using time words. I didn't even reflect. I was seriously like going around like Buenos Aires, like you know, saying things like I basically the equivalent of I go I go there yesterday. Like I just kept throwing in time words to change things, and I was talking to people just here, there and everywhere, and they didn't care. And I didn't care because they didn't care. I just kept going.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:06

Yeah. People like you're saying, people have to give each other the space to make mistakes, to process, to all that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:16

That's so cool. What a cool experience. That's why you had your Spanish product.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:23

Well, let's face it, the guys were kind of cute.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:28

You asked me before what I like about Spanish, so fucking language, language, language.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:37

So t tatun is that tatun. How did you how did all of that happen? Going to Timor, learning that language? Sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:47

Um I as a part of my like year abroad gas year experience, I wanted to do some scuba diving. And one place in the world that has the most biodiverse marine life is this place in Timor Leste. Remind me proximity-wise, where tourists. Yeah, um, so Indonesia. Tons and tons of islands. Timor Leste used to be a part of Indonesia. Okay. But now it's not. I wonder if I should be even be saying this. Because I don't want this place to be ruined. No, but tourism is like picking up there right now. And um I I wanted to do scuba diving, and so there's this organization, nonprofit, out there, doing reef check and basically classifying uh what areas have what types of poal and what types of sea life.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:50

Oh that completely love that.

SPEAKER_08 1:05:52

And part of part of your community service was also like speaking English with people, teaching a little bit. Bit of that, having conversations, but you also had a host family, so again, there was that buildup to some something meaningful, yeah, which hold that thought for a sec. Okay, and you were there for six weeks, yeah. Yeah, I did that for six weeks, and what was really great about this organization was that they're also training some of the um local people to become dive masters. Yeah, so that's you know one way in which you really impact the community from the inside. So we would be communicating with uh the dive master candidates as well as they were reading these hard textbooks filled with like very technical language. What does the language look like? Uh it looks like a little bit like Portuguese. Oh, okay. And then I think it has some elements of uh Indon some Indonesian like Bahasa words in there as well.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:11

Oh okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:12

Okay. But it's a language also.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:16

Right, right, yeah. What struck you is either easy or difficult to learn about the language?

SPEAKER_08 1:07:27

And it's not a hard language to learn. Uh what was easy about it was that it had some similarities to Portuguese and some to Spanish. I loved seeing those words in that language. They were like old friends coming in. What was hard about it was knowing that I have a limited amount of time to really use it.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:55

And also then coming back from the experience and knowing, well, probably not have the opportunity to use it again unless I made the effort to go back to return. But all the same, I enjoyed learning it and I enjoyed having conversations around the dinner table with my host family, where we would talk about, we would repeat topics and vocabularies from the day before and then like pray for us to have safety when we're going to do these dives.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:08:34

You just pick up certain words and you know go to church with um.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:45

Do you think you would go back or do you think you would consciously try to keep the language going, language learning going with that language?

SPEAKER_08 1:08:52

I want to go back, but it doesn't feel in my path now. Uh sometimes I still talk to uh Mima, who's who was one of the dive master candidates who I wrote quite close to.

SPEAKER_09 1:09:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:07

I don't know if I'll if I'll go back soon. I would love to, but I don't really have a reason to necessarily even use it, but I just love the way it sounds, and sometimes I'll even when I do posts on my WeChat moments, I'll ask Mima if she can translate this into Tetin. Yeah. Because something that I want to express about that time or that moment or that photo I feel should be expressed in Tetin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:45

If you're enjoying this conversation about the Chinese language, the Chinese language language. So I look forward to hearing from you. I'm getting the impression that languages come naturally, and I don't mean without effort or without studying that hard work, but it feels like they might come pretty naturally to you because you kind of emotionalize them as you're learning them. Does that is that true at all or am I projective?

SPEAKER_08 1:10:57

I emotionalize them, but I believe language learning isn't so much about the words as it is about wanting to connect with people. Like even at work, we have about like maybe a staff that's like 88% from China. The rest are foreigners from different parts of the world. Yeah. But I feel that I'm able to connect with people not only because of my face, that is one thing, but because I want to. Regardless of whether or not they want to connect with me, I'm gonna speak Chinese to you. And I'm gonna I'm gonna wanna connect with you on that level and let you know that I want to connect with you on that level.

SPEAKER_09 1:11:44

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:11:46

Yeah, let's let's talk about things. Let's talk about your life.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:51

Um Do you feel like in in China when people switch to English with you, do you do they switch to English with you? Okay, do you feel like that's putting over walls? Do I do I feel Do you feel like they're put they're putting up an emotional wall when they do that?

SPEAKER_08 1:12:09

Or are they just wanting to do you feel like they're just putting the practice or just I think they're trying to be respectful and helpful towards me. Okay. But I still keep talking to them in Chinese. And we we have a working understanding that that's just that's just how it is. Yeah. And that's great. Help each other out. Um because I don't give off the sense I think that like, oh your your English isn't isn't so great, so like please don't try and speak English to me. No, it's it's not like that, it's more like I'm I'm patient and just as they're patient with me and we're we're friends, you know, at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:56

Yeah. So when you do study languages, what are your go-to methods for whichever part you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_08 1:13:08

I think my favorite method is with people because I think the same topics of conversation come up over and over again, particularly with things that I like to talk about.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:21

Another way that I've really enjoyed learning Chinese this year is through yoga. Huh.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:29

Through talking about it or through doing it or through both.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:32

Doing it and being a teacher or and and also being a student. Sure. Um, I go to a yoga studio where it's mostly people that are originally from China. The teacher does teach occasionally in English, but a lot of the vocabulary where it's like now sometimes I'm like, can I teach? Like I can teach yoga in English, but I feel more comfortable in some ways teaching in Chinese now. You know, talking about opening your chest and all these things because it there's a sort of rhythm and sort of cadence that comes with teaching yoga. Yeah, yeah. And now I associate Chinese with that too.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:21

Are there any like written techniques, any flashcards, any do you record stuff and listen to it?

SPEAKER_08 1:14:27

I know that there are so many apps out there right now to teach Chinese. I always ask my friends for those apps. I've downloaded some of them and I just haven't started yet. I've been pushing back this decision to learn Chinese for years. This has been years in the making. I did I chose not to come to China. I chose to go to India before because I just didn't want to tackle this side of me or my uh some part of me knew what I was doing when I made that move. Um so I don't I don't know yet. I love flashcards though, so I probably will do a lot of flashcards, especially on the keychains, like the small little ones, not the big bulky ones that you carry around. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:13

Um for any of the other languages that you had learned, did you have any written methods for any part of the languages?

SPEAKER_08 1:15:21

I always carry a book around with me whenever I'm learning a language. So if I'm just talking to someone and I just want to know that vocabulary word quickly, I'll put it down. And people are always happy to help you. Yeah, for sure. They will they like that you're engaging with their language and that you feel happy too as well, learning something. So I think carrying around a book is one of my best tips slash insider spirits.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:49

How about listening? Be ready, prepared. Yeah, for sure. How about listening? Do you listen to things in multiple languages? Do you want to do that?

SPEAKER_08 1:15:57

Um I do. I I enjoy eavesdropping, I enjoy people watching. I enjoy seeing and hearing what types of topics people from other cultures like to talk about. But I don't think that helps as much as trying yourself.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:16

Yeah. Squeezing the language.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:19

I've been told to, you know, watch soap operas and TV and that sort of thing. Um if I can get myself to sit still, maybe one day I'll do that. I need I need good recommendations for like which ones should I watch? Which one will I fall in love with?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:37

If they had, you know what? If they had reality TV in China.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:42

Oh, they do.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:43

Like different, like trashy reality TV where I could learn Chinese from that. Yeah, I would totally watch that.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:52

The re the thing that they're calling reality TV, to my understanding, and I'm I'm saying this through from Chinese to English, and now my interpretation is it's more of like a competitive celebrity event kind of way. It's not reality TV like the American side where you just stick a camera in there and people pretend to be real and just go about their daily lives. It's not like that kind of reality TV. So it's a very, very different experience. It's like celebrities showing their lives. Not even that. They're like doing like I w there's one really popular one from Korea that came over and now there's a Chinese version called Running Man, and I don't remember the Chinese name. Have you heard of this one? No. Super, super, super popular. And the the episode I'm not really super into celebrities and I'm not familiar with enough Chinese celebrities, so I was really like, eh, even if this was celebrities I liked or knew, I'd still be like, eh, because they were like doing like little competitive things, like running things or goofy games or like things like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:52

Like that show. Yeah, kind of. So it's more like that. So they're calling it reality because it's not them acting, it's not them singing, it's them being real. So it's a different flavor of what reality TV should have.

SPEAKER_08 1:18:04

Give me a cross of Love Island and uh Real World and The Bachelorette and I will learn Shadows.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:13

I wonder. Hey listeners, if you know of anything like this, please do let us know. Um I do I was following a woman on YouTube. Um her handle was Lena around. She unfortunately had a medical situation and she had to go back home uh to Scandinavia. Um, but she I have it saved actually in my YouTube recommendations. She talked about uh TV shows that she listened to listened to slash watched to. She got to a ridiculously high fluent level. She was interviewing people for her channel in Chinese and doing stuff like that. Wow. Yeah. Um and that kind of thing. But um, but I haven't actually sat down and watched them here because I again with like 300 birds under my belt, I'd be looking everything up, so I was kind of waiting for the end of the story, you know. Maybe girl. But to be honest with you, I don't watch soap rappas or like things like that in English. Yeah. So I forgot.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:13

When does the turning point always have to be when the grandma or the matriarch figure goes into the hospital? That always happens. Right?

SPEAKER_07 1:19:23

Always so true, it's so true. Um but yeah, for me, I just think I've had people recommend movies and TV shows and things like that, but the stuff I like to watch is so like deep, esoteric, crazy stuff, or horror movies, which you don't need any language for, that I'm like, I'd like five years from now, I'll go look for those movies. But right now it's not really in the cards. So you're looking for stuff that you can do right now. I'm not, because I know the stuff I want, content-wise, the stuff I want to doesn't exist with that language. So I'm just I'm using the HSK test to get my language up to the ability where I can go into the things I want to do. What about like Dora? Like Chinese Dora.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:13

You know, like Dora the Explorer.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:15

Like, you know how I learned. Wasn't it in any other language? Yeah. So that's the thing. I'm like, I want I want to read like current events. I want as funky as that may be in different languages with different perspectives, I do. I want to read that stuff. I want to listen to podcasts coming from people, not just super edited versions like in the newspapers, but I want to see what people are saying about where they are or where they're what they're thinking and all that kind of stuff. So I I want to do those things, but that's like way up here. So I'm just pushing through all the test material to get the vocabulary and the grammar to be able to do that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So it's gonna take me a while. But yeah, the the graded readers are probably helpful for a lot of people, but I'm really picky on what I consume. And I don't really want to read a lot of those stories. They're just not interesting to me. And you have to be interested in order to stay motivated. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:10

Yeah. So maybe maybe if I'm like an elementary school teacher, I've I don't mind that blue school.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:21

I'm not even sure I was into a lot of that when I was a kid. And I'm not trying to be like, oh, I'm so mature, because I'm very goofy. But I just, like, other than the Muppet Show, I was not even into a lot of kids stuff when I was a kid. Okay, Sesame Street 2. We mentioned that earlier. Yeah. But select characters, not the whole show. Maybe Mr. Rogers. China, Mr. Rogers. I did like him, but I felt like it was a little slow. Like I trusted him. Yeah. I wanted him to be my neighbor. No, for real, I had really, really cold neighbors. And I was like, can you come next door here? I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah. Like I remember watching like space programs as a kid and being like, ooh, that's interesting. But there weren't that many at that time on TV. So I was just like, I don't know, just different different content. It's good that you like know that about yourself. Well, it took me a long time to get here. I tried to use all of these things that people recommended and all the languages I've never been able to get to a high level in. And failed, failed, failed, failed, and got demotivated because I kept doing things that didn't really resonate. I still like to talk to people. More about talking. Just language exchange, which I like. I'm much more of a despite the fact that I have two podcasts, I'm much more of a written person. So reading and writing than I am a speaking person. The irony is not lost on me.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:53

But isn't language about coming outside of it to meet zone on Sunday?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:00

Sure. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe it's not. I don't know. I think language is dot dot dot. You could fill that in like a million different ways. Yeah. And that's part of the beauty and the beast of the whole process. Is how complex it is. Language is friendship too. What's that? Language is connection. Oh yeah. Friendship. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I was it's funny because when I was teaching English in Vietnam and some other places, but really, really there, it was the language at that time of opportunity. And then I went to grad school in the US, and a lot of the rhetoric folks in the same department who I was teaching alongside of, but not necessarily with in the same classroom, were talking about language as pain, language as torture. And I was I just came back from seeing all these people's lives just go and all their opportunities expand because of their hard work in getting another language under their belt. And I just kind of went, no, it's but well, it can be that, but it's also the privilege of thinking that way.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:15

As foreigners.

SPEAKER_08 1:24:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:26

Because it it hasn't always been. There's different languages that are linguistic. But I'm talking about people in the US in grad school who had this idea that language is torture, language is pain, languages used to hurt people. Period. One story. And I just it was really hard to have a conversation about teaching languages as a positive experience. But it can be it's a rainbow. All of those things. It can be all of those things. Yeah, it definitely can be friendship. A few words at the right time in the right situation, no matter how funky the pronunciation is sometimes, can just be like totally.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:14

I I had conversations with my grandma in Taiwan. Um my second semester learning Chinese about taking a dump.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:29

Legit where I thought that was gonna be. Not the quality of it, not the quantity, just like I don't even remember what joke it was. We should be like, Dabian, Dabian.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:44

It's about wanting to con for me, it's about wanting to just connect. Maybe we need the opportunity to connect.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:54

Yeah. So we're gonna touch faces with you in a few weeks after your course is over.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:01

Any predictions on successes and challenges that you might experience over that time period today when I went to go sign up for the course and kind of speak with the teacher as he was leveling me. I felt how friendly he was. I felt his passion for the subject. I saw college students around the campus in grass and trees, and I felt China opening to me a little bit. So I think that over the next few weeks I'll feel like a student again, which is something that I've wanted uh and haven't fed in a long time. So I'm excited to learn. Um I think that as confident as I am with knowing that I'm a language and a words person now, I think in a few weeks I'll feel that even more. Um I know it's gonna be hard work. It's gonna be hard work because I don't have the discipline that I once had when I was a student. Um I'm interested not only to see how my language ability changes, I'm interested to see how I as a person will change and grow. But I also think that over the next few weeks I'll probably meet a lot of people. And build relationships in a way that I think you only can through a language class. In language classes, you have to put yourself out there a lot. You're trying to express your ideas. Other people are listening to you. You guess, sort of spotlight. Whether it's being called in the class or just sharing with a partner. And I so you asked what is another great way to learn language? I think it's through partner learning. You're motivated. If you trust the person in front of you, you're motivated to share yourself with them. And also hear some of their story. So yeah, talking about stories over the next few weeks and we'll see.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:52

Any final thoughts on anything we've talked about today?

SPEAKER_08 1:28:58

Um I'm just hoping that this this whole thing inspires me and gets me to start having a different relationship with China and also that I can it will inspire me to keep writing. I'm coming from a trip back from Japan, coming in from last night. And having been there, I had to look at a lot of characters that were similar to Chinese to discern meaning. Yeah. I think I I have hopes, and I hope I guess I want to say to people that are trying to learn language that is not always about the words you say, but it's about like the bridges you want to build. And if people feel that you want to build a bridge, nothing else now matters. Not the way you speak, not the tones. Um you can have a conversation with your grandma about shit. The end. Literally. Well, thank you for doing this today.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:21

I really, really look forward to having a follow-up in a month, a month, an hour in a month. Yes, yeah. 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. No no changing script podcast. A lot more is coming your way soon.

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