How I Learned to Speak Chinese

The other day I came across this really cool app. It's called hellotalk, and it actually reminded me of why it was so difficult to learn Chinese in the past. Because back in the day I had to use something called a dictionary and this is a special little book that you used to look up the words in a different language. So you can learn, but it was really really difficult. And I think a lot of people get confused because I watch my videos and they see a progression of Chinese language skill and my life in China but it was way after I moved here when I started to make videos so you missed out on all the difficult struggles that I had when actually trying to learn Chinese. Now long story short: I was approached the other day by some people that wanted me to check out this app and this app, hellotalk, is a fantastic way to meet people and be able to learn languages, not just Chinese, from all around the world. Now I was actually getting really frustrated when I was playing with it because of how difficult it used to be to try to learn Chinese even when I was living in China. A lot of people go kind of under the assumption that you learn a language just by immersion but that's just one piece of it, right? Now, back in the day I was basically going around and trying to have conversations in Chinese with people, but if I didn't know a word I was kind of out of luck because a lot of the time, I wasn't able to find it in the dictionary and I couldn't read Chinese characters. It's not like studying Spanish or something like that where you can actually kind of make a pronunciation out of the letters. Chinese is based off of thousands of thousands of intricate unique character so it made it twice as hard to learn the language as well. If you've watched my videos you know I'm married to a beautiful Chinese girl who actually was able to speak English It's been almost eight years now and we've gone through a lot. I've learned her language, she's learned mine, everything's honky-dory now and all of you probably know our happy story. You know, we're happily married four years now and we have a one-year-old daughter but I always try to think what if we just were able to communicate with each other what would have happened. Hi, hey, hi, how are you doing? Do you speak English? Why don't you, why don't you give me your number? Why don't you call me? Here. No no, like call me like your phone number can you give me your phone number? Yes, yes You have facebook? facebook facebook from Give me your facebook. Please. Hi. I'm happy to meet you. I'm really glad to meet you I, I, happy wo Can you teach me that? I'm learning I'm learning Chinese! You're learning English! learning learning learn learn, L, learn learn, learning! Ah, xuexi! What do you like to do? What... in your free time "Free time" zenme shuo? hrgh... Let me see: free, free, free, free, F, F, F, F, uh... A bird? What are you drinking? what... You're going to go? OK I'll use ... facebook i'll use facebook to contact you. Facebook ok. Bye bye. Imagine the disaster! Who knows how our lives would have ended up? What do you think? There is a heart Totally broken, right? Now the thing is like I wanted to kind of get into how I actually learned Chinese, And i wanted to point out a lot of people think that when i got here because i wasn't filming videos back then that magically and miraculously and my Chinese is like totally fine because they didn't see like the struggle process of me learning. Do you remember, Because I was never shy about it, right? Do you remember when I tried to speak Chinese to you within our first year of meeting back in like 2009? That was awful! I don't even want to listen to your chinese tone. I would just give up and shut that... shut my ear it's because back then it was this simple this is how I learn Chinese I carried a dictionary with me I look like an absolute dork I'd have a pencil and I couldn't really look up Chinese words and I'm not going to get into how the Chinese language work so much but how do you look up a character I mean there's twenty thousand something characters right so how am I going to look up characters in a dictionary if I don't know it so what I would do is have really really awkward conversations with Chinese people like yourself all right and I would go and every time I didn't know word I would ask the Chinese person what that word meant nine times out of ten they don't speak English so it was really help right so they'd jot down some some handwriting character and I go back he like how am I supposed to study this you know it's just complete limbo I was stuck in it really slowed down my language learning process also I would kind of try to tell stories in Chinese and then when i run into a roadblock I mean I would often find that you don't have the patience be able to help you out through the conversation so I'd try to get other people to do it it was a nightmare I'm actually really frustrated and angry that nowadays people have it so easily this is the first time that I was really excited about a product or an app and also incredibly angry because it's literally hello talk it's like this social media app and it just like we chat or Facebook so you still have the features like you have your moment so you post like a blog but also there's functionality to where you can actually correct people's language so i signed up as a chinese learner you signed up as an english learner even though we both speak the languages just to test it out though and what was it like it was kind of like people could find you yeah people can first off what they get they give you the best match and then second they can give you the people nearby and also they can show you who is extra online right so it's kind of like you can meet people for the explicit purpose of language exchange and this is kind of an inside joke wit the language exchange in China like before these apps and stuff before they made it less weird oh I can teach you tiny north it comes from me and like terrible Chinese from a foreign earnings like what ya ash way she Joanne and were down to you and helpful how what the idea exactly so these be kind of has that are popping up especially hello talk the one that we played with it's really crazy because it's kind of like it runs almost like tinder or one of those dating apps without the kind of sleazy like background behind of it as soon as I turn this app on as soon as we turn it on we are getting people that were saying hey let's let's learn together and they have a profile that shows you how many things they've corrected how many people they've helped so it's like you have a reputation it was pretty cool you can have like this introduction voy a la madrastra lobby a six year and nothing to have conversations with people and they give you all the tools and I'm going to go back in time like if I met a person and try to speak Chinese I would always have my dictionary in my notebook and I'd end up drawing pictures on napkins and stuff right so even if it was so difficult that I couldn't communicate my idea and had to draw a picture you can do that on this f2 or so that was really really cool and I'd be able to follow people's lives like all the way across the world so for me it was it's like frustrating because back then it's so awkward to meet people if you don't speak their language and if you like a lot of people that watch our videos in China think that we came together and anyone can come together really really easily and nonchalantly because they don't understand how big the language gap can be right like if you also don't want to have those slave romance and you just want to study and you want your own same gender and the same age range you can also set that that's like really amazing for you yeah that and like I always I always had this belief that you had to be in a certain country to be able to learn a language so when I move to China like there's no way would have learned Chinese in America that's for sure right because you're not surrounded by the language and that's absolutely key you should be surrounded by it all the time but with with this app with hello talk you can surround yourself with native speakers the entire time so if you you know if you want to spend your entire time on here and use it as your social media app your language will come along remember number three I thought was really cool that you can actually have it speak like so you sent me a message so it actually reads to see you know what it is and for tiny speakers at least this was really really good for me you put it in pinyin and it has all the tones so you listen to it and you can see which thought it is me sunlights the consignee all right I said very learned like because you actually talk to the native speaker so you also can learn a lot of playing in there that was a huge huge thing that I noticed actually I gave you a little example so I said you're giving me some really creepy creepy a sniffle just pretending to be a girl trying to find the handsome boy life need and i replied to you and if i was learning chinese out of a book for years ago right i was i wouldn't understand what i replied to you right but was this it's slang and then you would be able to explain it to me or vice versa right and if you didn't know what I was talking about i could just draw a picture of of grass right hey go now you know what I'm talking about grass thanks I was never known to be an artist you should thanks really appreciate it I thought this was a really interesting opportunity because it gave me a chance to talk to everyone about how i learned Chinese and how bitterly angry I am there's so much easier nowadays once again a pc is at all eating yes is it daddy again so what kind of language you want to learn the more you see cuando hospices yeah so you were wailing eating as you Konoha what about you narcissism a year I think I'm probably want to learn Spanish because i think it's always fulfill my business i have a lot of clients ok ok Tamil mas que tu mi porque quiero after in their containers para te quieres aprender espanol para los negocios don't lay I so how could you gunilla

Channel: laowhy86

Views: 460,248

Rating: 4.7397466 out of 5

Keywords: hellotalk, english, app, korean, friends, japanese, hello talk, laowhy86, china, serpentza, chinese, living in china, language app, language, apps, xiaorishu, hinative, duolingo, learning chinese, learn chinese, mandarin, beijing, learning, learn mandarin, study, learn, learning chinese for beginners, learning chinese conversation, learning chinese mandarin, chinese language learning, mandarin chinese (human language), hello, talk, chinese girl, conquering southern china, conquering northern china

Id: 3Qcn6iRAhZQ

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2017