Researching East Asia is Fun! · 6:57pm Jun 9th, 2016

So, for the past while, I've been asking various questions to various people about countries from East and Southeast Asia. It all started when I thought to myself, "Hey, Japan is pretty cool!" And it just divulged and diverged from there. Now there are several countries in and around East Asia that I cultivate an interest in, including China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Vietnam. And by far—by far—the thing I love the most about them would be to learn their languages.

At first it wasn't turning out very well. And what I mean by that is:

Me: Hey, <Chinese immigrant classmate whose real name I won't say>! If you used to live in China, can you tell me about it?
Her: I was adopted into America when I was 4. I don't know anything about China.
Me: Oh. *Tries to laugh off my blunder*
Random Other Classmate: You're laughing at the fact that she's adopted?!
Me: No, I—
Classmate: You bully!

Or:

Me: Hey, <Vietnamese immigrant classmate whose real name I won't say>! You lived in Vietnam until you were 11, right?
Her: Yes.
Me: I'm trying to learn Vietnamese, can you help?
Her: I'm not good enough at English yet.
Me: Oh.

So I just stuck with going on this one website and learning Japanese for a while. I'm still new to it, but it's coming along nicely. I've learned Hiragana and Katakana (the two main forms of Japanese writing), am working on several Kanji characters and learning new ones as I progress, and have learned a few Japanese particles, including the の possessive suffix and は topic particle (though the latter is very confusing).

However, my fascination in China has been growing a lot as of late, and as learning foreign languages is very fun for me and might be put to use later, I realized that I would very much like to learn to learn the Chinese writing system and speak Mandarin, Cantonese, or both (or maybe even a less common Chinese dialect). The only problem is, I don't know where to start.

So, if any of you know somewhere or someway I can start my campaign to learn to speak "Chinese" (in parentheses because with the exception of the writing system, there's no such thing as "the Chinese language"), I would be grateful if you could point it out.

Report BlabideeblahMLP · 281 views · #China #Mandarin #Cantonese #I Can Learn Japanese Mandarin and Spanish At The Same Time It's Not Like I'm Trying To Tap Out Two Guitar Riffs At Once #Gokies #Hashtag

Comments ( 3 )