Is it worth learning Chinese Sup Forums?

Is it worth learning Chinese Sup Forums?

I'm really torn. I absolutely love Chinese traditional arts and history, but the country itself is pretty much a third world dictatorship engulfed in perpetual smog at the moment. Chinese people also probably hate foreigners on principle.

I don't know what to do. Should I go for it, despite the negatives? Or would I be better off learning Spanish instead or German? (Even though I have very little motivation to learn either)
Oh, English isn't my native language by the way.

just learn the phrase "america sucks" first and you'll be good to go

Learn Korean, it's better

Ask yourself this: which foreign women would I like to fuck?

go to hong kong. its Chinese enough to scratch that itch but not mainland shitty

koreans are stupid

yeah it'd be probably easier, but Korean culture is heavily based on China's, so why settle, when you can learn about the original?

I'm not interested in women at all.

Don't you have to learn Cantonese instead of Mandarin then?

I'm going to learn Mandarin just because of the language population. Spanish is easier to learn and has a lot of speakers as well. For Mandarin I will take a 6 month intensive because apparently to speak it well is difficult for English speakers

Either way depending how old you are, you have a long life to live. Why not go for it.

>I'm not interested in women at all.

Then why bother learning another language at all? Why bother living?

Learn traditional mandarin then travel to taiwan, hongkong and singapore

Why learn English if you could learn Latin? Or why not learn Phonetician. That's the original western language. Plus The Chinese language is a fucked up mess of a few thousand years of just adding words when they wanted to

...

user, learned Mandarin in college and lived in guilin and shanghai for a bit. If you really want to do it, then do it. Only the big cities are smoged to hell the smaller cities are better. Chinese people are very nice to foreigners as long as your not an asshole. And yeah it has it's quirks but it's no worse than anywhere else. Plus you're less likely to get murder there than the U.S.

As far as the language it's not to hard once you grasp the basics of (Subject + Verb + Object), from there it's just vocab. Obviously it's a little more than that but overall it's not as hard as it's built up to be. Japanese is much worse to learn.

You might consider asking Sup Forums about shit like this but I say just go for it. I think they do kind of hate foreigners but being proficient in their language will set you way apart from the average gwailo they deal with. If you're into the culture, it would probably be enjoyable for you to learn so why not?

mandarin is the most lucrative language to learn. Knowing both English and Mandarin will be easy $$$.

Cantonese and Korean will be useless unless you're into watching Hong Kong movies or understanding Kpop lyrics.

Ethan?

No m8

Unfortunately, I have a knack for learning languages. It's like telling someone with a talent for painting not to paint.
I find it entertaining to work out the logic behind a language, decipher the culture and such. It's like a puzzle, you start out with little, but as you're putting it all together, things become clearer and clearer until you're starting to see the big picture, doing it faster, and faster, guided by intuition and practice. It's so much fun!
My English is decent enough, I just feel like it's time to move on and learn something else.

>Why learn English if you could learn Latin?
Because the media I consume and the books I want to read aren't in Latin. I apologize if I offended you, I wasn't trying to diss Korean, it's just how I see things.

I'm European actually, not American.
How long did it take you to learn Mandarin? Is it easy to make friends in China? What are the people like there, in your opinion? Good and bad.

>If you're into the culture, it would probably be enjoyable for you to learn so why not?
Well, learning German or Spanish seems more rewarding to me. I mean both Germany and Spain have higher living standards and quality than China.

Korean manhwa is sweet

Why is Japanese worse to learn?

Is there any trick to remembering the symbols that isn't just memorization?

Don't do it. You'll find yourself in a purchasing job and hate your life forever.

Learning the characters is the worst part to be honest. You said you'd do 6 months intensive learning, you could have all the basics and survival chinese done by then maybe more depending on how quickly you pick it up. The main thing to do is really practice speaking with different ppl b/c there are many dialects and they all sound like different languages if you're in China. Like I said before chinese ppl are very nice and if they see that you're making an effort with the language and culture they'll go out of their way to help you if needed. Yes it's easy to make friends in China. Whatever hobbies you have they're ppl who probably share those. I love it the whole time I was there.

Chinese only has 1 writing system, Japanese has 3. But as far as oral communication honestly Chinese is more straightforward (Subject + Time + Place + Verb + Object), whereas Japanese has much more grammar and rules/exceptions. So not necessarily worse in my opinion it's harder to learn and takes longer to get competent.

OP is a giant faggot

Thanks, but that being said does only memorization work for learning to draw those crazy characters/symbols? I know some Japanese from Japan who don't know kanji. I thought there was only around 2000 characters that Japanese even need to know to be considered at an adult reading level in kanji. So why do some of them not know it? It has to be easier to memorize those symbols if you're already fluent in a language that also uses crazy intricate symbols?

Omg learning a new lanugage how scary

are you a fucking retard or something like that

Japanese is just a hot mess, more so the writing. It's grammar is so tedious they routinely skip over assumed words so you have to learn the right way then the way it's actually spoken. Miss the context clues and you're lost. Don't get me started on the writing. It's probably one of the most Frankenstein's monster fucked up jumble of multiple attempts to re-purpose Chinese writing over the centuries in vastly different ways to fit a language that is simply not compatible. Plus you'll be using a ton of hiragana which, a hundred years ago, was considered only fit to teach to women. Bonus: once you learn it everyone will just think you're a fucking weeabo while the Japanese themselves will just think you're a freak and not trust you.

OP here, I only learned a handful of symbols just yet. I think you have to draw them yourself a couple of times to memorize the symbol properly.

I'm not this user anyway, I'm planning on learning it by myself, like I did with English. I often find that the classroom setting is the surest way to kill any interest that I have towards a subject.
> Like I said before chinese ppl are very nice and if they see that you're making an effort with the language and culture they'll go out of their way to help you if needed. Yes it's easy to make friends in China. Whatever hobbies you have they're ppl who probably share those. I love it the whole time I was there.
That sounds nice. And what about the government? Did you run into any trouble with officials and such?

Being able to read Chinese classics like The Analects in the original, written thousands of years ago, is pretty cool.

Chinese grammar is very easy, the sentence structure is the same as in English. Aside from the orthography and tones, it is not that difficult.

Japanese grammar is complicated when compared to Chinese, but relatively simple and regular when compared to English. It helps to study classical grammar and not just memorise phrases, as most texts will advocate.

The writing system is the most complicated of all living languages, but much of the beauty derives from that. There's more than one way to write almost anything, all with different connotations.

Example, "sushi":

寿司
壽司
鮓
鮨
すし
スシ

One trick to help with the characters is that most similar themed characters have similar parts on the left side. For example look up the characters for river and ocean. Both of them have the same part or "radical" on the left side which lets you know that it has something to do with water.

In addition to that which helps the more you see and practice the characters you naturally remember them. The only bad part is if you leave it for a while you can forget how to write em. That's probably why some japanese in your example may not :know"

Damn straight

If your just going about your business like a normal citizen then you should never really come in contact with government ppl

Yes, to someone who can spend the time to see the different layers that have built up and grasp the craziness in it, there is a perverse beauty in it that will fascinate people drawn to puzzles and the like. But as far as learning it for more practical purposes it's hella difficult, time consuming, frustrating, and has the least return on investment unless you intent is to just consume their media. They do not like when people go there and butcher it, and if you master it they find it highly suspect. No winning that one.

Long-time dweller in moonland here.

The short answer is they over-rely on input systems which only really require the user to know how a word is pronounced. For example, if I type "u t u b y o u", I see "うつびょう" appear. Then I press my conversion key and うつびょう becomes 鬱病.

鬱 has twenty-nine strokes, but it isn't too difficult to recognise.

The trend here lately is to use more and more kanji because the input systems make it so easy. But take them away and give the average Japanese a pen and paper, and watch the literacy levels drop. I have to be careful about which characters I use because my colleagues might be unable to read it.

Beware the rising dragon

I chose to master it. Of course, no one ever really believes me until I prove it, then they're just plain shocked. But that's half the fun.

chinese have dislikes, for the most part they admire the west,have nothing more than distaste for the unh nork regime,the leadership conceals unh missile & nuke activities from the people.
day to day,big cities are crowded,every occupation you have seen in the west is an occupation growing there like weeds in spring kansas prairies, work, study,follow the laws,learn classical and modern chinese,you will like it, if you have a language ear so much the more

bump

Yeah I get that hahaha. I signed up for language exchange and literally all the guys who hit me up on there said they didn't like manga or anime which I was kind of disappointed. Not sure if it's a lie because they're ashamed or if manga lovers in America wrongly believe everyone in japan must like some of these things.

Taiwan is ur place then. Learn Cantonese.

How about another question

You're trolling right?

Wow that's pretty crazy. I know this is a little off topic but in those countries can they do programming in Japanese /Chinese?

Best way to learn is by being there absorbing the language in person. Ur not going to find much culture in communist china tho. Ever heard of the cultural revolution? They destroyed their culture user. Only place to find culture is non commie china: Hong Kong, Taiwan, california etc

Obviously, their systems can handle display of the characters, and almost everything in done in Unicode now, but code itself is usually written with latin characters and quite a lot of English vocabulary. I don't know about Chinese, but I suspect it is the same.

Most programmers are pretty familiar with English in any case.

Too much Communist propaganda in the west. Ur a lost cause

someone post the screencap of the guy who learned Chinese and works in the steel industry in China to show OP what it's really like

Thanks for answering my random questions. I wish you good luck. Maybe you should get pen pals it's a fun way to brush up on a language. I have Japanese guys texts me words out of nowhere, and guys who correct my Japanese. Some help me translate. Some I trade hentai with. It's been pretty rewarding.

Don't learn Cantonese first. You'd be fucking up big time.

you are a pretentious faggot my man

No prob. Learning a new language can be a lot of fun, especially if you have some good companions to do it with,

I was asking because you said Cantonese in Taiwan. Taiwan is mostly mandarin very little if any Cantonese.

Japanese people absolutely despise weabboos or however it's spelled. they literally hate anyone not from there that goes overboard on the gay anime shit. if you don't believe me just look it up

Grammatically very similar to Japanese, huge amount of Sinitic vocabulary.

On the plus side, you can learn to read and write hangul in literally a day.

Yeah, it's hard, but it's definitely worth it. I'm two years into the language myself, and I love it. I plan on becoming a diplomat, so its hella important. I would say learn the Mandarin an a Beijing dialect, as it will probably be the most helpful. Good luck!!

This. Mostly useless language but based writing system.

Japanese adults look at those things as they're meant for kids.

I'm a foreign in Japan, and I occasionally encounter some weeb who somehow saved up enough money to visit here. The wincing and cringing from the locals is painfully obvious to all but them. They really do come here expecting an IRL anime.

kek yeah I know people who have gone over there in a similar situation and one of them actually got beat up. I knew 2 Japanese exchange students in HS who were really nice guys... great people. but that's where I learned about them really looking down upon the weebs

Yeah, they have good reason to be proud of it. No other living orthography is so simple and well-designed.

Pretty much the exact opposite of Japanese orthography, now that I think about it.

They had probably already encountered some American exchange students to Japanese high schools. Almost every last one is a full-blown weeb.

It's because they did a mindbogglingly simple but logical thing, they had it designed from scratch to be used to write anything and be learned in a day. Those were literally the two requirements. Most other societies would see an idea like that as cool but disruptive. They gave no fucks (easier 500 years ago when few people were literate of course) and did it.

That said, learning Korean is of very limited practical use and using that same time to learn Mandarin would be much more useful. But at least learn Hangul as an example of what can be done when people say fuck it, let's just do it right.

A beautifully scientific way to design a language.

Of course, English cannot even achieve spelling reform because of its near-ubiquity. No central authority to push through a reform.

I agree about Korean, though: unless you're planning to live there, there just isn't much reason to learn it. I can read and write Japanese, modern and literary, as well as Classical Chinese, but I have very little interest in taking up Korean.

I also visited Korea once, and found it to combine the absolute worst aspects of Western and Asian culture. You could not pay me to live there.

I'd say no.

I was interested in Chinese until I went there. Brought along a book of Li Ho's poems. No one there gave a shit about their own culture. They're all just trying to scam money from someone else 24/7, that's all China is in 2017.

Taiwan and Hong Kong do have people with some culture and knowing Mandarin would be useful for that in Taiwan (in Hong Kong about half of the people worth talking to know Mandarin, the other half are only really comfortable speaking Cantonese).

On the whole being interested in Chinese arts and history is a problem because it's almost impossible to find Chinese people to talk to who share that interest. Also Tang era classical Chinese is basically a foreign language to modern day Mandarin speakers, they have to take classes themselves to be able to understand it at all, so what good is all your language effort really doing you? To top it all off the general lack of quality research in China (it's 90% lies and plagiarism done to get an academic job or for propaganda purposes) mean that most high quality modern scholarship about China is actually done in English.

If you think it'll give you an economic advantage think again. The last thing you want to do for work is be the guy who has to deal with the Chinese all the time for someone else. Contracts mean nothing to them so you're constantly talking to them having them say yes and then not doing something, or doing only half of what they said they'd do, or not having anything ready when they said they would. So you get blamed for this bullshit on your end all the time.

The language you pick up should be because you're interested in the country in modern times. Is there some place you might move to after you retire? Is there a country you might more than once in your life? French is great for adventure travel in much of Africa. Spanish gets you access to great places to visit like Mexico and Peru. Those kinds of things should be your concerns.

Yes. Learn it well, it will stand you in good stead.

I urge any and all to learn things. It is good to learn things.

Why would you bother with Korean. Terrible country to visit, the men are all huge assholes, all the worst aspects of the West combined with the worst aspects of the East, almost all of the culture is derived directly from Chinese shit.

Forget it.

This. The Cultural Revolution destroyed Chinese culture, and the so-called "simplified" characters cut the Chinese off from what little remained. The mainlanders are basically Ferengi at this point.

Taiwan is probably the last bastion of traditional Chinese culture.

>all the worst aspects of the West combined with >the worst aspects of the East,

Holy fuck, I just wrote basically that. You've definitely been there, haven't you?

Taiwan is a great place to visit full of nice people who have a respect for their own past. It also has pretty good English levels, however, and unless you plan to live there I don't think picking up Mandarin just for Taiwan is a good use of your time.

There is actual Chinese culture in Hong Kong as well, although your average Hong Konger is probably about five times as materialistic as your average Taiwanese (and about a fifth as materialistic as a Mainlander).

There is still some in HK as well, but it must be slowly eroding under the rule of the mainland. It's been a generation since the handover.

Good countries in Asia:
-Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Japan, Taiwan

OK countries in Asia:
-Burma, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal

Bad countries in Asia:
-China, Korea, Mongolia

>ok countries
>burma

lolwut

You mean the brutal, narco-state military dictatorship? That Burma?

Hurr hurr I know a thing about Burma from the internet but have never been there hurr hurrrrrr

I guess I'm all turned around on North Korea too.