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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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I'm ethnically Chinese/Vietnamese but raised in the UK/Canada and basically have only had a really crap grasp of Chinese. So I've been actively trying to learn. The number of fucking Chinese people that tell me to shut up or that I sound stupid is insane. These aren't even random Chinese neither, it's my fucking friends. Some of these people speak English with a shit accent. I've never made of theirs and I just lightly correct their word usage (like if they're missing a word or something). How the hell am I supposed to get better?
Three years ago I said screw it and went with doing Duolingo with YouTube video support. I can now read and "write" (use pinyin) but speaking is poor because nobody wants to talk to me despite me having a lot of Chinese friends. Not gonna stop though. I'm starting to pay for tutors but this feels so silly because the point of me learning was to connect with my Chinese heritage. I should have picked up french instead.
Should've learned Vietnamese
Objectively speaking, Vietnamese is much easier to learn for an English speaker too since they also use the Latin alphabet.
Not sure how many Vietnamese speakers are in the UK though.
I dunno about "much" easier, as all tonal languages are pretty rough for English speakers and many of the phonemes are totally new. Easier to learn to read and write for sure, but listening and speaking are a different beast.
True, but I was comparing it to Mandarin and Cantonese (OP didn't say which Chinese language but I assume it's one of these). Both of them are also tonal languages from what I understand so in that way they are all different from English.
However, Vietnamese is easier since the characters are more recognizable. Listening to movies/shows with subtitles makes it easier to understand and it's easier to pick up reading Vietnamese than reading Chinese.
The issue here though, is that for OP it seems like Chinese is the more practical language to learn since their "friends" also speak it.
I can help and start calling around.
I wanted to share a quick story, but it's intention is not to excuse bad behavior. I speak two languages very well. One of the languages is relatively uncommon and I have only ever heard it spoken by native speakers. Recently I was at an event and am American told me they learned this language. I'm like that's cool as hell, let's hear. What came out of their mouth shorted out my brain and my brain refused to answer them in anything other than English.
I have no rational explanation of what occurred inside of my head. My partner actually asked me why I didn't respond back in the same language and I had no answer.