• Shoegazer [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Both of them get English teaching jobs where they'll give poor quality education to a bunch of poor kids

    • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Both of them get English teaching jobs where they’ll give poor quality education to a bunch of poor bourgeois kids

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        That was more likely to be true in China where learning English had more prestige attached to it. However, last year there were educational reforms which included making it necessary for foreign teachers to actually have teaching qualifications, so that eliminates most of the existing English speaking crowd.

        • constellation [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          And all the Ukrainians, Belorussians, Serbians, Pakistanis, etc. who were masquerading as Canadian. Now they have to display a copy of the teacher's passport in the lobby of the school. :hahaha:

    • iridaniotter [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Actually I intend to get a translation job that will probably be automated by large language models in five years thank you very much!

    • constellation [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Nope, poor kids can't afford it.

      You probably didn't hear, but China eliminated the entire after-school education sector a year ago. Gone. Poof. All those teachers had to go home. Now there's only public schools, and many have real standards.

      Soon you'll have to be a professional English teacher. Like, be certified to teach in your own country. You won't be able to be a random white person and teach. They're not there yet but it's coming.

  • CliffordBigRedDog [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    White boys who learn Japanese: :soypoint-1:

    White boys who learn Mandarin: :chad:

    White boys who learn some obscure dialect from southern China like Taishanese or whatever: :gigachad:

    • constellation [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      White boys who learn some obscure dialect from southern China like Taishanese or whatever:

      This is dumb idea. Once you travel outside that tiny area, your language skills will be useless. Good luck on your trip to Xi'an or Beijing (or overseas).

      • CliffordBigRedDog [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yes i was clearly telling people to learn taishanese instead of joking

        Also, people learn the languages of small euro states all the time

        A "small dialect" by Chinese standards would have like 2 million speakers

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    there are...some amount of leftists in Japan. I speak an ok amount of Japanese and I've met a few by complete chance. I don't really know what to make of it. No idea where that energy might go or how it could be harnessed.

    They only have 17% union membership, which really sucks, but it's actually higher than some other rich capitalist nations. France is only around 10%, UK is only like 11%. I've also noticed anecdotally from stuff online and meeting people that "共産主義" (communism, kyousanshugi) isn't a dirty word there, it's just seen a certain type of political association as valid as being a liberal or that weird fascist Buddhist party they have. So that's something at least.

    I would say it's hopeless. Japan's currently a fascist country of course. But I don't know, there's something there. There's a weirdly high amount of class consciousness, but I could just be comparing them to Americans.

    I speak a moderate amount of Chinese too though, hopefully more one day. It's actually not as difficult as y'all might think

    • Redcuban1959 [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The JCP is still pretty cringe, they need to change their Anti-China stance because it makes no sense other than to appeal to conservatives that will never join or support their party. Reiwa Shinsengumi seems to be a much better socialist party that is not afraid of calling the ruling LDP fascistic and a puppet of the USA.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        The JCP I'm convinced are controlled opposition or something. They've never gotten anywhere in the diet despite how wide-reaching their propaganda is. You can see their posters in every single neighborhood in Tokyo. They're also against nuclear energy and don't seem great when it comes to queer issues.

        Their numbers are kinda impressive though for a rich capitalist country, especially for one with Communist right in the name.

        Reiwa is promising, but they're also stuck with the same thing a lot of progressive elements in Japan are stuck with. Ever since the 2013 State Secrecy Law, Japan's been pumping tons of cash into their military and intelligence. And that probably coincides with western countries getting frightened of Xi Jinping becoming the Chinese president in 2012. So Japan's stuck in a political quagmire that reminds me of 2003 America, with tons of money funneling into military expansion, and progressive voices becoming stuck on anti-war issues as their main focus.

        • putsthecultinculture [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Japan has the same revolutionary potential as any western white country which is to say very little. Any material support to literally any other Asian country would be better spent than going to Japan. Israel would be a better invest of material support for a leftist movement than Japan. Japan isn’t an extension of the imperial core, it is at the center of it, a weird honor for a “non-white” country.

          • Nagarjuna [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Japan has the same revolutionary potential as any western white country which is to say very little.

            Can't believe you would erase France and Greece like this

            • Vncredleader
              ·
              2 years ago

              Greece when being complimented is Balkan or Turkish. Like how when talking about Italy in a positive way Italians are then North Africans like racist euros (and plenty of northern Italians) think

      • constellation [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Remember "The Japan That Can Say No"? By the former governor of Tokyo. The idea was that Japan should ditch the USA and form an alliance with China. That did not turn out well.

    • Yeat [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      idrk anything about japanese politics post ww2 (aside from the abe assassination lmao), in what ways is their country fascist and/or anywhere i can read about it?

    • booty [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      chinese is pretty difficult for most westerners just because we're not used to tonal stuff, but japanese is pretty straightforward tbh. it's mostly the writing that can be tricky.

      • Grimble [he/him,they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Yeah, hirigana and katakana are easy to learn as alphabets with phonetic symbols, but as soon as the kanji w/ chinese loaned symbols starts god help you

        • Abraxiel
          ·
          2 years ago

          Hiragana and katakana are the alphabets

        • constellation [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Japanese has fewer than 2000 kanji. That's it. Once you've learned those, you're done.

          Chinese has 5000 hanzi if you want to read a newspaper. 10,000 if you want to be able to read. Keep going, literate Chinese can read 50,000.

      • constellation [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Japanese is tonal too. It's just that the textbooks aren't up front about it. It's one of the reasons that Asian speakers are better, because they can speak the tones in Japanese. While the white boys are always going to sound weird and off. Not to mention, a lot of them learn from their girlfriends, so you've got this big hairy man and when he opens his mouth he sounds like a prissy little girl. :hahaha:

        • booty [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          yeah but tones in japanese only affect dialect like you're talking about, right? so sure the dumb white guy talks like a valley girl but if he tries to speak chinese he accidentally insults your mother. sounds like japanese is still straightforward relatively lmao

          • Nagarjuna [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            There are words that entirely change meaning with tone. Not as many as Chinese, but still a lot

          • constellation [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            No, they're an integral part of the language. It's just that textbooks don't seem to mention it, and that reflects the poor state of pedagogy in Japanese learning. I'm convinced the people who write textbooks don't want anyone to learn, because more people speaking Japanese would diminish their own accomplishments and make them feel less special.

            • booty [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              I had no idea, that's interesting. Where could I read more about this?

              • constellation [none/use name]
                ·
                2 years ago

                I quit studying Japanese long ago in favor of Chinese. Tones are definitely there, though. Heck English has tones.

                • booty [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  English just has one tone that's grammatically meaningful though, and even then you can do without it through context.

                    • booty [he/him]
                      ·
                      2 years ago

                      No they don't. There are at most two meanings between these 4 things, and both of those meanings could be extracted from context by a person speaking in a monotone.

                      • constellation [none/use name]
                        ·
                        2 years ago

                        All I have to say is that we have very different views of what tones mean in speech. Having studied tonal languages, I'm sticking with my view.

                        • booty [he/him]
                          ·
                          2 years ago

                          What a lame response. Why even comment? "I've decided you're wrong and I know more than you, but of course I can't articulate why." Did I accidentally log into reddit today?

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I mean, its difficult for me because I feel like I've got nowhere to use it. Even my friends who do speak Chinese just won't even pretend to have a conversation with me. And its not as though I'm employing it daily.

        • booty [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          yeah that's always the hardest part. you simply can't learn a language without having someone to speak it with. it doesnt stick lol

          fortunately there are way more resources for that these days than there were in the past

  • Yeat [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    i was using duolingo for a bit a while ago to brush up on my spanish because we had a good amount of spanish speakers come into my old job, added chinese into the mix for shits and gigs, learned a few cool words, and stopped for good after 2 days because i simply forgot

    • Flyberius [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I "something" "some country's" people.

      Oh wait. You are American.

      "Beautiful country", lol. I come from "hero country" 😂

      Such a polite language. I love it

    • constellation [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      美国佬

      (this is the pejorative term, which you should use from now on. If you use auto-translate it will tell you "yankee" but the real meaning is derogatory.)