learn chinese so you can read dumb memes and commentary on 哔哩哔哩. my favorite so far was someone reposting one of those videos of MAGA chuds pointing pistols at their junk for some reason, retitled "人类根除计划“ which is like "humankind extinction project". oh also lots of chinese g*mers to hang out with if you're into that, i played a ton of GTA Online with a homie from 辽宁省, although this was before I knew any Chinese whatsoever.
I'm learning Mandarin. Imo, it's not super difficult because the grammar is pretty straightforward. They don't have any tenses and therefore don't conjugate verbs (which was my least favorite part of my brief foray into spanish).
I'm also learning to read Mandarin as a side thing. I didn't even realize there's no tenses. There's no grammatical gender, the sentence structure is subject-verb-object (the same as english), and the way the characters are constructed is often very logical. It's a dope ass language, way more intuitive than German or Japanese, the other two I've tried my hand at.
I figure it makes sense because it's so far away from what I'm used to and also grants me access to the language of a gigantic swath of people with whom I have almost no cultural exchange otherwise.
The communism thing is really just a niche bonus.
No, if you can say "What?" "No!" "Maybe?" and "Uhhhh" with typical expressive enunciation in English, you can say chinese tones
If that were the case I wouldn't be able to speak my own native language.
This is the great misconception about tonal languages amongst English speakers, and leads to some really funny accents.
Tones are relative, not absolute. "High tone" just means higher than the low tones surrounding it.
100% yes. Learning languages is great in general, easily the most worthwhile low-effort hobby imo for a lot of reasons.
I took a year of it in college and it was really fun. The grammar is pretty different, but often simpler than English. Tones are something you have to remember, it's not too hard really, though there are a few phonemes that aren't in English that you'll have to get used to; I found diagrams of the inside of the mouth helpful with that.
I was illiterate in Chinese almost immediately after the class ended, but I'm sure there are helpful resources for learning and retaining characters.
Yup slowly chipping away at it. I’ve found a good app is Hello Chinese. But nothing beats talking to people.
