Languager1790 Posted October 23, 2015 Report Share Posted October 23, 2015 Hey everybody, newcomer to the forums here. I'm an American who studies Chinese (Mandarin) and seeks to one day teach English in the PRC as a way to earn a living. I've also been to China before and am itching to go back (Chengdu, Sichuan Province. To be exact). I can't believe I've never thought to look for a forum like this before. I like how there's a multitude of languages under one roof (so to speak). And while Mandarin is my only "serious" study, linguistically, I'm keen to know about other languages as well. I took a semester of Italian once and found it enjoyable. But I'd also like to know more about... rarer languages. So if anyone knows anything Mongolian or Okinawan, I'd love to hear what you know. Anyways, that's me. I hope to learn a thing or two from this place and maybe add some new knowledge someday. Oh, any fans of non-english movies here? None of my friends back home quite share my love of Foreign (to me) flicks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sillylucy Posted October 24, 2015 Report Share Posted October 24, 2015 Hello! Welcome to the forum and I hope you learn some really cool new things here. I am also and American who studies French and Spanish. I have always wanted to study character based languages, but I am too much of a wuss! I salute you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Languager1790 Posted October 26, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2015 Thanks for the warm welcome! I hope I'll see you add bold, promising knowledge to the site as well! Do not be so intimidated by character-based languages. What you get in terms of difficulty with writing (memorizing those stroke orders, recognizing traditional and simplified characters, etc.) is offset by not needing to worry about gender or cases like in romance languages. I took italian for a semester once and I found it hard to wrap my head around gender. When to end something with an "o" or an "a" and all that. Numbers are also nice and easy in chinese. Counting to 100 in Italian was hard for me, but it was nothing to get to 999 in Chinese.Give it a shot sometime! Just learn a phrase or two and I'm certain you'll see what I'm talking about. I should get into Spanish like you, though. Pretty useful to have at least a conversational level of Espanol in America. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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