this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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That’s a thought I hadn’t considered. I have young family I help care for in the US, so it might be hard if things start soon to leave, but that just opened up a whole new option to me, thank you.
I say if you’re interested in learning, at least give it a try! It’s such a fun and lovely language, I really enjoy everything about it. It’s tough, but being in China and reading signs was so satisfying, and the few times I could hold a short conversation were really confidence boosting. God do some people talk fast though. When my wife is on calls with her family it’s like a thousand words a minute. I honestly feel like they have to think faster than me because I don’t know how you can say so much in so short a time, I’m very much a slow and steady kinda guy. It also made me consider how language can affect cognition a lot.
I'm not quite sure what the laws are on that, but I do think if your wife is a Chinese national, your family should be able to apply for asylum, though you may need to fly over there from another nation first (Mexico most likely).
Yeah, everything I learn about the language is just really interesting (I love how composite words work in the language, it feels like if I had a good enough grasp of it I could convey what I mean even if I don't have the specific word that I want to say, just using a combination of existing words/letters.)
I definitely get the "people talk to fast" thing though, I'm Australian, and we're notoriously slow talkers in other languages, so that'll be the biggest hurdle I think. I'm always annoyed with how slowly it can take to convey ideas though, so learning a "faster" language is something I'm looking forward too, I waste too much time trying to think through ideas, and being able to convey those ideas in a more efficient way is something I've looked for all my life, so hopefully another language is the answer. I mainly keep putting it off because "I don't have the time" but I'll never have the time really, so I should just put aside whatever time I can each day to learn a little. I really like the idea of being able to speak to a billion people I couldn't previously.
In terms of talking faster, it'd probably be a lot easier to just learn another English dialect that is faster, like SAE.
Do you just talk to your wife in her second language? I always find that kind of thing odd unless her English is native-like
She lived overseas for years so her English is very, very good.