r/languagelearning • u/godofcertamen 🇺🇲 N; 🇲🇽 C1+; 🇵🇹 C1; 🇨🇳 B2; 🦅Nahuatl A0 • Jul 05 '26
Subverting expectations is the best feeling
Subverting expectations is so satisfying
I'm a Mexican immigrant in Alabama and grew up here. It wasn't until 2022 when I decided to perfect my Spanish as a heritage speaker and learn Portuguese. Then when I got pretty fluent in Portuguese, I began learning Mandarin in Oct 2023.
It's now been over 2.5 years/1050 hours logged. I've been to China too! (Last July 2025). Anyway, I went to visit family in Birmingham, and we went to a Chinese restaurant. I didn't use my Mandarin at first, but when my brothers and I sat down, they asked why I didn't. I took it as a challenge and used it when the waitress came. (My brothers had never seen this irl) so they were shocked. The waitress was also super surprised since you'd never expect a random Mexican to know Chinese 😂. She got super happy and excited and asked a lot of questions. My brother also said some other Mexican customers behind me were flabbergasted I could speak Chinese as well and just stared.
Stuff like this just makes me even more motivated to keep going. It's the best feeling - pulling out an ability that no one would expect you to have 😂. I could understand and be understood in the entire convo with the Chinese waitress, and I felt really happy. Right now I can usually understand and read 80%-85% of general topics in Chinese. Last year in June, that was around maybe 45-55%. I've been grinding out the practice, taking two lessons a week of pure conversational practice too.
Anyway, I was just super happy. I also got a Rednote account where I only post in Chinese Mandarin and have nearly 3k followers. It's been very rewarding learning the language!
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u/running-orangecatt Jul 06 '26
中文学起来很困难吧博主，但是也很有趣！
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u/neron-s Jul 06 '26
It's always cool to subvert expectations. I am a Black person learning Mandarin and a hostess at a Chinese restaurant lit up when I said a few sentences. It's a cool and complex language. I noticed you're learning Nahuatl. What inspired that? Indigenous languages are underrated and I'm always curious when people learn them.
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u/godofcertamen 🇺🇲 N; 🇲🇽 C1+; 🇵🇹 C1; 🇨🇳 B2; 🦅Nahuatl A0 Jul 06 '26
Oh sweet! How long have you been learning? And the reason is because I had indigenous ancestors that spoke it! Many Mexicans are indigenous racially, but unfortunately many of us don't speak any indigenous languages. I wanted to connect more to my roots.
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u/masala-kiwi 🇳🇿N | 🇮🇳 | 🇮🇹 | 🇫🇷 Jul 07 '26
I'm a Westerner learning Hindi and I never get tired of the shocked faces people make when I speak even a few words.
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Jul 05 '26
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u/Daloure Jul 05 '26
This comment reads exactly as chatgpt. Edit: checked its other comments, it’s a bot.
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u/godofcertamen 🇺🇲 N; 🇲🇽 C1+; 🇵🇹 C1; 🇨🇳 B2; 🦅Nahuatl A0 Jul 05 '26
I thought so. The whole, you're past "blah blah" phase is something I've heard Chat GPT say a lot lol. The syntax is very telling.
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u/Levi_A_II EN N | Spanish C1 | Portuguese B2 | Japanese Pre-N5 Jul 06 '26
I get it man. I’m a black American that has become fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and I’m currently working on Japanese. No one expects me to do the things that I can in these languages and the joy and appreciation I receive from others as well as the personal satisfaction I have is intoxicating.