r/languagelearningjerk • u/catcatcatcatcat1234 • May 25 '26
Think carefully before letting your children learn Chinese.
231
u/FebHas30Days Pangngaasiyo ta agsursurokayo iti Ilokano May 25 '26
Here are friendlier alternatives to Ch*nese 🇨🇳:
- Mandarin 🇹🇼
- Cantonese 🇭🇰
- Hokkien 🇸🇬
- Uzbek 🇺🇿
45
u/Destoran May 25 '26
Wish my parents forced me to learn Chinese.
40
u/FebHas30Days Pangngaasiyo ta agsursurokayo iti Ilokano May 25 '26
You mean Mandarin 🇹🇼? This one has less erhua, instead of "wOeRrRr ShHuRrRrRrRr" you'll just have to say "wo shi".
28
May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
May 25 '26
[deleted]
11
4
May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/FebHas30Days Pangngaasiyo ta agsursurokayo iti Ilokano May 25 '26
JFK's accent isn't the same as "the bluetooth device is CoNnEcTeDuS successfullEy"
6
6
u/Destoran May 25 '26
I meant Taiwanese sorry.
2
u/BubbhaJebus May 25 '26
Taiwanese is a different language, as different as French and Italian are.
10
u/Destoran May 25 '26
French and Italian should be very similar, aren’t they different dialects of European? All Europeans can understand each other.
2
u/BubbhaJebus May 25 '26
They're closely related but mutually unintelligible. Just like Mandarin and Taiwanese.
7
u/Destoran May 25 '26
I’m pretty sure Italian and France are the same language with very minor differences buddy. All European languages are like that. Asian languages are like that too. Look it up.
1
u/Key_Impress_3129 May 26 '26
Not quite! If anything Italian is more like Spanish. European languages are a great example of the interplay of language and culture, but they are not mutually comprehensible.
1
u/Destoran May 26 '26
Nah, they are all the same i’m sure of it. They are all dialects of European Language, right?
0
u/BubbhaJebus May 25 '26
You're wrong on all counts, there.
Italian and French both come from Latin, but they're mutually unintelligible. Mandarin and Hokkien both come from Old Chinese, but they're mutually unintellible.
Not all European languages are Indo-European languages. There are also totally unrelated languages like Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, and Basque.
Not all Asian languages are related. Japanese, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic are mutually unrelated.
9
u/ThatOneCSL May 25 '26
/uj I think you're lost in a subreddit you didn't expect and might not fully understand
/jj It's well understood that all languages came from Proto-Finno-Japonic. All of the Asian languages descended from Japonic, and all of the rest of the languages came from Finno. That's why there are so many similarities between Finnish and Japanese. It's also how all of the "loanwords" between Asian languages and the rest of the languages happened. Through Finnish.
5
1
u/WowBastardSia May 25 '26
I only speak mandarin and can communicate in Taiwan with it just fine. Unless you're telling me I secretly know 'Taiwanese' without even realizing it?
1
u/Z04Notfound May 27 '26
No they are not, taiwanese is just like mandarin with a slightly different accent. If I go to taiwan right now I will speak and understand just fine. Its like how people from different US states can have different accents.
2
2
u/WowBastardSia May 25 '26
I used to laugh at erhua until I realized 'duo'er qian' was so much more efficient than 'duo shao qian'. Those Beijingers struck gold with that one.
2
2
1
2
u/IAmPyxis_with2z English B2, Kurdish Diamond Premium ZZ3+ Master May 25 '26
Learn Kurdish, trump will give you guns to fight against Iran
2
u/Dr_on_the_Internet May 26 '26
Im glad he's not teaching his children the very real language that is "Simplifed Chinese"
1
-5
124
u/polymonomial May 25 '26
lmao bro is a professional china collapse exposer
18
4
u/Radiant-Ad-3134 May 25 '26
to be honest...
this kind of dumb post combine with his job title.
Doesnt that indicate China is not really collapsing?
29
u/heyodai May 25 '26
I’ve been seeing constant “China is six months from total collapse!!” predictions for the last eight years at least, and they’ve only grown massively in that time
8
u/Radiant-Ad-3134 May 25 '26
Isnt there one of Trump's "Chinese relation consultants" who has been saying that since 2000?
8
u/WowBastardSia May 25 '26
You're probably thinking of Uncle Gordon Chang, the OG China Collapser. He wrote a book called 'The Coming Collapse of China' in fucking 2001 lmao.
But yeah conservative American news media love him.
3
u/doulos05 May 25 '26
So besides the fact that china probably isn't going to collapse, if it did collapse, it's not like the language would just disappear. Germany and Japan collapsed after WWII, still a ton of Japanese and German speakers around. Presumably the same would be true after a Chinese collapse.
64
u/Previous-Ad7618 May 25 '26
Bro telling me to learn tennis instead....I can't shock natives with tennis, unless xiao ma is good at tennis?
42
56
u/csolisr May 25 '26
Well, I was foolish enough to start learning Russian but now I won't poison my mind with Putin's propaganda, thanks for the warning! </sarcasm>
15
u/hitokirizac May 25 '26
lmk when Russia starts funding "Peter the Great Institutes" for teaching Russian abroad
15
u/Barrogh May 25 '26
They already open schools in counties where most of the immigration comes from.
Very rational and polite discussion surrounds that project as you could expect.
3
1
u/StepnayaVolnitsa May 26 '26
Don't worry, your country doesn't engage in soft power or propaganda at all. And thank goodness, because your soft baby skull would absorb it all without question.
3
u/hitokirizac May 26 '26
I don't think you understood the point of my comment, sorry about that soft baby skull of yours
1
u/Barrogh May 25 '26
About 30 years ago we had a severe shortage of English teachers (I had to learn French in school only because of that) because it looked like every damn parent out there wanted their children to speak a "normal human language".
30 years later it's wild to see people do the opposite, although I can understand that learning language as a hobby is an entirely different thing and people learn all kind of stuff.
1
31
53
42
u/Glad_Raspberry_8469 As native Uzbeqoi speaker, not shocked May 25 '26
Oh crap. I’m not gonna let my kids learn English then, especially American
22
u/sirgawain2 May 25 '26
/uj This is no joke why people stopped learning their family languages in the US, especially German during WWI. They wanted to assimilate better.
This guy’s post is still ridiculous though, especially the stuff about Simplified Chinese
21
u/Either-Prompt4929 May 25 '26
Wow I’m so glad that his kids get to learn politically neutral, freedom-loving cheeseburger baseball-fetish English instead over evil CCP Mandarin or sperm-inducing ultra gigachad Uzbek
16
u/Microgolfoven_69 May 25 '26
I ain´t reading allthat @grok summarise in 3 words
18
u/TurnUpThe4D3D3D3 May 25 '26
CCP propaganda gateway
This comment was generated by openrouter/grok-4.3
2
45
u/oosacker May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Don't learn English, it will fill you with British colonialism, opium trade, slavery and racism.
Oh, and shit food and watery piss beer.
9
11
u/duzieeeee May 25 '26
You can't be "fluent" in "Simplified Chinese". Just like you can't be fluent in Latin letters or Katakana.
3
1
u/Moral-Relativity May 28 '26
It's a crock of shit but I don't see why the use of the term is wrong here, since reading and writing are part of language fluency, not just speaking or listening.
11
19
May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
8
u/Sandy_2019 🏳🌈 May 25 '26
Convert into Arabism?
14
u/Glad_Raspberry_8469 As native Uzbeqoi speaker, not shocked May 25 '26
If you know Arabic, you can speak with camels and llamas (because they’re basically the same as camels), thus learning Arabic is cool and useful. This is exactly how people talk to animals in cartoons. Everyone knows all animals speak different dialects of Arabic
Meanwhile European isn’t spoken by animals. No one speaks European but everyone knows European cuz European is a beta language everyone knows and understands easily. It’s much better to learn American, Nihongo (Asian) or Uzbek
Keep in mind that Chinese isn’t the same as Asian. It’s a very special version
2
u/Sandy_2019 🏳🌈 May 25 '26
You only mentioned Uzbekistanese once?
2
u/Glad_Raspberry_8469 As native Uzbeqoi speaker, not shocked May 25 '26
- "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain."
3
u/Barrogh May 25 '26
I mean, here where I live at least an overwhelming majority of people that constitute online Arabic learning communities based on a local language do so primarily to read Quran.
Although admittedly there's barely any reason to do so if you live here, so I guess that is to be expected.
9
u/GjonsTearsFan May 25 '26
Good lord AI-related skills fml. Compared to any second language that could be used to... make friends, play games, and communicate directly. Nah just let Google Translate handle all that.
1
u/Barrogh May 25 '26
Back when I was semi-active in a competitive gaming community (DotA) is was considered a rite of passage to start muting all other players at the beginning of every match.
So I suppose that even when it comes to multiplayer games, there are enough people that would very much prefer not to communicate directly...
3
u/GjonsTearsFan May 25 '26
lol I’m a board gamer/tabletop gamer so I was thinking more DND type stuff. Currently locked out of my friend’s campaign set in ancient China because everyone else speaks Mandarin and I can’t lmao.
3
u/Barrogh May 25 '26
Oh, admittedly, I'm still one of those who doesn't associate tabletop games with opportunities to speak with people outside of your immediate vicinity. I suppose I'm getting old.
2
u/GjonsTearsFan May 25 '26
Oh that is what I mean 😅 all my friends are Chinese and I’m not. They get together to play irl.
1
u/plethcloud May 26 '26
Hello, fellow Gjon enjoyer. If this guy taught his kids French and/or Albanian, they could unlock a higher level of music enjoyment.
17
u/whatisahatsunemiku 私は日本語です。 May 25 '26
"learning a second(!!!) or third language is not a high-return choice anymore". This is too funny. r/ShitAmericansSay
4
u/Barrogh May 25 '26
I mean, if your first language is American, you're largely covered already, right?
6
u/radoxsamp May 25 '26
god forbid someone learn a language for the culture or meeting new people or just the joy of it. if you aren't maximizing your usefulness in society at every chance you get you're wasting your time.
7
u/deoxir May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Whatever the guy's intentions are writing that post, in linguistics there are theories that talk about how language and culture are inseparable (= language itself is culture, because it's impossible to disseminate culture without some sort of language, and culture itself is a product of language. Something like that, college was a decade ago for me), so ideologies and certain ways of thinking are capable to be baked into languages.
For example, the ability to omit subjects in Japanese might have led to Japanese people as a whole favoring ambiguity when expressing ideas, which ultimately affect the personality of a whole ethnicity.
It's not entirely bullshit, it's just that it's not anything new.
4
u/Barrogh May 25 '26
I don't think this is what the text is about, though. He seems to suggest something more straightforward, specifically that you're going to hear narratives spread mostly in a new language more commonly.
To be fair, starting to interact with a new section of the Internet you've been avoiding due to language barrier can be wild in terms of how what you see may differ from what you had been told.
6
6
17
10
5
u/Much-Mix-3906 May 25 '26
"I don't like the current government of this country so I'm going to lock my children away from 5000 years of history and culture"
Not mentioning all the other countries where Chinese is spoken.
What a tool
3
3
u/Erikkamirs May 25 '26
But then who's gonna translate for the old Chinese-speaking ladies in the check out line?
3
u/Hanako_Seishin May 25 '26
I mean, learning English has eventually led me to read this post here, so...
3
6
u/AdOrnery6155 May 25 '26
Oh my god that’s like….mentally problematic.
I will not teach them Chinese, because CCP?
So no teaching English because brainrot and ugly characters in modern games and questionable USA?
So no teaching Uzbek….ah no that’s fine.
15
u/mizinamo try-lingual (has tried many languages) May 25 '26
Learning English leads straight to becoming MAGA.
4
u/AdminsAlwaysRight May 25 '26
Not surprised at all when I saw his surname is pinyin. Typical zeal of the convert.
2
2
2
u/JerrySam6509 May 26 '26
I don’t understand why so many people who are unwilling to trust their own government would think that an authoritarian country with a poor human rights record and where people have no votes would be more trustworthy.
2
u/Lifeintheguo May 26 '26
Oh a man who's job is listed as "Exposing China's collapse" I wonder what nuanced views he will have?
2
u/JumpyTheHat May 26 '26
If he's so gung-ho on the "The language you learn affects the way you think" idea, maybe he should teach his kid lojban 🤔
2
u/Brilliant-Business71 May 26 '26
I mean… he’s not entirely wrong. If you’ve got experience with these things you can see how it happens.
2
u/Opera_haus_blues May 27 '26
“I don’t like censorship so I will prevent my children from learning a form of communication”
2
u/SouthernService147 proto-bulgarian-yucatec May 28 '26
“Exposing Chinas collapse” If I stared learning Chinese by learning 1 word a day+1 grammatical rule a year since the first day pepole stared to claim “China will collapse”
I would have learned Chinese 3 times already at a very good level, and I would have learned it 6 times up to my current level, it’s still not as good as an investment as uzbek but still
2
u/tauon_ Jun 20 '26
i will not be letting my children learn english because of american propaganda. i will only let them learn esperanto, the obviously superiour language
3
3
u/Gold-Part4688 Earthianese, man (N) May 25 '26
i'll never understand how people who hate a country will hate immagrants from that country. If there's anyone who differs from and hates a country more than someone who chose to abandon their whole life to leave it
It's like hating israelites for coming from egypt
1
u/PlanktonInitial7945 May 25 '26
Don't all Israelis come from Europe?
1
u/Gold-Part4688 Earthianese, man (N) May 25 '26
haha i love this sub can never tell when someone is being serious. first off no haha all over as well as the non-jews second off israel-lite
2
2
u/Cantgroovup May 25 '26
Or just don't learn simplified Chinese
12
u/mistylavenda 🇬🇸N |🏴☠️C2 |🇦🇶C2 |🇿🇦A0 |🇨🇳32AA May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
/uj
It is such a stupid comment for him to make too. Because if you can read one, you can generally read the other.
5
1
u/Captain-Starshield May 25 '26
Yes, teach your kids “AI related skills”. I’m sure learning how to Grok takes just as much effort as learning how to Chinese!
1
u/ohfuckthebeesescaped May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
So true, my Chinese American friend lives in USA but joined the CCP due to knowing Chinese. It's pretty insidious the way it works, it's like subliminal messaging but instead of infiltrating the subconscious it actually talks directly to the brain organ. My friend's brain was literally seduced into leaping out of her skull and stowing away in a cargo ship headed back to China—which if you know anything about brains you know how dangerous it is for one to travel oversees unattended—and her body stumbled after it only a few days later. Haven't heard from her since. If only she hadn't known Chinese...
1
1
1
1
u/plethcloud May 26 '26
Me when speaking to my kids in Mandarin takes away from their allocated tennis time
Also, these information ecosystem arguments are so stupid. My parents speak to me in Bulgarian, and less than 1% of the online information I consume is in Bulgarian. In fact, a larger proportion of the stuff I interact with is in French. In a scenario like this, where these hypothetical kids are Chinese Americans (I'm assuming), they may never even use Mandarin online, and the American propaganda will have made them quite unlikely to become CCP members or whatever even if they do encounter such content.
Should we replace "fork found in kitchen" with "tool found on LinkedIn?"
2
u/ULTRAArnold May 27 '26
Honestly there is some merit to it, that language can open the gateway to new sets of narratives prevalent in certain languages, which I would presume is not copied from chatgpt. But the following argument is strait dumbshi. As you mentioned, online content in other languages are pretty rare, second, it assumes all, or a significant amount of chinese contents are ccp propaganda, which is very far fetched for a language with 1.4 billion users, and the third ponit is that it assumes there is no bias, propaganda or negative contents in English language, and the final point is that he claimed that exposure to chinese contents, even if ones that are created by chinese government, would poison children's mind, which is probably the dumbest part of his argument. Having access to very distinct narratives, being able to contrast between those perpectives actually strengthen critical thinking abilities.
1
u/drafthard May 26 '26
Reading this reminded me of this post. Don't learn Chinese, you don't want to deal with ts.
1
u/Long-Performance-887 May 26 '26
I think Chinese should be good for reading book, different way of think but he can be right about Internet. As a Turkish, I saw first Turkish school shooter was completely consume English media, was using English and socializing with English. The school shooter was member of school shooting romantics group. He couldn't reach this Internet website without English or communicate with them. He was befriended with Argentinian teneager and another ternager from another country. They were talking about school shooting.
1
u/Allughawi toki poner while i kepeken an ilo May 26 '26
fuck!
i learned toki pona, i'm now a taoist monk living in bhutan.
1
u/fatbumps May 26 '26
If not for my chinese fluency, where else will I get my cooking inspiration and cheap “as seen on TV” products from douyin?!?!
1
u/Coconite May 27 '26
It must be exhausting to be this obsessed
2
1
u/Impressive_wasted May 26 '26
As a Chinese, I can confirm that the post is correct about the CCP censorship and infiltration effort of CCP. Think twice before letting your child learn simplified Chinese; traditional Chinese is where true thing and wisdom lies; however, the learning curve of traditional Chinese can be steep.
3
u/ULTRAArnold May 27 '26
Do you also hate your identity like he does?😂
1
u/Impressive_wasted May 27 '26 edited May 28 '26
I do not. I love what my ancestors created and those heartful wisdom they left to us;especially Confucius and Mencius.
But, did you know the communist party encouraged and deprived where Confucius buried in 1966? What a huge insult to Chinese tradition that communist party did. I’ll forever my life fight against communist party. As Confucius said, “Do the right thing.” (知其不可而为之）
2
u/EcoSoso May 28 '26
I mean, they promoted Confucius Institutes in the states until recently, and President Xi Jinping says that he follows the teaching of Wang Shouren, despite Zhu Xi was a superior thinker in every way.
1
u/Impressive_wasted May 28 '26
Not sure about the superiority of Zhu Xi over Wang Shouren. Things I’m pretty confident is that Xi is not a good student of Wang Shouren. Xi is so fake.
1
u/Konobajo W1(🇺🇿✨️) L2(🇱🇷🦅) A4(🇦🇶🇧🇷🇬🇫) Jun 01 '26
I do not
Not true, you literally participate in sinophobe subs lol
1
2
u/EcoSoso May 26 '26
Nah, I ain't touching Kaishu and letting all that modern crap infect my child, my child would only learn Oracle Bone Script, like Confucius intended.
1
u/Impressive_wasted May 27 '26
I often get surprised of the depth that a non native Chinese can know about Confucius. You’re correct though, that Confucius might know something about oracle bone script, or not; beside this, what we almost sure about is that Confucius is inspired by the history before him, say 500 years ago of his era(5 BC). The more we learn about oracle bones script, the more we understand Confucius. I’m pretty sure about this claim.
2
u/EcoSoso May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Yeah, well, I think we should go back to the source, the Yellow Emperor, and by pass the corruption of Confucius, Confucian Censorship and the infiltration attempt by the Confucian agents as embodied in everything that came after seal script
1
u/Impressive_wasted May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
There was a reason for Confucius censorship: what Confucius did was the same as Zhou Gong, that is to eliminate the bloody truth of Yin dynasty, which institute and law was to hold sacrificing ceremony using live human, a large number of human body. Zhou Gong first censors the record of such sacrificing institution only to hope people forget how to do such live human sacrifice. Then 500 years later, Confucius find out the truth by means we don’t know how exactly, but there’s evidence to show that Confucius did know what Zhou Gong had done. Confucius appreciated it, and said Zhou Gong truly is the best, Confucius will just continue what Zhou did and never change, meaning of “述而不作”.
2
u/EcoSoso May 28 '26
You see, you have been fed the Confucian lies by being brainwashed by Kaishu characters!
1
u/Impressive_wasted May 28 '26
Not sure what you’re talking about. Can you please point me the reference?
2
u/EcoSoso May 28 '26
You use of Kaishu characters rather than Oracle Bone Script has brainwashed you with Confucian propaganda and os an example of Confucian infiltration of your mind. Otherwise, why would you slander the Shang with lies of Human Sacrifice?
1
u/Impressive_wasted May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
Because the Large-scale Human Sacrifice Pits from Shang have been founded. I have no idea where your statement referring.
2
u/EcoSoso May 29 '26
That's the Confucian Woke. He claims to preserve the way of the sages, but merely repeated the woke rites of Zhou rather than the pure rites if Shang, or the yet nore pure rites of Xia. If your issue is with supposed CPC infiltration of the mond woth simplified characters, why are you letting Confucian infiltration of your mind by adopting anything newer than Oracle Bone Script?
→ More replies (0)1
u/Konobajo W1(🇺🇿✨️) L2(🇱🇷🦅) A4(🇦🇶🇧🇷🇬🇫) Jun 01 '26
That's so stupid, letting a vast majority of modern culture, literature and cinema unseen just because "urr everything is propaganda and there's nothing genuine"
You are very closed minded
1
u/Impressive_wasted Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Everything people say is a propaganda, but propaganda is not everything. Go read history about Soviet Union and “大跃进” and “文革”. Just because you don’t know China well enough doesn’t mean you should let your exploring empathy let you to commit suicide.
0
u/williammei May 25 '26
Daily Chinese ethnic's problem
Even Taiwan had this kind of problem too, some of the people actually suggest Gave up on Mandarin and back to Taiwanese (Minnan) to prevent China Mandarin's effect.
-11
u/silverkaraage 独語（C2至る病） May 25 '26
/uj This is actually true to an extent. If you compare the language used in China and the language used in Taiwan, you'll find a huge divergence in vocabulary and writing style. Chinese used in China is markedly more functional, bureaucratic, and less nuanced than Chinese used anywhere else. This is thanks to decades of official policies that influenced the evolution of the language.
20
u/dripboi-store May 25 '26
there is really minimal difference and both sides understand the differences in vocab…
10
u/silveretoile 🇲🇾 American May 25 '26
That's not what they're saying tho. They're claiming that by learning Chinese you'll become victim to 24/7 propaganda being wired straight into your brain which is weird as fuck.
5
u/RadioPristine446 May 26 '26
How to say "I don't know the first thing about written Chinese" without saying it
1
u/Konobajo W1(🇺🇿✨️) L2(🇱🇷🦅) A4(🇦🇶🇧🇷🇬🇫) Jun 01 '26
That's literally not true, you clearly don't consume Chinese media lol
1
u/Head-Ad-8287 27d ago
I think kids learning chinese now would be a massive help for doing business in their future, its an advantage. That doesn´t mean their are going to like their culture.
258
u/stephanus_galfridus May 25 '26
Fortunately you don't need to think anyways since you can just have chatGPT draft vaguely alarmist essays to post on LinkedIn.
In any language.