 But this girl was like, no, you're not Chinese. And then I was like, hold up. Let me speak my bad Chinese real quick to let you know. And then she was like, yeah, I said, you're not Chinese. And I was like, oh, damn. All right, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, everybody, everybody. Now, now, can you, first of all, real quick, can you take off your hat real quick? Please, why though, why? Just show that you got the dress cut off. Woo. Your head can breathe now. I feel 10 pounds lighter. Guys, we got a special podcast, you know why? Because we were just having a conversation the other day with some other ABC friends, American-born Chinese. But a lot of Chinese-Americans cannot speak Chinese. So today in this video, we are about to explore it. 10 reasons why Chinese-Americans suck at Chinese. I think we can all relate on a different level. So I guess maybe the first thing that we could, we should establish is what is everybody's journey with the Chinese language? Well, I've been speaking Chinese in particular, Cantonese my whole life because, you know, I'm a fob, my parents are fobs. I'm born in America. The majority of the language being spoken till I was probably like three was Cantonese. We get sent to Mandarin school. It's run by these really strict Taiwanese ladies. You get murked. Oh my goodness, they keeping me in at recess because I sit cancelling the songs, I'm crying. Hey, you just better know you're both homophobes. When I'm like maybe like 16 or 17, I don't know. I think I just go through some major identity crisis and I just really want to learn it. I take Mandarin class late at night. I ended up studying abroad. That was huge. In Shanghai by my junior year, I studied, I was there for like four months almost. Unlike David, I did not grow up speaking Cantonese. I did not grow up speaking Mandarin. It was around in the household. I did not pick it up for whatever reason. I think mom and dad at that point, they thought I had a speech impediment growing up. So then they were like, yo, let's just teach this kid English because I don't know if he can handle two languages. Let's get into it, guys. The number one reason why ABCs are terrible at Chinese is because Chinese is a really hard language to learn. That's Max. Let me throw out some stats. Okay, Chinese is one of the few tonal languages in the world. It is the most widely spoken. It's not the only tonal language. Vietnamese, Hmong, Laos and Thai have anywhere from six to eight tones. Chinese, you know, Mandarin has four Cantonese. Some people say what they have six. Just to explain to people what a tonal language means, it means that two words could sound the same, but based on the tone, they could be completely different. There's like high-low pitches and stuff. Yeah. So there's this one famous poem in Chinese that's 92 characters long, but of the same sound. And it tells a story. There's up to 50,000 characters. Characters as in pictures, hieroglyphics. It's like a pictographic, logogram, whatever you want to call it. Okay, there's even a character called Byang that has 58 strokes in it. That's crazy. Now, 58 strokes. That's crazy. It makes you not want to learn or write Chinese. And let me tell you this. There's over 50,000 characters, but most people that are smart only know 10 to 12,000. And then to read the newspaper, you just need to know 1,000. I already teach you to tell me just get to 700. If you can get to 700, you could like be good enough on the internet and whatever. And I think that speaking is one level hard because you know, there's a lot of tones, but actually the reading and writing is next level because they're pictures. And not only that, you learn to speak through learning the reading and writing. Oftentimes it helps to reinforce both sides. Yeah. Even in Japan, they're starting to move away from Kanji because it's too hard. It's like limiting their system. They rather just spell it out with their alphabet. And there's no language that's hard when they got a simplified version for you. And the simplified version is still hard. It's still hard. Is serious? Instead of 12 strokes, it's like eight strokes. Very simplified, thank you. Now it's funny because a lot of Asian countries, like Japan and Korea, were using the written Chinese language. Not necessarily speaking Chinese. And Vietnam, we're using the written Chinese language for many, many, many years, but up until like 100 to 200 years ago, they switched. And they were like, nah, nah, nah, we gotta come up with our own. And I think they made it easier. It's literally the last pictographic language left on earth. Well, that would be like if the Egyptians kept hieroglyphics essentially as their form of communication. No, there's a lot of Chinese characters that you can just pretty much easily draw them from the thing that they mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chuar. Dude, it looks like Chuar. Chuar looks almost exactly like a Chuar. You can't get Chuar wrong. I wanna give Chinese props because it is also a very beautiful language. And for that reason, with all the pictures and all the strokes and calligraphy, it is beautiful in many ways, but it is hard. Trust me. And I know you see John Cena and Mark Zuckerberg learning Chinese. They probably got top-level tutors. You shout it out. John Cena, actually, I'll say this, better at Mandarin than Zuckerberg. Well, I don't know if it's because of the language, but the Chinese are very good at the chili sauce. Pronunciation-wise. Really? Zuckerberg has hella vocab. He has no tones. My Chinese is very good, but my Chinese is very good. Number two reason why a lot of ABCs are terrible at Chinese is because growing up, especially growing up in the past, like, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, there was not a lot of cool ways to keep in touch with Chinese culture. Now, unless you were into C-pop, C-dramas, C-movies at the time, you weren't going, you were taking yourself out of a huge market of people who also speak Chinese in a bunch of ways that you could learn. The Japanese kids could watch all this anime in language and be like, oh my gosh, that's like how my mom talks or that's like all my grandma talks. Or the Korean kids can turn to like so much media that they legitimately think is cool and modern that's in language and be like, oh yeah, like I want to learn from everything from H-O-T to 2 p.m. to now Black Pink. Now, Nelson, you grew up consuming a lot of like Hong Kong media and Cantonese media, right? Nah, more so like if I would say like 70, 80% Cantonese. I mean, there were some Mandarin tracks. Also growing up, we watched a lot of Chinese drama. I mean, I would say that Taiwanese people had a little bit more to turn to for sure, whether you're talking about Jay Chow or Wang Li Home or something like that. They generally, the kids are good at Mandarin. Yes, yes. Taiwanese kids, Taiwanese Americans generally are better at Mandarin. From upper middle class families. Yeah, especially from the educated families. So Taiwanese people do take a lot more pride in Mandarin than a lot of other groups of Chinese. That's a fact. My point number three is that even if kids know Mandarin and know Chinese or even Cantonese, they're not speaking a mixture of Chinglish, Chinese and English with each other when they hang out. We know that amongst ABCs, they're not mixing Chinese and English together, which would prolong and kind of boost the level of Chinese amongst the group and community. One of our producers here, Justin, is Korean and he's not good at Korean. And he said that even people at his level that are not really that good at Korean, still speak Konglish. Right, still try to use as much Korean as they can. I know some Koreans who do that and they can't even really speak like two sentences in a row, but they're constantly saying the words they do know. That's like me trying to throw in Chinese, which sometimes I do, but I oftentimes start a lot of conversations I can't continue. Sometimes I start a con, but I can't continue. Well now, do you witness? Especially in the Uber rides. Hey, I stop at... Oh, you're from there? Oh, okay, okay, okay. I'm from Shandong, Japan. I like to eat cabbage the most. I think South Korea has seen so much Westernization in the past 50 years, that they don't even really look at it like East versus West as much. It's more like all blended into one fusion. Like being Chinese is like very much like black and white. Like we are the East, they're the West. And to mix the two is like won't, either won't work or is not right or just nobody does it. I remember growing up, we were trying, you were trying to wrap in Chinese and I was trying to throw in some Chinese. And I think people just thought it was really weird because they were just like, ah, you can't mix the two. Like, I would never, I would never mix the two. I would never speak Chinglish for just that everyday thing. Like, yo, where are you going? Did you come up with some Chinglish right now? Well, I remember in Taiwan sometime was like, yo, can you give me Nida Haoma? Like, because we were trying to organize the basketball team. And I remember just being like, oh, what? So they greet you in Yo Bro, which is kind of like the American, obviously way of greeting. And then they're like, give me your number, Chinese. Yeah, but I think that that's too weird to me because there's like, there's no point in saying, yeah, that in Chinese, you are Sifat Head. Okay, like a... Butt head. Butt head, yeah. Butt whole head, actually. It was an anus, ring head. Oh. No, sometimes when we're trying to say bad word, like butt, we just say pigu. Instead of just saying the word butt. Look at the pig. Did you see the pigu? Whether it's right or wrong, a lot of ABCs feel like even though they respect it, Chinese culture is just super outdated and uncool. And I do not think that Korean Americans or Vietnamese Americans feel that way about their culture. Speaking of... Like I would say some of my Koreans for sure, they think being Korean is cooler than being American. But definitely you will not meet any Chinese or Taiwanese Americans that would say that Chinese culture is cooler than America. And that's why I think Taiwan, when we're talking about this level of adoration for Chinese culture, I think some of our Taiwanese friends have had it about Taiwanese culture, Chinese culture for a while, because Taiwan was a more pleasant and fun place to go back to growing up. While mainland China, to be honest, growing up, not up until like, you know, the past 10 years, it ain't to this day, it's still kind of hard to get around, man. My WeChat's messed up. I mean, even if you go back to Hong Kong, Macau, people gonna catch you slipping. It's like the big city. It is? No, it is hustle and bustle. People ain't gonna be... They gonna outsmart you, man. Yeah, if they can get you, they'll get you. It's the densest place like in the world, one of them. Yeah, to me, Hong Kong, especially at a time growing up, it had a lot in common more with New York City. All right, reason number four, why Chinese is hard to learn and why a lot of ABCs suck at it is sometimes, and this is a short point, but which Chinese do you learn? Growing up, if you can't do knees, there's a debate, especially 15 years ago, you're like, yo, I gotta learn Cantonese because that's my language I'm with. However, of course, nowadays in 2019, and I feel this way, and I feel for a lot of ABC Cantonese people because now they're kind of sitting there being like, dang man, I kind of wish I was studying Mandarin and would probably maybe affect my career if I had known it, but I spent most of my life learning my mother tongue, which is Cantonese. Like David said, the predominant Chinese language right now in 2019, you have to say Mandarin. If you're making that decision today. Yes, today. Even now, even though I would say I'm pretty fluent in Cantonese, I do wanna learn Mandarin. I feel like Mandarin is the language that you need to know right now, whether you're doing business or media in terms of being in Asia or America, or even around the world, I think Mandarin is such a powerful, and strong language that it's very beneficial for you to have. The movement of people globally, like a lot of local dialects are being eliminated because there's too much movement. Like people moved cities and stuff like that. Like obviously previously in the world society, people just live and live, born, live and die in one zone. So that lends itself to more local dialects. There has to be more standardization. There are pros and cons to Mandarin being the number one language. That means some dialects will begin to dwindle in numbers of people who speak it, unfortunately. Specifically in regions that have like high economic movement. Funny story is that we're in New York years back and we meet this guy Jimmy and he's Fujinese. And then he asked us, like, yeah, do you guys speak Chinese? And then David, you're like, yeah, I speak Chinese. And then he starts speaking to us in Fujinese. Kili kula. Kili kula. Tsupo, tsupo. And then- Kili kula. And then we're just like- Hold up, what? We're like, hold up. Cause that's the first time I've heard of Fujinese. And I was like, wait, that's what you consider Chinese? I'm talking about Mandarin, and then Cantonese. And then all the other dialects. You know, but from where he was coming from, his particular family situation and upbringing, he really thought the default Chinese with Fujinese. I think you could see that same thing in the Singapore too, like the Hokkien. Yeah. What is Chinese in Singapore? Is it Hokkien or is it Mandarin? Well, I think they would all know that Mandarin's the main one, but a lot of them, their best Chinese dialect is Hokkien. Yeah. Reason number five. Growing up, there was no real pressure to learn it. You didn't need to learn it for anything. Because you didn't have access to any secret parties or secret venues or cool things. It depends. In a small town, if you speak Chinese to the only other Chinese person, they might be like, oh, yay. But you know, in like the West Coast, where there's a decent amount of Asians, if you speak Chinese to another person, it like doesn't really matter. Well, I might have gotten better service for speaking Chinese. Maybe, yeah. But like we don't really, like it's, you don't really get the hookup for being Chinese. Well, I mean, it's the biggest group of people on planet Earth. They can't treat each other all that special. Good point. Biggest one. So many of us, you know what I'm saying? You're living in a Chinese zone. You could have learned Mandarin in high school. But you chose Spanish. Yeah. Why is that? You know, all the hot girls, you know, were taking Spanish. Asian girls, I was like, you know, I'm trying to. Wait, you're saying, you're saying that the popular cute girls at school didn't choose to take Mandarin class? I'll tell you this, man. I took Chinese at UW, University of Washington. I guess like Jamie Chung, like whitewashed Asian chicks that is in the white sororities. They got to either of those girls is in Mandarin 101 at University of Washington. I don't know how it is nowadays. No, I think in college, in college, there were some. Maybe that's why I took Mandarin in college because I've seen, you know. Wow. You know, I can say for myself, one of my regrets in life, and this is not the craziest regret, but it is a regret is that I did not take Chinese in college. I could have, I should have. I'm gonna say, I need you to do it. One of my biggest regrets is I didn't take Chinese in high school. Yeah, yeah. I had this Chinese teacher and then he was white and I was like, shook at the time. I was like, what? Teacher? Like white, white. It was, he was Doshan. Doshan. There's late night party spots in Koreatown that you basically have to speak Korean and be Korean. Yeah, and you couldn't even be Korean-American and not speak Korean but really like fully being part of that club. Right, right. So actually I gotta talk about one thing I was barred from or I was, someone was trying to reject me from was the Chinese Student Association at UW. I ain't gonna call you out. She was from Beijing American School and I knew the president of the CSA. You know, I was trying to be a good Chinese kid. You know, I mean, all was up. Like I'm cool. Like let me see what CSA is all about. Let me be an officer. But this girl was like, no, you're not Chinese. I was like, yeah, I'm Chinese. And she's like, no, you're not. And then I was like, hold up. Let me speak my bad Chinese real quick to let you know. And then she was like, yeah, I said, you're not Chinese. And I was like, oh, oh. But too bad I still got in. All right. Number six, why also ABC sucks so bad at Chinese is that when you're trying to speak it and you're trying to learn in real life, people are super critical of you and will always try to correct you or basically tell you to stop. Now there is kind of this, it feels like this feeling that when you try to speak Chinese to somebody and it's bad, they kind of say, like, do it right or don't do it at all. Like don't bring in that bad Chinese, man. Just speak to me in English. And you're just like, I'm trying to practice here, man. And they're like, I don't have time for this. Yo, that's true. I don't have time for this. I remember I was talking to my cousin. I wanted to, you know, speak Cantonese and like text them in Cantonese, but it was so bad. He's like, dude, what are you doing? Just stop, just say it in English. And I was like, man, I'm just trying to enhance my Cantonese language. It really puts you in a sink or swim proposition. There's no middle ground. And I think that really when I think about it, that's actually what encouraged me to swim. It doesn't allow for a slow development. And there's no dog paddling? Yeah, there's no dog paddling. There's no dog paddling. Bro, that's me. It's either like you tread in water like an Olympian or like at least like a varsity swimmer or you just sink it to the bottom. Yeah, I don't obviously, I think you had a stronger desire of course, growing up to do it and shout out to you. And for me, that's what I regret is that I only got the desire like later in life. Well, they say the language cut off age, I'm not gonna lie guys, it's 34. They said your brain cements at 34. I don't believe that. It's a wrap after 34. My brain is not the same, David. If you date a Chinese girl in America, she's gonna wanna learn English. Like I dated a fob. From China. From China, from Dongbei. She was actually like really fob cause she came here after college. And she did teach me some Chinese, but it wasn't like how you think. Like everybody's like, oh, dated Chinese girl, you'll learn Chinese. We're in America, man. I'm still trying to operate. Like you still gotta operate and get things done. You can't spend your whole life learning Chinese. I'm not like some guy who moved back to China to teach English and all I'm doing is chilling and learning English. Like I got a business to run. So it was hard. If you guys know about like over there, they don't listen for the sound of the vocab. They listen for the tone. So you can be saying the word with the wrong tone and you can't understand why they can't just figure out that your tone was wrong. They don't listen that way. Their processor processes tone first. Do you think people are now getting used to it a little bit more? Well, cause they're speaking to so many foreigners. Foreigners are more phonetic based, sound based. They're more using context. And also a lot of the popular Chinese rap now is not, does not have perfect tones because a lot of the rappers are from like places like Sichuan where their style of Mandarin is already different. Kind of like mumbling and stuff. People used to give Jay Chow a lot of crap because when he would sing he would eliminate the tones. No, yeah. Yeah, but you're right. The younger generation, I think of Chinese people, they're more listening for the phonetics and the context mixed with the tone, not just tone only. I like that better. I do think Cantonese, they understand the phonetics a little bit better. Like, I think they're more used to it. The lazy tones. I don't know. That's my feeling when I speak it. Saying Cantonese properly is more difficult from your throat, but the Cantonese gives you a more leeway on the grammar. Number seven, let's move along. Move along. All right, let's finish this. Okay, a lot of Chinese parents want their kids to achieve so bad that they just teach their kids English or just make sure that they speak good English because they want them to go as far in America as possible. And especially if you're talking about college exams and taking tests, yes, it's true. In America, you do not need to know Mandarin. I do think learning another language can make you smarter in a different way, helps you think in a different way. However, there is no SAT question that is about Mandarin. So if you're a parent, so I'm not defending the parents right now, but if you're a parent and you just want your kid to succeed in America as much as possible and this was a lot of the thinking for most people, you'll just make sure they know English well. All right, now, another reason why a lot of ABCs are not good at Chinese is because, first of all, there are so many different types of Chinese, so many different levels of education, different levels of Westernization, and a lot of Chinese parents who made it to America and survived and did their thing, they weren't necessarily formally educated. So even their reading and writing level of Chinese is not even top level. No, that's true. My parents didn't even make it to middle school. Yeah. So you would say your parents are not the best at reading and writing Chinese? Yeah, they could probably like get by. Right. After I ask each other, how do you write this word or something like that, you know? The ability to hand write Chinese is like vanishing. Like everybody's typing opinion or speaking it and then you just speaking it in the phone and letting it reach out, you know? I'll just say this, man. Chinese culture is so ancient. It's gonna be interesting to see how it develops in the modern world and how it integrates and how it, and I'll just tell you this, nobody's gonna be able to predict it. It's just gonna look like something else. Hey, you know, and this is a very ABC perspective. Push for pinyin. I'm a fan of pinyin. Me too. And I'm not gonna lie, chances are, especially at this point in my life, I'm probably never really gonna learn how to write Chinese. I mean, it's pretty safe to say that. I mean, why put limits on yourself? Right. Never say never. Never say never. Never tell yourself that you can't do anything. Trust me. That's a fact. We gotta wrap this up, but basically that was technically nine reasons why ABCs suck at Chinese. Now, I'm not saying all ABCs are bad. It's plenty of ABCs who learn, plenty of ABCs that were raised with it, but if you guys know a large number of Chinese Americans, you will know that a lot of them. The majority. The majority, probably majority, over 50% are not good at Chinese. I have been actually looking to learn Chinese. I think everybody else out there should take a stab at it. I'm not saying you necessarily gotta dedicate your life. Maybe it doesn't fit inside of your life right now and you've already decided that you don't need it, but if you are gonna say you're proud of Chinese, you gotta know something. That's all I gotta say. Obviously, that's my perspective as someone who doesn't know it, so. I've been telling Andrew, man, you're trying to take that Chinese class at one of those colleges. I'm with you. Thank you so much. In the comments below, let us know if it's also been hard for you to learn Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect. Let us know in the comments below. Let us know if this was relatable and please share this with your friends if you wanna have this discussion with them. And yo, shout out to everybody else too. I didn't mean this to be exclusive to only Chinese people, but it's just like, I mean, we're just having a conversation, so. Hey, guys. Shout out to the Koreans of Vietnam. Hey, everybody. Until next time, guys. Hop hop boys. We out. Peace.