 Why does it seem like Latinos are more proud of speaking Spanish than Asian Americans are proud of speaking their Asian language? The internet's wondering. Yeah, I mean this sparked a ton of very lengthy, very interesting, very nuanced responses on Reddit long story short. This guy from Hunan, I believe he's from China, he said, you know, guys, I'm Asia born and bred. Working with a number of Asian American kind of caught me off guard that most of them are incapable of speaking and understanding their cultural heritage language, often times limited to some very basic words that are not enough to carry a fluent conversation. However, according to Google, only 24% of Latino can speak little to no Spanish. This kind of got me wondering. Yeah, so basically he's wondering, he's like, Hey, I met a lot of Asian Americans that cannot speak or are ashamed to speak their mother tongue. What's up with that? Are we going to acknowledge David that in his post, he put CKVT, etc. And why do I know what he means? That's Chinese, Korean, Viet, and I guess Taiwanese or Thai or Thai, right? You're right. The statistically more likely Taiwanese is Taiwanese probably, but anyways, we'll talk about it guys, because this is a question that we've talked about on our channel before. So we got the comment section. We got our own thoughts. Please hit that like button and check out other episodes of the hot pot boys. So regardless whether you are good at your motherland heritage, country of origin language or not, you know what you can do? You can enjoy some small ass sauce. Guys, small ass sauce is something that all Asian Americans can be proud of. Check out the Instagram to see all the foodies and chefs that have enjoyed it. I've had people taste it, real chefs, unpaid, none of the testimonies are paid guys. These are just people who actually really like the sauce. You know what? I feel so grateful that that many award-winning or critically acclaimed chefs really like small ass sauce and we do not tell them to say that. Yes. Anyways, check out the Instagram. Statistically, 57% of US born Latinos say they can carry on a conversation in Spanish. Asian Americans, it's near 35%. Of course, these are self-reported numbers. Nobody's going to come and test you like even at a job, sometimes they don't come and test you. They just assume based on the look. Why does it seem like, I guess you could infer, by the way, I'm quite aware that logically, even on a surface level, the situations are dramatically different, but why does it seem like Latinos are much more proud of speaking Spanish or a lot, a higher percentage of them do versus Asian Americans? Yes. So there's a few reasons why you guys let me know if you agree with these reasons. These are just things that I was thinking about and talking to a couple Spanish-speaking friends of mine. I would say number one, Spanish is a lot closer to English. It's just a lot closer. So in a way, even for me to pick up Spanish as a fluent English speaker, it's actually not that hard if I want to pick up little bits here and there. Spanish is considered a Latin language. English is considered a Germanic language, but with a ton of loan words from Latin. But the key is that both of them, Spanish and English are actually Western languages. I know Spanish is oftentimes associated with Mexico and the Caribbean or South America, but it comes from Spain. Spain is definitely a European country, and not only that, that is a country that did colonize a number of countries. So you're talking about two languages of European countries that did spread their wings out and colonize different places. Also I just think overall Asians don't have as much confidence because I think a lot of Asian parents, they do stress high achievement in academics, which means that you need to learn a certain level of English. And because a lot of this person, this poster, this OP, he's talking about the Asians he met in his professional job. If you are going to have a professional job, you do need to have some level of English. So oftentimes those Asian families are overcompensating and going deep into assimilation so that their kids have the best chance possible to get into a good school and get a good job. It's very situational. One thing he didn't say, he didn't go, yeah, the second generation owners of multiple small businesses and flushing or in St. Gabriel Valley cannot speak Chinese. Because the truth is, if you're the second generation kid who's like inheriting your parents' business, which is based in the Asian community, there is like an 80, 90 percent likelihood that you would be able to speak it, right? Because that's your situation, it behooves you or it requires you to. Right. I mean, again, if you meet Asian Americans in corporate America, I am not surprised at all that a lot of them do not speak an Asian language well. It's very believable because that is a certain segment of Asian Americans and they've been on a certain path. Perhaps the largest segment though, probably even a larger segment than the second generation of small business owner kids. Yeah, I would like to, I guess it'd be interesting, David, to pull college Asian Americans versus the ones who are in corporate America, right? Because that might have a gap too. The higher you get in corporate America as an Asian American, if you made me guess, I actually think that they speak less Asian languages. Dude, at some point, depending on the industry, it might not even help you because people might not like, they might feel like you're different or not, you know. Possibly, yes. That's just the other worlds. And that means you're spending less time in the world that you need to spend in to climb that ladder. If you're speaking Chinese all the time to your other Chinese coworkers in a very American industry, who knows. But Andrew, Andrew, you're talking about some very logical points, but I got some deep ones for you. Confucianism, which is the general and, you know, it's debatable, but it's generally the philosophy that informs a lot of Asians' assimilation patterns has always stressed dominance in societal culture. So who is the dominant force they must be adapted to that lends itself to a cultural mindset of adaptation, arguably driven by Confucianism. Another point is that ultimately Andrew, everybody overrates their own ability to be bilingual. This is, I just read this, somebody else brought this up. It was a study saying that everybody always overrates by a few points how bilingual they actually are. Right, right, right. That's actually really funny. I have definitely overrated how proficient I am in Chinese. Right. Also, I think my ultimate quick thought before we get into the comment section is just like a lot of really good info around the globe. And I'm not saying it's a hundred out of a hundred or the translation is a hundred out of a hundred. A lot of good info globally has been translated in 2023 into the English language. So you don't need another language to gain access to any sort of large information pool. I'm not saying, of course, I'm not saying all information pools, but if you had to say there's one single language that the most widespread holistic info is contained in 2023, you would say it is English. Yeah. Yeah. I would say most. Yeah. That has the most media probably because America is the land of media and every day in America or Anglo-Saxons or British or whatever, they have dominated the most of the the hyper global society era, which is the past 400 years. Yeah. Also, last thing before we get into the comments, do you think it's also because like in America they do cater to Spanish speakers a lot more like they'll always have like the Spanish translation or everything is also in Spanish. So I think if you're a Spanish speaker, you can feel like, oh, America is still catering to me and is a very Spanish friendly country. So I'm more proud of speaking. Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's a functional thing in America too, because I believe 15 percent of the population is of Spanish country origin. So just literally from a functional level, you know, you want to provide that so everything can like flow and everybody can get things done, right? Anyway, let's move on to the questions here. This guy said, you know what I found is that many second generation Asian-Americans push away their culture and then they want to get back to their roots later on in life, but they already may be too old at that point to learn their heritage language at a high level. I agree. I've seen this a lot and it is unfortunate, but that's also part of assimilating. Sometimes you risk not coming back to the culture. You know what I always tell people? If you want to stay in touch with it is watch subtitled versions of TV shows or pop cultural content from your country of origin. Even nowadays from a smaller country like Laos or something like that, I'm sure you can find some things with subtitles that are on YouTube or another platform and that could be really useful. It may not ever bring you to like, of course, anywhere near native fluency, but it can keep you up to date and make you feel like you're tapped in at least got a couple toes in there, right? Somebody said, I'm a Chinese American who basically knows no Chinese. If life is an RPG, my family definitely decided to dump all our skill points into assimilation and trying to do well from a Western perspective. All my time was trying to beef up on math and science and piano and chess and stuff like that. So basically that left me with no like VC or Manna or, you know, whatever. How much XP points to put into language skills. Oh, yeah. This sounds like an excuse, but a good one. This is a solid excuse. I mean, how do you think parents decide to do it? Is it a XP point distribution thing? Because let's be honest, different families born into different situations, whether that's immigration waves or connections or income or education level, it's almost like they're their amount of XP points to distribute amongst a variety of projects and seed of variety projects is different. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, you're raising a Asian kid in America and you want to stress to them to be good at the piano, science, math, chess, all this great, nerdy, brainy stuff, which is my minority, but stereotype. No, no, no, but but you're spending all this time training them. And then in his off time, his or her off time, they just want to hang out with their American friends. So they're not going to have much time to speak and flex their Chinese skills. They're just literally not going to have the time. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I would even argue. And this is specifically for Chinese. I'm not saying for other Asians, I know the situations are variable. East Asian, a Southeast Asian, a heartseller act, a refugee to every sort of possible combination of things in between. Sometimes your parents are one from this one, parents are one from that one. I'll say this, I think not only that, Andrew, it creates a situation where all the Chinese things or things that are associated with the Chinese language, even not even that your piano lessons are in Chinese are the unfun things and hanging out and being super American is the dopamine fun time. So not only is it like you're not getting exposed to like the Chinese language, Andrew, you're almost repelled from it. Right. You're almost it's not just a neutral. It's an inversion. And we have we have talked about this earlier. It's joyless. It's joyless. And I hate that it plays out that way, especially for like a lot of like Chinese kids, but I feel like it does. I think, for me, it ultimately comes down to the purpose, Andrew, and what is the end mission of learning your parents language to like, let's just say even a six out of 10 level, you know how you were saying earlier that people deep in corporate, why would they need to know their mother tongue at anything beyond like a two to just like say the food names just so you're not embarrassed? Right. But if you are the son of a grocery shop empire in a ethnic enclave, you probably should be at least a four to a five at minimum at your parents language, because how are you going to carry on the family business or even like help out at the shop? Like you can't even contribute, right? That's true. So I guess is it is a tactic to build in some sort of incentive for people where their their parents are not supermarket owners? Like, you know, for the people who are not born into the my parents are small business owners and need to navigate the complexity of this micro fishbowl enclave. I don't have that situation. How do people create it? Is it just a love for the pop culture? Is it a want desire to translate the shows or like, I guess, or is it does it seem like flu language fluency in the second and third generation is literally just situational? Like it's like if you need to know it, you'll know it. If you don't need to know it, then you probably won't know it. Now, you can always take classes and travel, even if your parents don't push it on you, but that's that's more rare. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, ultimately, Andrew, what is your takeaway? Is this even a fair comparison for this guy from Hunan to be like, yeah, why can't we all just be like Latino where we are like 60 percent for conversational? I think this OP is looking at it fairly simplistically, but I get what he's saying. Right. Nothing he's saying is wrong. Obviously, any Asian American understands what he means. A lot of Asian Americans are not super proficient in their Asian language to an understandable level. Sometimes I would say not a lot of Asian Americans are above a three out of ten. Yeah. But I think it depends on what your parents kind of push you towards and if they push you towards the enclave and the culture and to understand, oh, you got to operate in this neighborhood. That's where our family is. Then you're going to know the language better. And how are you going to talk to your uncle and your uncle does business? But it is true. If it was like, hey, it's corporate America and learn how to network. You got to focus on English, you know, for the most of the case. But I guess it is just natural, guys, that that as longer Asians are in this country, the less they will speak that Asian language unless there is somehow a need to. So it's just something that happens. But of course, as always, you don't have to be ashamed of your language. There's ways to be proud while not speaking it very fluently. Right. And you can be born into that need. You could develop that need or you could go find that need yourself. You could go purposely seek out a career that requires you to be fluent in your parents' origin language. The easiest one, by the way, in 2023 with how the freight shipping it is is import, export. If you force yourself to do import, export for a career, it's just going to benefit you to be like, especially obviously you're importing things from your motherland. Oh, importing things. Imported the Sichuan peppercorns for small ass guys. Check it out. Lots of chefs and foodies like it. Check out the Instagram. But made in the USA with real truffle, real truffle shavings. Let us know what you guys think of this OPs. Read a post in the comments section below. A lot of good points. We couldn't even get to them. I'm telling you, Andrew, some people are writing two, three pages explaining themselves. So clearly it did touch on a nerve and people felt what they were trying to say. But they felt like they needed to provide a lot more explanation. Let us know what you think of the comment section below. Until next time, we're the hot boys. We out. Peace.