Why are you learning Chinese?

Wondering why other people are learning Chinese.

In my case I’m learning the language because my partner is Chinese and I want to communicate more with her family.

Just starting out, but it would be great to know about others

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I have a special attitude and love for languages. It’s a long story.

My native language is Russian. However, I was born in Kazakhstan and was learning Turkic Kazakh and Germanic English in school.

I really enjoyed learning languages so later I entered the Linguistics faculty of the South Ural State University in Chelyabinsk, Russia. My major was English – Old English, Middle English, and lots of theoretical stuff. As my second foreign language I chose German.

However, I graduated from University, I can’t resist the temptation (yes, I’m a nerd), and shifted to the IT area.

But no one can escape their fortune. Several years ago I moved to Montenegro that is a Serbian-speaking country. So I joined the Serbian language classes.

And what I’m working on now? – The application for learning Chinese :grinning: !

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It felt like a natural transition after studying Japanese for so many years. Also, spoken Chinese is beautiful.

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Did you reach N1 level in Japanese? I feel Japanese is easier at first but gets super tough after N3 level. With Chinese I feel the opposite.

Yes I’ve passed the N1. I don’t feel that the jlpt is a great way of judging actual fluency though.

I live in Taiwan and want to live here forever. I love it so much. I’m quitting my English teaching job to study Chinese, so I can have more career options for living here…

You think spoken Chinese is beautiful after learning Japanese? Lol I love living in Taiwan, but I don’t exactly think Chinese is “beautiful”… then again I don’t think English is beautiful either. I think the only “beautiful” spoken language is Japanese, actually! But to each their own!

If you want to live in Taiwan, I would recommend learning the traditional characters, not the simplified that are taught on this website hahaha

Finally I got that answer about Pandanese! I couldn’t find it anywhere! Lol.
I thrived with Wanikani for Japanese. I’m currently working on traditional characters, but it can’t hurt to have some mnemonics of radicals, simpler characters etc that I can incorporate into bigger characters.

Can you get around with English in Taiwan? It was a former Japanese colony, so perhaps many people speak Japanese too?

For culture, food and many things interesting

I’ve been fascinated East Asian Culture for a very long time, and have always wanted to learn the language! I started learning Japanese earlier this year (And still am!) thanks to the Corona pandemic, but I have time to study both so why not?

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I am a Chinese-American that is beginner-intermediate on Chinese. My family mainly lives in Lanzhou, Gansu, a city that is about the same population as Los Angeles, but definitely not as popular. I want to repair my Chinese so I went here from a post on the Wanikani forum (I am learning Japanese also). I hope to do well on my journey since Pandanese seems promising!

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I just really love the language and the country itself.