[Satoshi]

I've learned some decent Thai during the last year, don't think it's that hard actually. Started with learning the pronunciation, tones and alphabet and then the vocabulary. The first six months I was pretty serious spending a few hours each week with the program. But now when I know the basics and a bit more I've kind of lost the motivation to study hard. I can get to know people and have conversations, that's enough for me, at least right now. I'm still learning when I'm having conversation, chatting or reading on facebook, but not in the same pace as before. Why do you want to be fluent? Take it easy and learn some basics first...

As two other posters earlier in the thread also have learnt Thai without to much pain, it might be the easiest of the said languages.

But as someone said, you should chose the country and not the language.

[Sargon of Akkad]

I've become relatively advanced in Mandarin. I started learning some of it from the 9th-10th grade, nothing from 11th-13th grade, and began studying it seriously in uni for about 4 years.

Fortunately for me, I never had any real problem learning the tones (I tend to have an overall easy time recreating the sounds of other languages), but as far as speaking and overall pronunciation are concerned, I only became really good at those after studying in China for about 8 months. Most of my progress did not come from "hard work" in the sense of sitting down and studying at a desk, but rather from regular, daily use. In fact approching, dating, and generally chatting up loads of Chinese women in and outside of China, particularly those who couldn't or didn't want to speak English, did wonders for my Chinese language proficiency. Right now most Chinese usually tell me I don't have a strong or noticable foreign accent, which gives the illusion that I'm better than I actually am.

Reading and writing, on the other hand, are the two areas where I still need to improve the most. I can't even begin to quess how many characters I can already read and/or write, but it's currently at the level of being able to understand an informal email or letter, not at the proficiency to read a novel or newspaper (at least not without the help of a dictionary).

As far as tips for learning tones are concerned, I can't really give any. It seems to be something you either pick of quickly or something you need a lot of time to get good at. For me it was relatively easy, but this is different with every person. I used to think people who butchered tones simply weren't trying, but I now realise that's not the case. There are differnet types and you'll simply have to see which type you are. If you happen to be the kind who's "tone deaf", then I would suggest surrounding yourself with the language as much as you can and visit China/Taiwan as much as possible. If you go to China to learn the language, it is very important not to surround yourself with other foreigners or with English-speaking Chinese. If you can't afford to visit regularly, it should be pretty easy to find some Chinese or Taiwanese expats in the country you currently live in (even in Japan, for example, I have plenty of opportunities to talk to Chinese people either living or traveling in here). I was much more willing to speak the language when I knew it was the only available option of communication I had. While studying is also important, speaking and using the language regularly is even more important. It will not only improve your tones, but also get you accustomed to more subtle aspects of pronunciation, as well as the overall speech patterns and ways of formulating sentences that people use. At some point, you want your speech to sound natural, and not like an English or other foreign sentence that was awkwardly shoehorned into a Chinese sentence.

[TravelerKai]

I'm a little bit surprised to see so many say that learning Mandarin was a waste of time. For me it was not. I learned Spanish when I was in grade school and grew up around lots of Mexicans as a Texan, so getting a minor in Chinese in college was a no brainer. I did not want to learn Arabic because I did not want to get sent out into those kinds of places. At one point I was going to go into Foreign Service. Spanish is so easy compared to Mandarin, there is no reason to pick one over the other.

I learned from others that Mandarin was going to be huge for business and political reasons, when I was in my first year in college, so I bit on that gamble and enrolled in the classes. It eventually paid off and it still might pay off even more. Back in 2003-2005 I could not get even one Chinese girl to talk to me, even with some okay Mandarin. they all just seemed racist as hell. I had never been rejected by a woman before at that time, so it crushed me pretty bad and I never wanted to bother with them again.

So I stuck to the business and politics side of things. Eventually after college I my Mandarin was pretty good and when I got my 2nd gig IT consulting, they tested out my Mandarin in a interview by bringing in a Chinese guy to test me. They were impressed and told me that I could be the IT manager for their Shanghai office aside from the other consulting they were bringing me in for. That was huge for my career because I was bottom of the barrel in a city full of elite guys in my space.

That was a big opportunity for me. I worked late, prepared technical documents in Chinese (I previously had none of that in my vocabulary), and provided support and direction for all those users there. It helped me sharpen my skillset majorly and get the much needed experience I needed for my resume, which at that time was less than 1 year as a consultant. After that gig was over, I even got an offer to teach Chinese students in China, Microsoft technologies.

Some years after that, I got divorced and when I got back into the game, my best friend who is Chinese suggested that I should date Asians and I never had any business marrying a non-Asian back then in the first place. I agreed. My other friend who is half black that had a Thai-Cambodian wife said the same thing. So I started dating Chinese women in the US and outside the US. It was amazing how fast things changed in 7-10 years. I did not find them to all be racist anymore, even though some I met were. If anything some were just ignorant as hell or following the racism taught to them from other Americans (The Totem Pole). I eventually made myself exclusive to mainland Chinese women around 2011/12. My Mandarin while a little worse than it was back in 2008, it was still more than good enough to talk to them and impress them. I eventually married one and brought her back to the US with me and she is the best wife in the world. God could not have sent me a more perfect woman.

I used to regret bothering with Chinese and "wasting time learning it", back in 2006-2008, and then again in 2009-2010 (thinking I probably should have learned Arabic), but now I am VERY happy I stuck with it. Guys need to understand that Mandarin is one of those lifetime languages. You won't learn it in 2 years, like any Latin based language. You will be working on it for all of your life. Just relax don't get too impatient. The opportunities you have to use it right now, most likely won't be the same in 5 years. You might be doing business, trade, legal, or other work and getting paid well for it, just because you can speak, read, and write it. And maybe when it is time to settle down, you can get a knock out babe like I did.

[clever alias]

(12-12-2014 08:37 AM)TravelerKai Wrote:  

I'm a little bit surprised to see so many say that learning Mandarin was a waste of time. For me it was not. I learned Spanish when I was in grade school and grew up around lots of Mexicans as a Texan, so getting a minor in Chinese in college was a no brainer. I did not want to learn Arabic because I did not want to get sent out into those kinds of places. At one point I was going to go into Foreign Service. Spanish is so easy compared to Mandarin, there is no reason to pick one over the other.

I learned from others that Mandarin was going to be huge for business and political reasons, when I was in my first year in college, so I bit on that gamble and enrolled in the classes. It eventually paid off and it still might pay off even more. Back in 2003-2005 I could not get even one Chinese girl to talk to me, even with some okay Mandarin. they all just seemed racist as hell. I had never been rejected by a woman before at that time, so it crushed me pretty bad and I never wanted to bother with them again.

So I stuck to the business and politics side of things. Eventually after college I my Mandarin was pretty good and when I got my 2nd gig IT consulting, they tested out my Mandarin in a interview by bringing in a Chinese guy to test me. They were impressed and told me that I could be the IT manager for their Shanghai office aside from the other consulting they were bringing me in for. That was huge for my career because I was bottom of the barrel in a city full of elite guys in my space.

That was a big opportunity for me. I worked late, prepared technical documents in Chinese (I previously had none of that in my vocabulary), and provided support and direction for all those users there. It helped me sharpen my skillset majorly and get the much needed experience I needed for my resume, which at that time was less than 1 year as a consultant. After that gig was over, I even got an offer to teach Chinese students in China, Microsoft technologies.

Some years after that, I got divorced and when I got back into the game, my best friend who is Chinese suggested that I should date Asians and I never had any business marrying a non-Asian back then in the first place. I agreed. My other friend who is half black that had a Thai-Cambodian wife said the same thing. So I started dating Chinese women in the US and outside the US. It was amazing how fast things changed in 7-10 years. I did not find them to all be racist anymore, even though some I met were. If anything some were just ignorant as hell or following the racism taught to them from other Americans (The Totem Pole). I eventually made myself exclusive to mainland Chinese women around 2011/12. My Mandarin while a little worse than it was back in 2008, it was still more than good enough to talk to them and impress them. I eventually married one and brought her back to the US with me and she is the best wife in the world. God could not have sent me a more perfect woman.

I used to regret bothering with Chinese and "wasting time learning it", back in 2006-2008, and then again in 2009-2010 (thinking I probably should have learned Arabic), but now I am VERY happy I stuck with it. Guys need to understand that Mandarin is one of those lifetime languages. You won't learn it in 2 years, like any Latin based language. You will be working on it for all of your life. Just relax don't get too impatient. The opportunities you have to use it right now, most likely won't be the same in 5 years. You might be doing business, trade, legal, or other work and getting paid well for it, just because you can speak, read, and write it. And maybe when it is time to settle down, you can get a knock out babe like I did.

This sort highlights the point I'm going to make. Chinese is fairly useful if it's paired with something already in demand. If Chinese is the only thing you have going on your resume', then it's not going to help much at all. But if you have an in demand skill, then it has serious potential. For example, if you want to work at GE in China, nearly all of their job openings are for senior management, engineers, or accountants. But these are all jobs with fairly high placement rates anyway. If you have a technical skill and speak technical Chinese, you'll get picked up fairly quickly. But even if you don't speak Chinese, you won't have much trouble finding a job over there. But if all you do is speak Chinese, you're going to struggle.

[VolandoVengoVolandoVoy]

So, I was matching up difficulty of language (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:L...h_Speakers)
with number of native speakers of the language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lan...e_speakers)
to try and find a sweet spot.
I still haven't decided yet, but here are the top spoken languages and their state dept assessed level of difficulty for a native English speaker, I matched them up :

1. Mandarin, 955 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
2. Spanish, 405 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
3. English
4. Hindi, 310 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
5. Bengali, 300 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
6. Arabic, 290 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
7. Portuguese, 210 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
8. Russian, 155 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
9. Japanese, 125 Million Native Speakers, in excess of 2200 classroom hours
10. Punjabi, 102 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
11. German, 89 Million Native Speakers, 750 classroom hours
12. Javanese, 82 Million Native Speakers, 900 classroom hours
13. Wu, 80 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
14. Malay/Indonesian, 77 Million Native Speakers, 900 classroom hours
15. Telugu, 76 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
16. Vietnamese, 76 Million Native Speakers, in excess of 1100 classroom hours
17. Korean, 76 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
18. French, 74 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
19. Marathi, 73 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
20. Tamil, 70 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
21. Urdu, 66 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
22. Persian, 65 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
23. Turkish, 63 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
24. Italian, 59 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
25. Cantonese, 59 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
26. Thai, 56 Million Native Speakers, in excess of 1100 classroom hours

[getdownonit]

(12-12-2014 12:05 PM)VolandoVengoVolandoVoy Wrote:  

So, I was matching up difficulty of language (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:L...h_Speakers)
with number of native speakers of the language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lan...e_speakers)
to try and find a sweet spot.
I still haven't decided yet, but here are the top spoken languages and their state dept assessed level of difficulty for a native English speaker, I matched them up :

1. Mandarin, 955 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
2. Spanish, 405 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
3. English
4. Hindi, 310 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
5. Bengali, 300 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
6. Arabic, 290 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
7. Portuguese, 210 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
8. Russian, 155 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
9. Japanese, 125 Million Native Speakers, in excess of 2200 classroom hours
10. Punjabi, 102 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
11. German, 89 Million Native Speakers, 750 classroom hours
12. Javanese, 82 Million Native Speakers, 900 classroom hours
13. Wu, 80 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
14. Malay/Indonesian, 77 Million Native Speakers, 900 classroom hours
15. Telugu, 76 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
16. Vietnamese, 76 Million Native Speakers, in excess of 1100 classroom hours
17. Korean, 76 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
18. French, 74 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
19. Marathi, 73 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
20. Tamil, 70 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
21. Urdu, 66 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
22. Persian, 65 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
23. Turkish, 63 Million Native Speakers, 1100 classroom hours
24. Italian, 59 Million Native Speakers, 600 classroom hours
25. Cantonese, 59 Million Native Speakers, 2200 classroom hours
26. Thai, 56 Million Native Speakers, in excess of 1100 classroom hours

Just going by native speakers doesn't tell you the whole story. Indonesian, for example, is spoken and understood by way more than 77 million people. Indonesia's population is ~250 million and most people know bahasa Indonesia, if also a regional language.

You also need to look at the percentage of those language speakers, for a given language, that also speak english. This is why it's pointless to learn Danish, for example.

So if you consider these factors it would seem that Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish are the top candidates since they have many native and second-language speakers and few English speakers. Choosing a language to learn depends more on your preferences and reasons for learning than just statistics though.

[Thailand_Veteran]

(12-12-2014 02:02 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

I've learned some decent Thai during the last year, don't think it's that hard actually. Started with learning the pronunciation, tones and alphabet and then the vocabulary. The first six months I was pretty serious spending a few hours each week with the program. But now when I know the basics and a bit more I've kind of lost the motivation to study hard. I can get to know people and have conversations, that's enough for me, at least right now. I'm still learning when I'm having conversation, chatting or reading on facebook, but not in the same pace as before. Why do you want to be fluent? Take it easy and learn some basics first...

Regarding Thai I recommend to do 150-200 hrs with private teacher. Thats enough to get along in Thailand. You ll be able to read and answer messages and have normal conversations with girls. The extra effort to become fluent is actually not worth it. I tried but as Satoshi I lost motivation after a while. Especially writing requires constant practice.I left Thailand 2 years ago - right now my speaking and reading is still good, but writing would be quite a pain.

The table shows Thai and Russian on the same level. However the difference is that with 200 hrs Thai you ll speak really good, with the same effort in Russian you re still quite basic with many mistakes.

Also conversations with russian/ukrainian girls are on a higher level compared to thai girls.

[RichieP]

Basically...

-Mandarin/Thai/Japanese are learnable with a solid effort (to conversational level at least).
-Vietnamese and Korean are much more difficult. i.e. good chance you might put in 6 months, get pretty much nowhere then give up (that 1100 hours from FSI for Vietnamese is certainly wrong - the consensus is it's way harder than Mandarin)
-Spanish and Indonesian are relatively easy to get basic-conversational.

Given that, what countries actually appeal to you culturally?

Also the most dangerous thing you could do is commit before tasting life on the ground. I'd recommend take a scouting trip, check out a few places that appeal for a couple of weeks each and see how you dig the culture.

[VolandoVengoVolandoVoy]

(12-13-2014 05:23 AM)RichieP Wrote:  

Basically...

-Mandarin/Thai/Japanese are learnable with a solid effort (to conversational level at least).
-Vietnamese and Korean are much more difficult. i.e. good chance you might put in 6 months, get pretty much nowhere then give up (that 1100 hours from FSI for Vietnamese is certainly wrong - the consensus is it's way harder than Mandarin)
-Spanish and Indonesian are relatively easy to get basic-conversational.

Given that, what countries actually appeal to you culturally?

Also the most dangerous thing you could do is commit before tasting life on the ground. I'd recommend take a scouting trip, check out a few places that appeal for a couple of weeks each and see how you dig the culture.

Good points. To be honest, my thoughts now are to make Brazil my next move. My finances will be better if I stay where I am for a few more months, and then I won't have to teach English in Asia, which was/is one of the factors playing into where to pick and how to make it work. My Portuguese has gotten rusty, and I want to learn how to surf. Maybe learn Zouk too...it's a big dance now in Brazil, and this Brazilian 8.5 I know is really into it, and from the pics I see on FB, her friends that do it with her are smoking hot too.
After a few months of that, I think making a scouting trip to Asia would be the wise move.
Try it on as you suggest. I think either Vietnam or Thailand, I honestly don't know which I would prefer. I've only been to Asia once, an 8 day trip to Shanghai and Nanjing, and I didn't like it at all.
As for Vietnamese being rather difficult, this article confirms what you were saying:
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/...vietnamese

Quote:

When John asked me to comment on my experiences learning Vietnamese and Chinese, I was happy to oblige, because it allows me to try and wrap my head around what I’ve been through since I began studying Vietnamese last September (8 ½ months ago now). In the interests of full disclosure, I studied Chinese for a total of five years, and have spoken it now almost 25 years.
I will cut to the chase: Vietnamese is enormously more difficult than Chinese. Hands down. It’s not even close. Some of you may recall a seminal essay by David Moser: “Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard”. I had the pleasure to meet David recently (his Chinese is superb, by the way), and here’s some unsolicited advice for David and anyone else who might agree with him: if you think Chinese is hard, steer far, far clear of Vietnamese. I studied both languages in a very intensive environment, but when I recall my (much greater) proficiency in Chinese after the equivalent period spent learning Vietnamese, I can only cringe in shame at my Viet inadequacy. True, this is just my own experience, but don’t take my word for it—every person I know who has studied both languages sings the same sad song—Chinese is far easier than Vietnamese in every way except, just maybe, reading. Why is this? Here are a few general thoughts:
Pronunciation
This is the big one. It is hard to imagine two sound systems more diametrically opposed than English and Vietnamese. Every aspect of Vietnamese phonology is hard. Vietnamese has single, double and even triple vowels. Few of them are remotely similar to English, and just the slightest mispronunciation will result in an unintended vowel. This, compounded with the tones, can easily render one’s speech unintelligible or worse.
The pronunciation of a consonant can change depending on whether it occurs at the beginning or end of a word. There is a multitude of nasal and glottal sounds that don’t exist in English or Mandarin. In southern Vietnamese, the dialect I am learning, people often pronounce ‘v’ as ‘y’—to add to the confusion, ‘d’ and ‘gi’ are also pronounced as a ‘y’ sound’. The consonant pair that has given me the most difficulty is t/đ (different from the ‘d’ above). In normal speed speech, I cannot distinguish them; in the language lab only if I listen very closely. Here’s a real-life example of why this is so critical: a very common dish in Vietnam is phở bò tái—rare beef pho. But when I pronounce this in Vietnamese, my teachers say they hear ‘phở bò đái’, literally ‘cow piss pho’. Oops. Umm…waiter?
In short, I’ve found Chinese phonology presents much less difficulty than Vietnamese.
Tones
Vietnamese Tones
Image from Wikipedia
Like Chinese, Vietnamese is tonal, but the similarity ends there. The northern (Hanoi) dialect has 6 tones; the southern (Saigon) has 5. Thankfully, I’m learning the Saigon dialect, because that extra tone of the Hanoi dialect is a ‘creaky’ tone which has the effect to my ears like nails on chalkboard. I had hoped my experience with Chinese would prove beneficial—the tones in Mandarin always seemed somewhat intuitive to me, even from when I first began to study the language. Not to say I am completely error free, but tones were never problematic for me to the degree they often are for other students.
Having spoken Chinese for so many years, I plead guilty to tonal transfer, but in my own defense, tones in Vietnamese are more subtle, and for me, not nearly as intuitive. Two that give me a lot of trouble are the dấu huyền and dấu nặng tones (low-falling and low-dropping), particularly when occurring consecutively and spoken at conversational speed. Also, the dấu sắc (high-rising) tone is tough for me, because I tend to produce it like the second tone of Mandarin, which is wrong. However, tones are the least of my worries in Vietnamese; I think they will come more naturally after I arrive in Vietnam this August. And at least my teachers tell me I sound tonal when I speak, albeit with a somewhat pronounced Chinese accent.
Grammar, etc.
Vietnamese, like Chinese and English, is an SVO language. But that is its only concession. Vietnamese grammar is the most difficult aspect of the language after pronunciation. Similar to Chinese, sentence particles are a very important grammatical component, but Vietnamese takes this to a stratospheric level of complexity. I also believe Chinese is more flexible than Vietnamese—in the former, once you learn a particular sentence pattern, you can pretty much plug anything into it, and while it might not be the way a native speaker would say it, they will often understand you. Not so in Vietnamese. Phrase memorization is more useful than patterns, because if you don’t say it exactly like a Vietnamese does, you will usually encounter a blank expression on the face of your listener.
Another characteristic of Vietnamese is it boasts an extraordinary number of synonyms. Chinese is rich in synonyms too, of course, but the difference is that in Chinese, you might commonly encounter two to three of them in typical popular usage. In Vietnamese, it seems people like to use all of them.
But all is not lost
Vietnamese is indeed a very rich, complex language—in fact my classmates and I have an inside joke: Tiếng Việt rất phong phú (Vietnamese is a very rich language) = Vietnamese is really, really hard. But there is an upside for those with a Chinese background when learning Vietnamese. Due to the roughly 1000-year period that Vietnam was a colony of China, Chinese had an enormous influence on the Vietnamese language. I can determine a Chinese cognate in up to 60% of the vocabulary I’ve learned to this point. Its close relationship with Chinese is both a blessing and a curse, however. A blessing, because I can often correctly guess the meaning of words when I encounter them in a text, and a curse because that close relationship makes it harder for me to take Vietnamese on its own terms—and this language, like its people, is fiercely proud and independent. I feel as though I am treading water in Vietnamese, and my facility in Chinese allows me to, just barely, keep my nostrils above the water. That’s why I’m in awe of those among my classmates who are making good progress in Vietnamese without the benefit of Chinese. It makes their achievement all the more amazing.

[VolandoVengoVolandoVoy]

heh, quote from the comment section of the above article:

Quote:

If God created different languages after the Tower of Babel in order to punish us, he must have added tonal languages as a particularly sadistic form of torture

[Switch]

I'll throw in my hat for mandarin. Much easier than people make it out to be because the grammar is practically non existant, and honestly the tones are not that bad. Don't get me wrong, you will butcher words even after years of practice, but people will understand you. Native chinese speakers are very impressed with my speaking abilities, and they can understand me even though I know for a fact that I have a fat, ugly American accent. You would be best off taking a formal introductory class so that you can get used to the language structure and tones in a formal setting, and then venture out on your own. My best tip is to totally disregard characters. They take so much effort and time to learn that the return on time investment is simply not worth it. Chinese language ability is 90% sheer vocabulary, in my opinion. Source: 6+ years of formal mandarin study.

[atlant]

(12-13-2014 08:09 AM)VolandoVengoVolandoVoy Wrote:  

heh, quote from the comment section of the above article:

Quote:

If God created different languages after the Tower of Babel in order to punish us, he must have added tonal languages as a particularly sadistic form of torture

The supposed difficulty of tonal languages is a hysterically exaggerated cliche that really needs to die. Actually more languages in the world are tonal than non-tonal. And most tonal languages have far more challenging elements than the fact that they are tonal.

The reason you think it's difficult at first is because it's an alien concept and it takes some time getting used to the fact that the tone of a word is just as important as its phonetic character. But really, non-tonal languages incorporate tonal aspects in everyday use all the time: raising your voice at the end to indicate a question, or indicating emphasis, humor, emotion etc., all of which can significantly change the meaning of what you say.

Before getting into Mandarin I actually started with Cantonese, which has 6 tones. And it was pretty doable. Unfortunately so many people seem to get caught up in the half-knowledge spread by people who at some point picked up a Lonely Planet phrasebook, read something about tones and then gave up in confusion. If you actually spent all that time just getting down to learning, you'd see how completely hyperbolic all the "x tones means x times as difficult" rhetoric is.

[TopPanda]

I lived in both China and Thailand last year.

It was easier to learn Chinese since there were so few English speakers around, that I had to learn the local language pretty damned quick. But when I got to Bangkok airport I found even my taxi driver spoke good English.

I was disappointed that it's so hard to learn Thai script, by contrast I learnt enough Chinese characters to be able to read most bus timetables.

I am currently studying for my CELTA, and I can't believe how easy Mandarin is when it comes to grammar. English is a nightmare.

If dating's your thing, then lady quality is also far higher in China.

[Rawmeo]

(12-14-2014 05:46 PM)TopPanda Wrote:  

If dating's your thing, then lady quality is also far higher in China.

You probably went to the wrong parts of Thailand. Many players agree that in general, Thai girls are of higher standard. Also about English, I live outside Bangkok, and I'm pretty much the only speaker around.

Thai has 44 letters and 22 vowels; Chinese has thousands of characters.
Thai has no verb tenses, no gender / number. I don't know about Chinese.
To read Thai, just remember the sound of each letter. You can pronounce the word even if you don't know it; just like English. In Chinese you can't.

[WanderingSoul]

TopPanda isn't a player. He's a 45ish year old man who is overweight with no style, fitness or game.

I'd ignore any advice he gives in regards to women.

[RichieP]

The key distinction with Mandarin is to remember that getting conversational != reading chinese characters. Latter is a mighty challenge, former is doable once you really get the tones down (do it sooner rather than later)

[ChrisGambi]

the pay off for speaking the language is insane in all countries you are considering, coming from second hand observation (guys dating up, work, etc), would love to hear from guys that speak vietnamese or even thai if they agree

[hervens]

May I ask why you left out Japanese?
With over 130 million speakers, and japan being as technologically advanced as it is, not only would it make cultural sense to learn Japanese, but could also be a wise business decision as well.

[Biologist]

(10-13-2015 09:42 PM)hervens Wrote:  

May I ask why you left out Japanese?
With over 130 million speakers, and japan being as technologically advanced as it is, not only would it make cultural sense to learn Japanese, but could also be a wise business decision as well.

Japanese is not a tonal language.

But otherwise you are right, Japanese is one of the most valuable languages one could learn.

[the high]

I'm learning Japanese and dabbling in Mandarin. The problem with learning Japanese is that outside of Japan, Japanese is not spoken much throughout the rest of the world. Compare that with Mandarin which is pretty much everywhere.