I am native Cantonese speaker. A few years ago I used to spend a bit of time answering questions on the Duolingo forum from people learning Japanese and Chinese. One funny fact I found was that having no tense in Chinese is unexpectedly a difficulty to English and European language speakers. They have been so used to embedding the time element in their languages and once it's not required any more they are super uncomfortable about if they say something correctly.
I speak two and a half languages (English, Mandarin and Taiwanese) as I was born in Taiwan, and have lived in the United States for 2 years. Now I am in the UK (in Leeds, Yorkshire for the past 20 years!) I have tried to learn Italian, Spanish, Persian and Danish. Persian is hard, although the numbers are not that difficult to learn. Danish sometimes can be easy and hard as the grammar and vocabularies can be different from English. Take the word "carrot" for instance, in Danish it is "gulerroder". There are 29, and some times 30 letters in Danish because they have 3 extra vowels on top of the "a, e, I, o, u". Their "e, I" can also sound quite different, depending on the vocabularies themselves. I did enjoy learning Danish at the beginning, then I find it less and less enjoyable. Also, due to Brexit and family argument, I have lost my chances of forming a family and settling down in Denmark. Still, I carry on keeping up my language skills ( Japanese for me is easier to learn than French). Keep posting the talks about language learning experiences. It's good for our brains.
I think it depends on your mother tongue. I do speak Korean fluently but that thanks to my Cantonese hat so basically I can understand a vast majority of C1 - C2 level vocabulary. It sounds great to have people being supportive but at the same time I don’t want people to feel very “foreign”, so I won’t really express any excitement if I see people started learning any Asian language. I would also love to mention that random languages coming from your mouth! My parents speak Shanghainese to me since I was small and I found it interesting when I stopped using it for some period of time, Korean would popped up in the middle of the conversation between me and my cousins!
What a fun sharing of experience. I dabbled in German at school many years ago. Didn't learn a lot but amazed how much I still remember...like Mittwoch is the odd day of the week, a number no matter how long is written as one word and any two-digit number is somewhat spoken backwards.
It's a great pleasure to watch and listen to such wonderful young, beautiful Ladies, with such a level of excellence in acquiring languages, especially the "challenging" ones, and sharing their much valued experiences... 👍🌹🌷🌹
I have learned English at school, majored in Japanese and taken Spanish course during college. One of the best things of learning more than one foreign language is that the more I master one, the easier for me to get resources from all over the world to help improve the others. For example, as a native speaker of Taiwanese Mandarin, I learn English through it; and then when it comes to Japanese, I get to use both Taiwanese Mandarin and English to help myself understand the contents better since sometimes it might be difficult to tell the difference between some vocabularies if you translate them to only one language. However, the downside of learning multiple languages is that they sometimes put up a fight in my brain and make me struggle with conveying my point in just one language--like I'm talking in English and all of a sudden my brain decides to switch to Japanese mode and my tongue just can't catch up with it😂
I had this similar experience with my Spanish friend as well. I mispronounced the city Málaga into Malága. Then I saw my friend with this most confusing look on her face ever. I had to repeat so many times to her until she finally realized that I was talking about Málaga. Never thought that stress is such an important part in speaking to native speakers
I learned Russian in university, and I can totally understand the difficult process of learning a new language with word genders and strict tense. Thank you and I do enjoy this conversation from two intellectual girls. Keep it on.
I really like watching this kind of native-to-native series where the speed is pushed to max 😂. This showed us the pace which should be regarded as usual and normal, rather than that of Susie when teaching
I speak fluent in Mandarin and Japanese because I had my first degree in Tokyo. Ironically I had my lessons all in English. I like to make day dreams in different languages. Furthermore, I will watch international news from locals in three languages from internet sources. I gain more obective view of the facts.
First year in university, I had taken English, French, and Japanese classes at the same time. But that was not my first time to learn English and Japanese, so I was only struggling in learning French, just let me be used to the grammar of Latin languages. Second year, I had taken Italian and Korean classes. Because of the background of learning French and Japanese, I didn't feel there were difficult. Third year, I'd taken Spanish. Fourth year, I'd taken international medical Interpretation and translation coarse In Law school, I'd taken German In the master program of nurse practitioner, I've taken Indonesia, Russian, Thai, Arabic For all the experiences of learning languages, I found that if you're quite getting used to be the language family of target language you learned, the time of achieving fluency is getting shorter.
Catherine is so impressive! I feel the same as Susie about learning 2 languages and one pushes out the other. My English is not very well and I struggled when I was learning French, and I gave it up eventually. 😅
你好！I am originally Chinese but I’m born in England. I learnt Chinese and English when I was 2 at the same time and Chinese always was easier as a toddler but now my Chinese has slipped behind and my English dominates. I relate that speaking Chinese is the easiest but I find writing and reading near impossible, but reading is a bit easier. I’m picking up French and Spanish at the same time and my Spanish always sound so French as my French is definitely better
7:53 I think Catherine could understand this easily if she could capture the different ways of pronouncing Chinese characters. 國家is 국가 , 火車is 기차 from 汽車, this case is different because it comes from Japanese Chinese characters, 汽車 きしゃ(Even though they don't use this word anymore because it's been electrified so it changed to 電車 でんしゃ 전차)
Native Chinese here. As you see I am writing in English because I have been living in America and I have completely forgotten how to write Chinese. My vocab is also shot but pronunciation and grammar are still fine though
Being a native Mandarin speaker, I can totally relate to this conversation. Especially I am currently learning German; German grammar, indeed, is very regimented, compared to Mandarin or English. In the conversation, Catherine mentioned that "English is the most forgiving as a second language", I would say it's probably because English is the most powerful language in the world. Most people have to study it for business usage or immigration reasons so native English speakers have a long history of communicating with non-native english speakers. I think this can result in English as the most forgiving second language. On the contrary, I think Germany is a relatively not that opened country so it has a lower tolerance when it comes to German language.
The difference between languages, is not merely using different way and different word to express the same idea; it is a frame how people perceive the world. Different thinking is the key.😃😅
Thank you, Susie, for bringing up such an intriguing topic! I’m a Chinese living in Leeds, and I also speak Japanese. I resonate with the feelings you mentioned - speaking a language allows you to delve deeply into another culture. Proficiency in a language not only unveils the intricacies of a culture but also reveals certain aspects of people’s personalities, way of thinking etc. in that country. By comparing Japanese with English, I have to say English is way much easier, as you could feel it is more systematic and consistency in many many ways, whereas Japanese is more flexible and full of “Radom stuff” 😅 sorry I don’t know what word to use. Meanwhile I do feel when you study two languages together, at the beginning you may found yourself mix up things easily, especially when you try to speak without thinking too much, but once when both languages are more settled in your brain, this would happen less, of course this is from my own experience 😊 I have an interesting example here, 13 years ago, when I was preparing IELTS test as well as JPLT, one day I came across a speaking test practice with a word “腰”, there is a very weird sentence flashed through in my mind: my koshi is painful 😂 (koshi is waist in Japanese) I almost spoke this out … that was super funny and I could still remember the experience today
Thank you for sharing your story！ It's always enriching to hear about others' language learning journeys and the unique experiences they encounter along the way. 😊
You ❤ sort of dived deeper to the Chinese radicals 😮in comparison with the hanja sino korean big words in korean being like suffixes prefixes😅 which is just 國+家 level thing. well the radical concept is also the case for korean deep down cuz the the hanja they rarely write now is actually just 99 percent identical to traditional Chinese 😂 although mandarin underwent a lot of sound shift, southern min and cantonese sound very similar to sino korean🎉😅😊
Pragmatics - Chinese is most difficult in common seen languages, such as "when you free come for dinner" however this is not an invitation. Typically only people asking "do you have time this Friday for dinner", most likely that is eligible to be considered as an invitation. Worst of all, you have no book and no where to learn. People may argue that you may learn from locals or so. Here is the flaw - learning is meaningful when you learn before. I expect someone may say " learning is a process spanning over time, balabala" 😉
It's kinda like English asking "how are you doing?" It's not like you really care about that person having a good or bad life. It's a way to say hello in another way.
I’ve learned Korean for four years and recently started to pick up French which I learned in high school and university. I spoke Korean to my French teacher once without notice so I guess my brain was really struggling lol Also when I was learning Korean, I found my English was getter worse 😅 My native languages are Mandarin and Taiwanese but need to use English at work
I’m a native mandarin speaker living in Canada. And I’ve started to learn French for a year. From my observation, although French and English belong to different languages groups, Romance and Germanic languages groups respectively, they’re still quite similar in terms of logic of sentences, vocabulary and grammar systems. And I sometimes tried to firstly organize a sentence from Chinese to English before translating it into French. That’s more easier than directly translated from Chinese to French. Also, since you’ve mentioned that you, as an English native speaker, learned French before, I’m just curious about your viewpoints of learning French, and how it differs from learning mandarin?
From linguistic science view, 3 important factors for a given language. Grammar, Semantics, Pragmatics. After your learn that 20 or so special Chinese characters, you finished learning all. Asia language, pronunciation is difficult; while the total phonetic combination of Chinese are just above 100, considerinng the different ton; 400-500 that's all; No more.
I've ever learned german in university. Some words from German and English are often similar in their pronunciations. It's amazing. But sometimes I found out one german word has so many letters. It's really difficult to spell it.
German words [ nouns ] are extended words which include the relation between two parts…for instance, ‘Gott’ [ god ] and ‘götterfunken’ [ God’s divine sparkling’…
besides, there renders confusion as in pronouns as ‘Sie’ and ‘sie’ where the former refers to second person ‘you’ while the latter depicts third person ‘she’ 😞
Yes, English is much easier than the rest of European languages. At least no memorisation of each noun's gender form (esp. German with 3 forms), no "over-"contraction of serial words (like Spanish and French). But as you said, German sentence structure could be satisfying because it is set in several fixed orders like formulations, Verb + Angabe + Ergänzung and so on. I've stopped learning Spanish after learning German (Germanic) for a decade; I can't adapt to the Latinic system.
I think train is 火車 in Chinese as in the old steam driven trains, you needed to burn coal to run it and there's a furnace (火爐) in the driving compartment
I am a native Mandarin speaker and kind of fluent in English. Now I am learning Norwegian, which also has three genders as German. I suffered so much from Norwegian grammar and am really struggling to memorize the transformation of nouns, verbs, and adj because of the genders.
Semantics - that is more serious in the enemy side 😃 for example, H K is "highly autonomous".... basically that means "not autonomous but something 'very much' close to autonomous", not to mention all those invented party language system - virtually "1984"😛
影片末段的現象我覺得我比較像舒萱，尤其是當third language並不同為歐語系的時候 但如果兩種語言出自同一個系統，就會像Catherine那樣，感覺兩種語言一起進步： 我之前自學法文的時候 就感覺英文基礎在學習法文上幫助很多； 但現在在倫敦念書，大量接觸英文的狀況下，我發現我的中文能力(even though it's one of my mother tongue)以一個非常快的速度在下降、而英文能力卻因為每天仍然會用中文跟台灣的朋友聊天（即使比例已經非常低）， 仍然進步的速度非常有限...
We learn some languages because of several motivations. For me, I just wanna chat with others and maybe therefore I can be another group of people in the world. Maybe I can be accepted.(likewise)
Speaking of learning two languages at the same time, in Taiwan and some Asian countries, bilingual education is being promoted, do you think it's helpful to learn multiple languages in elementary or middle school?
I used to find conjugating verbs the hardest part of learning Spanish and Portuguese, while for learning English idioms and phrasal verbs is the toughest part..well perhaps not super tough but since there's a ton of them, it takes years to accumulate and become a fluent user - but then I find them very interesting and that keeps me motivated to go on learning and failing and learning again 🥰 Learning Mandarin, however, what confuses me the most has always been memorising whether the word starts with zh or z, xi/shi and so on.😂 And then learning how to spell French words is definitely the biggest nightmare ! 😅 I found myself too dumb for German genders and never really pick it up again after uni.... 😇
I would like to say "fire car" because long time ago, train is driven by fire, at least some smoke at the front, therefore, we say train as a "fire car"😂
We do (maybe I should use “did”) have 敬語 in Mandarin Chinese and also use them in our daily life😂 but it is getting weakened and non-predominant etiquette in speaking.
German is so darn challenging, the sentence structures is just so alien to me. Something as simple as going to your house could be = bei dir zu Hause (notice there is no 'your'). I really dislike the word come and go, because I find description in motion is difficult, and a combination of reflexive, preposition and verb is very confusing such as Es gibt nichts, woüber man sich Sorgen machen müsste (Something as simple as "there is nothing to worry about"). Additionally there are reverse order of subject and object such as: Ich habe den Job gekündigt (I quit the job) Mir wurde der Job gekündigt (the job terminated me) Especially where thing like a dative case right Infront of a sentence needs practice and getting used to. I really don't believe there is such a thing in West and East anymore. I find learning the German culture just as different and a world of its own as well. However their younger generation are Americanizing, because of the media influences and the pop culture.
It is harder to be really good at Chinese than any European language. Even more ‘cryptic’ European languages such as German or Russian have thousands of Pan-European, Greco-Latin words, and even more so-called ‘calques’ from those Greco-Latin words (like Vorurteil and предрассудок are literal translations of the Latin word praeiudicium, which obviously has given our prejudice via the French préjudice. So instead of directly borrowing the Latin word, German and Russian coined two new words by translating the Latin prefix prae (vor, пред) and the root iudicium (judgement/reason, Urteil, рассудок). There are tons of such words in German and Russian). There are a few calques from Greco-Latin terms in Chinese too, such as 首都，首meaning head, i.d., the ‘head city’, from a late Latin phrase urbs capitalis, which has given our word capital via the French capitale, and the German calque Hauptstadt, however, for obvious reasons, these calques are harder to detect and much fewer in number in Chinese. Sometimes they mistranslate things completely, like grammatical case is 格in Chinese, a laughable mistake influenced by English, since ‘case’ here comes from ‘casus’, meaning ‘fall’. Modern Chinese is also quite random regarding those two character words: originally two synonyms were combined in colloquial language or for rhetorical effects in Ancient China, and theoretically any two synonyms should be able to form such a combination, and it is indeed the case for Ancient Chinese, but in Modern Chinese the two synonyms are mostly fixed, e.g., 國家is made up of two synonyms and means the same thing as each of the two synonyms, but one cannot replace one synonym by another synonym and say something like 國朝 （for 家and 朝，meaning house (as in the House of Windsor) and dynasty (as in the Tudor Dynasty) respectively, are synonyms here. Here too one sees the mark of absolute monarchy, since 國家 essentially means the ruling house. L’état, c’est moi! Some Chinese apologists like to say this word shows that the Chinese regard their country as one big family, which is a laughable misinterpretation of Chinese state philosophy). These fixed two character words, which are essentially pleonasms or even tautologies, are what appear to me to be the most irrational part of Modern Chinese. Ancient Chinese is far more rational in this regard, since normally one character is sufficient and two synonym characters are combined mostly for rhetorical effects. However, Ancient Chinese has its own difficulties. I have managed to master Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, Russian, and learn some Spanish and Portuguese, but I still can only read like Xenophon or Caesar level Chinese historians in Ancient Chinese (if you know what I mean), despite having learned the language longer than any of my other foreign languages! Since I don’t know any Japanese or Korean, I am not sure if they actually form a close, largely homogeneous Kulturraum with China similar to Europe with its Greco-Latin roots.
I would say, the grammar of German is pretty difficult to understand than Chinese and English. I learned that the grammar of Japanese is straightforward, very swift.
學任何語言都不容易，有興趣確實是很大的助力；
感覺兩位美女都是學霸，語言能力強，謝謝分享！👍🥰🙏
我發現英國腔真的很好聽，很慵懶
我很同意中文在某些情形下真的很像樂高，一塊一塊疊起來
其實,英語應該是全世界的擬音文字裡面最容易學習的語言,既沒有複雜的發音-濁音,半濁音,氣音,彈簧音和捲舌音,也沒有容易搞混的詞性-陰陽,公母,男女,更沒有令人厭煩的敬語和文法.不過,唯一的缺點就是少了一點美感性.繁體中文的每個單字,雖然是同一個字,但是如果使用各種書法字體書寫,就會呈現不同的美感藝術樣貌,這也就是繁體漢字最引人入勝,令人著迷之處.加油.
可惜台灣在去中國化，現在台灣變得很奇怪，繁體字也被台獨用臭了！
我的感觉恰恰相反，我觉得中文是一种结构上相对简单的语言，并没有太多的语法规则，比较难的是约定俗称的语句使用部分，必须要长期使用，而英文应为糅合了相当多不同的语言，所以英文其实有比很多其他语言都多的元音发音，即使是同一个元音字母在不同的词和位置里都可能会有不同的发音，而且因为糅合语言的原因，也有很多词是不遵守基本的发音规则的。在语法方面，英文比中文更复杂，和其他欧洲语言比较，语法形式比西班牙语复杂，但是比德语简单。
我是台灣人，我能說中文、英文、俄文，我認為沒有什麼最難的語言，學習第二語言取決的你的母語跟這個語系多麼接近，俄文我當初是在Spotify聽歌學的，自己買書看
然後平時去公館的俄羅斯餐廳找俄國人聊天，增進口語能力
其實，學中國語言一定要學會漢字，尤其楷體字，既使難，也要學起來，因為中文的精華在漢字，遇到有人跟你引用成語經句詩詞表達他的意思時，不懂漢字會不易理解，學會漢字則可以感受到意思之精妙及趣味。
08:13 為什麼火(fire)跟車(car)，合在一起會變成火車(train)? 因為火車這個概念，就是燃煤產生蒸氣，而在軌道上行走的車子。同樣的，就會有電車這樣的概念出現。
日本語…蒸氣機關車似乎比火車易了解
西班牙語很像加密後的英語🤣🤣🤣 非常認同！
我已經會中英日三語，目前正在使用Duolingo學習韓、德、西語，所以兩位說的我都能感同身受。但用這個app，與其說是學習，更像是遊戲，必較沒有研究文法的拘束，一切都是從問答遊戲中靠自己去領悟。目前的感想是：
‧德語和日語很像，都是文法非常嚴謹，必須要遵守一定的順序，所以非常有安全感。
‧我不知道這樣講會不會惹毛韓語的人，但絕對是指好的方面，就是我目前覺得韓語像是簡易版的日語，所以學起來蠻得心應手。大致上日韓語之間可以做一對一的轉換，而且該放的位置幾乎不會變。所以蠻推薦已經會日語的人，可以稍微跨出一點舒適圈，去碰碰看韓語。只要熬過剛開始韓文字的練習，接下來就是海闊天空。
‧目前對西語還處在很混亂的狀態，而且不知道怎麼總是會把德語的記憶和西語搞混，所以還沒什麼心得。
我西班牙文已經是可以流利讀懂的狀態，，聽懂也可以聽到百分之80。說一下西班牙語最難的地方並不是動詞變化，西班牙語最困難的地方是很多很多西班牙代詞，非常多變化之後動詞並沒有和英文，中文一樣分我您他她。代詞可以表示事和人。le可以表示他她您。也就是說西班牙文讀單獨句子給你的信息量非常少，你要理解整段對話才能猜出主語或者代詞代表什麼。這並不容易。
戴小姐真的很用心在經營頻道，發掘有趣的話題，而且親切的回覆大家的留言。
As a learner of Korean, Spanish and French, the way of how you speak in English accent fascinates me in a deep sense. ❤❤❤ just cant resist it.
我自己學英文/台語/日文/法文
英文用很久、從幼稚園開始接觸，後來變成主要接觸外國媒體的語言，讓我繼續用下去的理由：各方資料都能用英文找到一些文章可看
法文的文法我沒全學完，但知道不容易
德文的文法也不簡單，發音也要特別注意-但這是在合唱團碰到的
日文的話，因為我是從高中學的，大致上文法都記得，但我不定時會看一些教日文老師臉書的文法探討文
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Catherine說她見到韓國人的時候，就會變成要一直說英文，我默默想起以前在日文教材看到類似的文章，唉呀
內容大概是學日文的外國人表示「不要看到我就要說其他外文或英文，請對我說日文」
I am native Cantonese speaker. A few years ago I used to spend a bit of time answering questions on the Duolingo forum from people learning Japanese and Chinese. One funny fact I found was that having no tense in Chinese is unexpectedly a difficulty to English and European language speakers. They have been so used to embedding the time element in their languages and once it's not required any more they are super uncomfortable about if they say something correctly.
We just use other constructs like auxiliary word/verb or time phrase to accomplish the task
I speak two and a half languages (English, Mandarin and Taiwanese) as I was born in Taiwan, and have lived in the United States for 2 years. Now I am in the UK (in Leeds, Yorkshire for the past 20 years!) I have tried to learn Italian, Spanish, Persian and Danish. Persian is hard, although the numbers are not that difficult to learn. Danish sometimes can be easy and hard as the grammar and vocabularies can be different from English. Take the word "carrot" for instance, in Danish it is "gulerroder". There are 29, and some times 30 letters in Danish because they have 3 extra vowels on top of the "a, e, I, o, u". Their "e, I" can also sound quite different, depending on the vocabularies themselves. I did enjoy learning Danish at the beginning, then I find it less and less enjoyable. Also, due to Brexit and family argument, I have lost my chances of forming a family and settling down in Denmark. Still, I carry on keeping up my language skills ( Japanese for me is easier to learn than French). Keep posting the talks about language learning experiences. It's good for our brains.
非常喜欢！这种坐下来和在特定话题有长期思考、实践的人聊天，真是超级好的学习材料，这期和之前alix面试建议都超级好～希望多多考虑这类型的题材
聽妳們這樣聊，會讓我回想起來學習語言的樂趣
謝謝🙏
喜歡凱瑟琳描述語言的方式跟案例，都會對學習語言時的釐清困惑非常有幫助。前一陣子同時學習俄語和越南語的時候真的很難出現搞混的情況，但也是偶爾會有一些發音很接近的字會會混進來！不過不可否認同時學習兩種語言真的很好玩
這兩種語言同音異字較少，越語還用聲調區別，字彙要背很多，好在文法接近中文。
日、韓語同音異字超多，需要靠前後文和語態或漢字來辨別字意，文法較固定套用，特殊講法慣用語相對就較少。
I think it depends on your mother tongue. I do speak Korean fluently but that thanks to my Cantonese hat so basically I can understand a vast majority of C1 - C2 level vocabulary.
It sounds great to have people being supportive but at the same time I don’t want people to feel very “foreign”, so I won’t really express any excitement if I see people started learning any Asian language.
I would also love to mention that random languages coming from your mouth! My parents speak Shanghainese to me since I was small and I found it interesting when I stopped using it for some period of time, Korean would popped up in the middle of the conversation between me and my cousins!
好棒的分享！希望能多做一些類似的主題，非常有趣，收穫滿滿。
What a fun sharing of experience.
I dabbled in German at school many years ago. Didn't learn a lot but amazed how much I still remember...like Mittwoch is the odd day of the week, a number no matter how long is written as one word and any two-digit number is somewhat spoken backwards.
大學選修過德文，真的很難QQ 每堂課都要考單字，3個詞性真的太可怕了，還有各種動詞、形容詞和副詞的各種變化式，學了德語突然覺得英語人性很多😂
法語也類似：名詞含性別，連帶
冠詞與形容詞亦一併含相關性別。
動詞的語尾變化亦磨人😞
西班牙文簽
動詞詞性照人稱代名詞分每個都不一樣，還有其他的一些變化
有時候寫一個句子而已都要想超久
@@百年棉花糖 🤔🧐
英語跟德語均屬於印歐語系日耳曼語族。
@@hinhangsiu6783對！
影片後段提到的情況，我兩個都有出現。
一個是有跟Catherine一樣的體會，在學習亞洲語言的過程中，也幫助了歐洲語言的進步，我的情況是日語跟德文。
另一個跟Susie一樣的感覺，是德文跟英文。德文學習的時間雖然比英文短，但是使用的頻率高於英文，所以在說的部分，會出現打架，講英文的時候，會無意識冒出德文字。
一種語言把另一種語言推走，我都笑稱這是侵蝕，比如很激進的學英文，久了會開始忘記某些中文。會不會句子形成（主受動或主動受）或字母的相似度，決定侵蝕的嚴重度。我先學法文，再學德文，我唸德文短句就唸得軟趴趴😅
完全能體會最後所說的，我學了德文後經常與英文搞混，習慣用德文後我甚至會用英文時要講and的時候講成und，講thanks的時候講成danke
分享我去倫敦點外送時的經歷給大家，小哥來了之後給我餐點，我原本要講thank you，結果我說成danke🥲
It's a great pleasure to watch and listen to such wonderful young, beautiful Ladies, with such a level of excellence in acquiring languages, especially the "challenging" ones, and sharing their much valued experiences... 👍🌹🌷🌹
I have learned English at school, majored in Japanese and taken Spanish course during college.
One of the best things of learning more than one foreign language is that the more I master one, the easier for me to get resources from all over the world to help improve the others.
For example, as a native speaker of Taiwanese Mandarin, I learn English through it; and then when it comes to Japanese, I get to use both Taiwanese Mandarin and English to help myself understand the contents better since sometimes it might be difficult to tell the difference between some vocabularies if you translate them to only one language.
However, the downside of learning multiple languages is that they sometimes put up a fight in my brain and make me struggle with conveying my point in just one language--like I'm talking in English and all of a sudden my brain decides to switch to Japanese mode and my tongue just can't catch up with it😂
对我来说，学习语言比学习科学困难得多，谢谢两位美女老师的分享
I had this similar experience with my Spanish friend as well. I mispronounced the city Málaga into Malága. Then I saw my friend with this most confusing look on her face ever. I had to repeat so many times to her until she finally realized that I was talking about Málaga. Never thought that stress is such an important part in speaking to native speakers
I learned Russian in university, and I can totally understand the difficult process of learning a new language with word genders and strict tense. Thank you and I do enjoy this conversation from two intellectual girls. Keep it on.
I really like watching this kind of native-to-native series where the speed is pushed to max 😂. This showed us the pace which should be regarded as usual and normal, rather than that of Susie when teaching
I speak fluent in Mandarin and Japanese because I had my first degree in Tokyo. Ironically I had my lessons all in English. I like to make day dreams in different languages. Furthermore, I will watch international news from locals in three languages from internet sources. I gain more obective view of the facts.
First year in university, I had taken English, French, and Japanese classes at the same time. But that was not my first time to learn English and Japanese, so I was only struggling in learning French, just let me be used to the grammar of Latin languages.
Second year, I had taken Italian and Korean classes. Because of the background of learning French and Japanese, I didn't feel there were difficult.
Third year, I'd taken Spanish.
Fourth year, I'd taken international medical Interpretation and translation coarse
In Law school, I'd taken German
In the master program of nurse practitioner, I've taken Indonesia, Russian, Thai, Arabic
For all the experiences of learning languages, I found that if you're quite getting used to be the language family of target language you learned, the time of achieving fluency is getting shorter.
Catherine is so impressive! I feel the same as Susie about learning 2 languages and one pushes out the other. My English is not very well and I struggled when I was learning French, and I gave it up eventually. 😅
❤太喜欢这期的分享了，谢谢
超愛與朋友討論主題的影片內容
As a native Chinese speaker learning French, I also find the learning process helpful to re-clarify my English a bit.
你好！I am originally Chinese but I’m born in England. I learnt Chinese and English when I was 2 at the same time and Chinese always was easier as a toddler but now my Chinese has slipped behind and my English dominates. I relate that speaking Chinese is the easiest but I find writing and reading near impossible, but reading is a bit easier. I’m picking up French and Spanish at the same time and my Spanish always sound so French as my French is definitely better
7:53 I think Catherine could understand this easily if she could capture the different ways of pronouncing Chinese characters.
國家is 국가 ,
火車is 기차 from 汽車, this case is different because it comes from Japanese Chinese characters, 汽車 きしゃ(Even though they don't use this word anymore because it's been electrified so it changed to 電車 でんしゃ 전차)
3:30 Catherine給的例子在我的經驗裡覺得應該是因為個人的關係，我之前會跟我媽講幾個台語的字，但我可能發音不是很標準，所謂的不標準可能就只是什麼鼻音沒有發出來或者促音不是發的很準類似這種很細微的東西，但我媽就會說"你在說什麼?"，然後我跟Catherine一樣再講一次那個字，然後用國語解釋，我媽才會說啊~你要說"XXX"(正確發音)。在我看來很枝微末節的東西但在我媽耳裡聽起來就是不對🤣🤣🤣
去賣河粉滑雪😂😂😂😂btw, 你哋學過好多語言，而且掌握得好好，多謝你哋分享咁多學習經驗❤
早上好Susie😀😀🖐🖐
Native Chinese here. As you see I am writing in English because I have been living in America and I have completely forgotten how to write Chinese. My vocab is also shot but pronunciation and grammar are still fine though
Being a native Mandarin speaker, I can totally relate to this conversation. Especially I am currently learning German; German grammar, indeed, is very regimented, compared to Mandarin or English. In the conversation, Catherine mentioned that "English is the most forgiving as a second language", I would say it's probably because English is the most powerful language in the world. Most people have to study it for business usage or immigration reasons so native English speakers have a long history of communicating with non-native english speakers. I think this can result in English as the most forgiving second language. On the contrary, I think Germany is a relatively not that opened country so it has a lower tolerance when it comes to German language.
同時懂兩個語言, 英文和中文, 最大的困擾是發現要表達自己的意思是另一種語言 ! 🤣🤣....我也懂一點法文,西班牙文, 大概懂得不夠深, 這兩種語言只有在旅行的時候管用 !
The difference between languages, is not merely using different way and different word to express the same idea; it is a frame how people perceive the world. Different thinking is the key.😃😅
Thank you, Susie, for bringing up such an intriguing topic! I’m a Chinese living in Leeds, and I also speak Japanese. I resonate with the feelings you mentioned - speaking a language allows you to delve deeply into another culture. Proficiency in a language not only unveils the intricacies of a culture but also reveals certain aspects of people’s personalities, way of thinking etc. in that country. By comparing Japanese with English, I have to say English is way much easier, as you could feel it is more systematic and consistency in many many ways, whereas Japanese is more flexible and full of “Radom stuff” 😅 sorry I don’t know what word to use.
Meanwhile I do feel when you study two languages together, at the beginning you may found yourself mix up things easily, especially when you try to speak without thinking too much, but once when both languages are more settled in your brain, this would happen less, of course this is from my own experience 😊 I have an interesting example here, 13 years ago, when I was preparing IELTS test as well as JPLT, one day I came across a speaking test practice with a word “腰”, there is a very weird sentence flashed through in my mind: my koshi is painful 😂 (koshi is waist in Japanese) I almost spoke this out … that was super funny and I could still remember the experience today
Thank you for sharing your story！ It's always enriching to hear about others' language learning journeys and the unique experiences they encounter along the way. 😊
@@susiewoo我实在有些不理解我们中国人的一些行为，比如由为防范新冠病毒形成的吃饭时使用公筷新习惯在病毒风波过去还不到一年的时间就维持不住了。这个用公筷的新习惯难道不应该作为一种对3年病毒 风波的历史记忆永远的保留下来么？
關於中文認字和書寫最快的方法，1.學注音符號，除了學會發音基本原則，更重要學會書寫方式和順序。2.看金庸小說，白話文，少有艱澀難懂的辭彙，簡易快速進入中國歷史，大量常用辭彙，以及有趣的內容。3.日、韓書寫方式中的重要描述文字是漢字，原因很簡單，封建中國是亞洲最強勢的文化。
兩位的邏輯跟觀察都好棒
自然语言在其诞生的区域内是人人可以理解的，因此，在中国历史上是没有所谓的“语法”问题的，因为该文明区的所有人使用同一种文字表达。只有当不同的语言开始交流时，才有了所谓的“语法问题”。
Hi Susie, do you know a book called Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu? It’s so good the book is about Chinese language modernisation
Catherine as like as teacher is a super student
You ❤ sort of dived deeper to the Chinese radicals 😮in comparison with the hanja sino korean big words in korean being like suffixes prefixes😅 which is just 國+家 level thing. well the radical concept is also the case for korean deep down cuz the the hanja they rarely write now is actually just 99 percent identical to traditional Chinese 😂 although mandarin underwent a lot of sound shift, southern min and cantonese sound very similar to sino korean🎉😅😊
東方太注重分性別,地位,等都很無謂,日文泰文都有,相反西方太多結構方面限制
都來學一下香港廣東話,就會發現新天地,以上一切基本上都沒有,沒有敬語,不分性別,沒特別句子結構,反轉都可以,甚至加入簡單英語/日語/韓語一起,更更甚至你隨時可以創造新詞一樣沒問題,基本上都沒有什麼文法/次序/用詞等等錯誤的概念,如果有,把錯誤變成潮語看待就沒有了,反正隨便講都會明🤣根本是擺脫煩惱的語言
This is why I like Cantoneses. Cool!
I like the topic of this episode.
原本學習法語學到一堆規則跟一堆例外感到很痛苦
後來想想中文也是一大堆約定俗成的例外
就比較放鬆釋懷了~😂
日本韓國越南語有很多漢語詞彙在裡面 身為中文母語者去學這些語言的單字時真的會容易一些
就像歐洲語言的拉丁文字根 我們一開始根本什麼都不知道🤣
这期很有趣！
Pragmatics - Chinese is most difficult in common seen languages, such as "when you free come for dinner" however this is not an invitation. Typically only people asking "do you have time this Friday for dinner", most likely that is eligible to be considered as an invitation.
Worst of all, you have no book and no where to learn. People may argue that you may learn from locals or so. Here is the flaw - learning is meaningful when you learn before. I expect someone may say " learning is a process spanning over time, balabala" 😉
It's kinda like English asking "how are you doing?" It's not like you really care about that person having a good or bad life. It's a way to say hello in another way.
I’ve learned Korean for four years and recently started to pick up French which I learned in high school and university. I spoke Korean to my French teacher once without notice so I guess my brain was really struggling lol Also when I was learning Korean, I found my English was getter worse 😅 My native languages are Mandarin and Taiwanese but need to use English at work
I’m a native mandarin speaker living in Canada. And I’ve started to learn French for a year.
From my observation, although French and English belong to different languages groups, Romance and Germanic languages groups respectively, they’re still quite similar in terms of logic of sentences, vocabulary and grammar systems. And I sometimes tried to firstly organize a sentence from Chinese to English before translating it into French. That’s more easier than directly translated from Chinese to French.
Also, since you’ve mentioned that you, as an English native speaker, learned French before, I’m just curious about your viewpoints of learning French, and how it differs from learning mandarin?
只是不是在越小的年紀開始接觸ㄧ個語言+非常充份的沉浸式環境 ，都很難
所謂越小的年紀開始接觸，包括「僅僅是聽到別人講」，例如 台灣人從小聽到日語的機率 還是比西班牙語高很多（動畫有時候是日語原音），即便從來沒學過五十音，25歲後再學五十音，還是會比西語好親近（不考慮漢字的部份）
所以那些在英語系國家長大、至少父母之一是華人、從小有聽華語 卻只會回答英語的人，20歲後才開始密集學怎麼講華語，也能學得又好又快
最慢20歲就要密集、不間斷的開始沉浸在ㄧ個語言裡，過了25歲才開始常聽別人講ㄧ個語言，那幾乎永遠學不好了
20歲後如果只是開始學、但沒有24小時都密集沉浸，隨著ㄧ年ㄧ年的黃金歲月流逝，那也學不好了
「越年輕開始大量聽」+「夠密集不間斷24小時只聽只講該語言」是兩大重點
我從小就常聽到台語，但我根本沒興趣學 所以至今不會講，如今卻還是能聽懂至少一半台語的意思，這就是「從小開始聽」的力量，不費吹灰之力，連不想聽懂 都沒辦法
反之，25歲後我才開始學、聽到ㄧ個語言，連續10年 拼命的開廣播聽，10年後聽力也仍然非常吃力！
曾有人跟我說，xx語言不難啊，年紀不是問題，但我ㄧ看他用該語言寫的文章，5句話裡有4句文法錯、語境怪，畢竟他25歲才開始聽，而且也沒有24小時沉浸，每天都還是有大量用到中文母語
所以我不相信「年紀不是問題」，敢這麼說的人其實外語都不怎麼樣，只是他的標準很低
年紀不是問題，只是學習方式不對而已。什麼叫做沉浸式學習法？Comprehensive Input不就好了？我學習西班牙文7個月。我的軟體裡面記錄我學會了3萬2000個單詞。現在放假打算每天audiolibros閱讀至少6萬字。我已經能夠很流利的閱讀大部分書籍，新聞也可以聽懂百分之80以上。但是我一句口語都沒有說過，也沒有練過聽力。我也沒有環境。所謂的環境根本沒有關係。
沉浸式如果你看劇，還是到母語者環境。一個小時能夠輸入到你大腦的單詞量可能只有1千到2千字。並且不會有長句子複雜句型。我現在聽有聲書，一個小時可以有1萬個單詞的輸入。
你知道加拿大很多移民都是三十歲後才來的嗎？但英語還是非常流利哦！
而且都是非母語國家哦，不要以管窺天了😂
（當然還是有只跟母國人混導致雅斯只有4的移民
@@ryan7pupu老兄，我整篇文都在說「從小開始接觸」
英語是每個人從小就開始聽的，就算沒認真研究，電影ㄧ打開仍會聽到英語，那就「不屬於」我說的情況
不要以管窺天這句話反送回給你是最合適的，只學過英語的你，自然看不懂我在說什麼
From linguistic science view, 3 important factors for a given language. Grammar, Semantics, Pragmatics. After your learn that 20 or so special Chinese characters, you finished learning all. Asia language, pronunciation is difficult; while the total phonetic combination of Chinese are just above 100, considerinng the different ton; 400-500 that's all; No more.
光中文跟英文就快把我搞瘋了😂佩服二位👍
大學學了法語之後英文有退化掉…主要是口語方面，因為習慣了法語的發聲方式和常用的單字之後就想不起英文的了😢😢需要一段時間思考 切換成英語模式就好了。讀沒有影響 但拼單字的話也會分不清（原本就在兩個語言裡的拼法很像）
另外我是先把日語學透了才去學韓語 感覺腦子裡沒有地方給韓語了😂無論怎麼樣還是會先跑日語單字出來 不過可能也是因為韓語還不夠精進啦
個人感覺在亞洲和歐洲語系之間的話不太會弄混 而且年紀越來越大之後學得的確更慢了 學韓語比我想像中花的時間要多得多 不像在學校的時候那樣很快就能掌握基礎的單字和語法
身為一個中文母語者 （普通話＆台灣河洛話）
小時候也有相關為什麼火車叫火車
但小朋友總會天馬行空的亂唸
火車=著火的車
just like car on fire😂
而我的第二外語是日文 第三則是英文
確實多少會互相影響表達的方式及思維
車is more like vehicle than 'car'
I've ever learned german in university. Some words from German and English are often similar in their pronunciations. It's amazing. But sometimes I found out one german word has so many letters. It's really difficult to spell it.
German words [ nouns ] are extended words which include the relation between two parts…for instance, ‘Gott’ [ god ] and ‘götterfunken’ [ God’s divine sparkling’…
besides, there renders confusion as in pronouns as ‘Sie’ and ‘sie’ where the former refers to second person ‘you’ while the latter depicts third person ‘she’ 😞
it is because German and English are related--Teutonic
Yes, English is much easier than the rest of European languages. At least no memorisation of each noun's gender form (esp. German with 3 forms), no "over-"contraction of serial words (like Spanish and French). But as you said, German sentence structure could be satisfying because it is set in several fixed orders like formulations, Verb + Angabe + Ergänzung and so on.
I've stopped learning Spanish after learning German (Germanic) for a decade; I can't adapt to the Latinic system.
I think train is 火車 in Chinese as in the old steam driven trains, you needed to burn coal to run it and there's a furnace (火爐) in the driving compartment
請問 furnance 和 boiler 的區別？ 😆
@@barelybear5489 furnace boiler whatever. You won't survive when you're there 🤣
@@S-fi5ox 火車上的是boiler
@@barelybear5489跟蒸汽动力有关的装置叫boiler，因为要把水烧开成蒸汽然后高压喷出驱动发动机叶片，然后冷却形成循环（蒸汽轮机的基本原理）🤣
I am a native Mandarin speaker and kind of fluent in English. Now I am learning Norwegian, which also has three genders as German. I suffered so much from Norwegian grammar and am really struggling to memorize the transformation of nouns, verbs, and adj because of the genders.
中日韩三个语言学习难度。最简单的是韩语，最难的是日语，中文在中间。同时也是最通用的，所以学习中文非常明智😊
日文最難是因為要同時記日本漢字和五十音嗎
@@東吾君還有漢字讀法，比漢語亂得多，有的時候一個字對應七八種讀音，還有敬語
@@東吾君 如果不计算书写难度，仅仅是学会说的话日语最难，如果是计算书写的话中文难度会提升一个档次
Semantics - that is more serious in the enemy side 😃 for example, H K is "highly autonomous".... basically that means "not autonomous but something 'very much' close to autonomous", not to mention all those invented party language system - virtually "1984"😛
火車
火是燒煤來運作
車是載具
我是這樣想的
😂 Totally related to that. I was learning both Japanese and French about the same time and I sometimes got some of their vocabularies mixed up.
中文一个词语能代表很多意思，英文用很多词语可代表一个意思！英语是更接近人类语言😁
影片末段的現象我覺得我比較像舒萱，尤其是當third language並不同為歐語系的時候
但如果兩種語言出自同一個系統，就會像Catherine那樣，感覺兩種語言一起進步：
我之前自學法文的時候 就感覺英文基礎在學習法文上幫助很多；
但現在在倫敦念書，大量接觸英文的狀況下，我發現我的中文能力(even though it's one of my mother tongue)以一個非常快的速度在下降、而英文能力卻因為每天仍然會用中文跟台灣的朋友聊天（即使比例已經非常低），
仍然進步的速度非常有限...
Chinese is not just about the syntax but a lot more tied to the history and culture behind in the semantics and usage it seems
We learn some languages because of several motivations. For me, I just wanna chat with others and maybe therefore I can be another group of people in the world. Maybe I can be accepted.(likewise)
謝謝你們的分享❤
中文字要記得多的話，最好學會"倉頡輸入法""無蝦米輸入法""行列輸入法"，因為中文字的所有結構都在裡面，因為從字的結構你就會發現，中文其實就是一個象形文字，就是一張畫，只是在古時候倉頡在造字時，把他加以分類，讓他更形象更具體規則化。了解這些規則後，你會容易記得他的發音，他可能所代表的意思，即使你沒見過這個字，你也可能會猜到可能跟他有關的訊息或涵義。
好有意思的对话
Speaking of learning two languages at the same time, in Taiwan and some Asian countries, bilingual education is being promoted, do you think it's helpful to learn multiple languages in elementary or middle school?
I used to find conjugating verbs the hardest part of learning Spanish and Portuguese, while for learning English idioms and phrasal verbs is the toughest part..well perhaps not super tough but since there's a ton of them, it takes years to accumulate and become a fluent user - but then I find them very interesting and that keeps me motivated to go on learning and failing and learning again 🥰
Learning Mandarin, however, what confuses me the most has always been memorising whether the word starts with zh or z, xi/shi and so on.😂
And then learning how to spell French words is definitely the biggest nightmare ! 😅
I found myself too dumb for German genders and never really pick it up again after uni.... 😇
to Cantonese speakers, you are right that it is very hard to differentiate among ‘x’ , ‘s’ , ‘sh’ ;
‘q’ , ‘z’ , ‘zh’ ; ‘c’ , ‘ch’ 😞
對於英語一直有個疑問，為何英語在尾音有輕音，例：test/t/, milk/k/... 造成句子裡有所謂的"連音" ，光是這個連音就夠頭大的，其它的歐洲語言好像也沒有這個現象，不對歡迎指正。
我的語言程度 :
繁體中文 : 9/10
台語(閩南語) : 8/10
美式英語 : 2/10
其他語言 : 0/10 😅
Catherine长得像ScarlettJohansson
I would like to say "fire car"
because long time ago, train is driven by fire, at least some smoke at the front, therefore, we say train as a "fire car"😂
Hi Susie, I think AI (?) translated the word "prospectus" in your video as "招股說明書‘’. It should be "科系／學程簡介" instead. 😅
不能这么比，欧洲语言里芬兰语、俄语不容易学会。
汉语貌似难学，汉字比较难记，但语法简单，只要发音标准，即便词序颠倒也能基本理解语意。
We do (maybe I should use “did”) have 敬語 in Mandarin Chinese and also use them in our daily life😂 but it is getting weakened and non-predominant etiquette in speaking.
German is so darn challenging, the sentence structures is just so alien to me.
Something as simple as going to your house could be = bei dir zu Hause (notice there is no 'your'). I really dislike the word come and go, because I find description in motion is difficult, and a combination of reflexive, preposition and verb is very confusing such as Es gibt nichts, woüber man sich Sorgen machen müsste (Something as simple as "there is nothing to worry about").
Additionally there are reverse order of subject and object such as:
Ich habe den Job gekündigt (I quit the job)
Mir wurde der Job gekündigt (the job terminated me)
Especially where thing like a dative case right Infront of a sentence needs practice and getting used to.
I really don't believe there is such a thing in West and East anymore. I find learning the German culture just as different and a world of its own as well. However their younger generation are Americanizing, because of the media influences and the pop culture.
我會把西班牙文跟印尼文混在一起....😂
西班牙文有性別，又會把主詞跟動詞拼在一起，受詞在動詞前面，又有時態, 跟該死的rr很難發音、重音不同，時態跟意思不同.........kinda tricky..
學習英文對我來說比較難 特別是記字詞同用句方面 😢 好像看多少次都很難記入腦的感覺
It is harder to be really good at Chinese than any European language. Even more ‘cryptic’ European languages such as German or Russian have thousands of Pan-European, Greco-Latin words, and even more so-called ‘calques’ from those Greco-Latin words (like Vorurteil and предрассудок are literal translations of the Latin word praeiudicium, which obviously has given our prejudice via the French préjudice. So instead of directly borrowing the Latin word, German and Russian coined two new words by translating the Latin prefix prae (vor, пред) and the root iudicium (judgement/reason, Urteil, рассудок). There are tons of such words in German and Russian). There are a few calques from Greco-Latin terms in Chinese too, such as 首都，首meaning head, i.d., the ‘head city’, from a late Latin phrase urbs capitalis, which has given our word capital via the French capitale, and the German calque Hauptstadt, however, for obvious reasons, these calques are harder to detect and much fewer in number in Chinese. Sometimes they mistranslate things completely, like grammatical case is 格in Chinese, a laughable mistake influenced by English, since ‘case’ here comes from ‘casus’, meaning ‘fall’. Modern Chinese is also quite random regarding those two character words: originally two synonyms were combined in colloquial language or for rhetorical effects in Ancient China, and theoretically any two synonyms should be able to form such a combination, and it is indeed the case for Ancient Chinese, but in Modern Chinese the two synonyms are mostly fixed, e.g., 國家is made up of two synonyms and means the same thing as each of the two synonyms, but one cannot replace one synonym by another synonym and say something like 國朝 （for 家and 朝，meaning house (as in the House of Windsor) and dynasty (as in the Tudor Dynasty) respectively, are synonyms here. Here too one sees the mark of absolute monarchy, since 國家 essentially means the ruling house. L’état, c’est moi! Some Chinese apologists like to say this word shows that the Chinese regard their country as one big family, which is a laughable misinterpretation of Chinese state philosophy). These fixed two character words, which are essentially pleonasms or even tautologies, are what appear to me to be the most irrational part of Modern Chinese. Ancient Chinese is far more rational in this regard, since normally one character is sufficient and two synonym characters are combined mostly for rhetorical effects. However, Ancient Chinese has its own difficulties. I have managed to master Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, Russian, and learn some Spanish and Portuguese, but I still can only read like Xenophon or Caesar level Chinese historians in Ancient Chinese (if you know what I mean), despite having learned the language longer than any of my other foreign languages! Since I don’t know any Japanese or Korean, I am not sure if they actually form a close, largely homogeneous Kulturraum with China similar to Europe with its Greco-Latin roots.
I am suffering from German pushing out my English proficiency as well... Nein always come out faster than no lol
覺得德語雖然難 但發音相較於英文比較規律（英文單字蠻多不規則發音的）但文法就真的…好難😢
I would say, the grammar of German is pretty difficult to understand than Chinese and English.
I learned that the grammar of Japanese is straightforward, very swift.
火車之所以叫火車,是因為最早的火車是蒸汽機推動,燃燒煤產生蒸汽來推動,所以叫火車.
你朋友的英文腔調好好聽喔
我覺得東方語言 亞洲語言比較有趣 因為多半都有自己的一套文字系統
小宣的可爱漂亮长在亚洲人的审美上。
對我而言 , 英文最難的部份有2 , 一個是無法聽清楚對方在說什麼 , 二是目前自己懂的單字太少 , 剛學會幾個新的 , 舊的就忘記了
謝謝回覆🙏🏻
One question, please ? Why the girl Catherine uses both “because” and “so” at the same time ？ I suppose she is a native English speaker …
Because English is the most forgiving language
Sussie. Do you know that 老子 is the 敬语 to referring to yourself? You can start using it the next time you introduce yourself to people
最近看到一个理论 说是韩语跟粤语有很多相通的地方 这里有没有人能证实一下？
或許這樣說，韓、日二語，和閩南語並潮汕語及粵語有淵源……