Most do, but there are different languages in china, like cantonese, Wu, Min, Jin...depending on the region. Cantonese is a lot harder than mandarin. All the old literature is based on it. Mostly spoken in Hongkong and Macau.
I messed up, I meant cantonese was the only dialect that was also put into writing to preserve the dialect in it's form. There was detailed literature of the dialect itself. Most old literature is written in old literature before the modern (high) chinese replaced it.
Here is the visual aid: The broken step ladder next to the guys with the golf club with the two seagulls on the park bench with the roof shed drawing - my foot hurts - 我脚疼 Oh wait, there is a chimney on the shed - your foot hurts - 你脚疼 Wait, there's smoke coming out of the chimney - we got a new pope - 我们有一位新的教皇
That was really impressive. Good reconstruction. If you didn't do that, I would have thought he's just making stuff up. How on earth does he see a broken step ladder in the Chinese word for 'me'? Well, I guess I can sort of see it. It takes a lot of thinking. The guys with the golf club... Man, that's some wild imagination. The two seagulls on the park bench with the roof shed... Is he like some expert at abstract art or something? How on earth does he do that?
@president camacho Oh, you have no idea. It's far deeper than anything from the West. If you get into the meaning, it'll revolutionise the way you look at the world.
Wow, an american comedian who mocks the german pronunciation on point instead of stupidly screaming acround and says that's how germans speak - that's actually funny! :-D
@@KomamuraSajin M.T. was saying that he was not acting like most comedians who usually just try to yell loudly in German to make German language jokes. It was a positive compliment on his routine.
Windows vs macOS, or Android vs iOS would be a better comparison. While all four are operating systems, a mobile operating system has a different use case and isn't directly comparable to a desktop OS, even if they have many similarities.
I spent some time in China after studying several languages as a history student. Left knowing three words after two months. My ear just can’t pick up the nuance. It was extremely distressing!
The most accurate description of (attempted) bi-lingualism ever! Tried learning Mandarin to speak with a family of exchange students. You'll never forget the first time a 3-year-old tells you (with a look of total disgust), "You're doing it wrong!" 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂
Dude is absolutely right you can say the same thing for different ways different inflections and it means completely different things heaven forbid you have a southern draw
Indeed, intonation would change the meaning of a Chinese word. An example would be:I asked him 我问他 . Getting the intonation wrong will mean I kissed him 我吻他
@@xunqianbaidu6917 Yeah, I really don't like how much people from my homeland like rush people. I feel like it makes everything more accident prone. I think that it's highly unideal.
Oh my gosh! I lived in Taiwan for several years, and at one point met a random guy on a train who asked me in his halting English, "but if you have already been here for 4 years, why is your Chinese so poor?" I had to keep up a savagely polite grin until I could finally get off at my stop. Well, buddy, maybe because I'm working here full time, not studying full time. Maybe my Chinese is more excusable considering that I'm doing it as I can informally on the side of my other responsibilities, and never studied it formally. So you've actually been assigned with teachers to learn English since grade school through college right? So wHy IsNt UR eNGliSh BetTeR? HUH? Ohhhhh, you mean learning launguages is actually difficult and takes a lot of work? Well WHO COULD HAVE GUSSED THAT!?! .... As you might have subtly noticed, I'm still somewhat salty over this encounter, lol. For real though, studying Chinese can be super fun.
Well, don't mean to make your head explode, but I learned Mandarin while living in Germany. Probably to a third-grade level, but I can order hot and sour soup and than them for it.
I love this man!!! He is so wonderfully smart & funny, in a refreshing way. More please! He ought to be famous & the world hear from him all over the place please!
At first, Mandarin Chinese can be very difficult due to 5 distinct tones, unique pronunciations, and thousands of characters which most Europeans/Americans are unfamiliar with. After a little bit of in-depth study, Mandarin Chinese can seem fairly easy due to a lack of verb tenses, articles, or genders of pronouns in the spoken language. After a more in-depth study, Mandarin Chinese will freak you out. There are hundreds, if not thousands of 成语 and 歇后语 with literal meanings that make no sense, such as “杯弓蛇影” which literally means “Cup bow snake shade”. Moreover, there are tons of characters with multiple meanings and make perfect sense when put together repeatedly. Like “单车差点滑倒了,我一把把把把住了” and “我有一个小本本本来很干净”. However, one of the most freaking parts of Chinese is that you can frequently mix one character for another. Just imagine having to deal with a weirder version of “There, they're and their” on a daily basis, such as differentiating between “瞭,撩,燎,僚,嘹”. OR you could also have a character with multiple sounds, each carrying a different meaning. “差” has four pronunciations, which means "mistake", "of low quality", "errand", or used exclusively in the word “参差” to denote "of different length", respectively. Mandarin Chinese is NOT a very easy language to learn
Your German accent is on point! :D I almost lost my German accent which is great but a few of my friends still have a pretty strong one. I am studying Chinese though at the moment and it sucks... I already know about 20 different translations for the word ma for example :D way to confusing... and if my "job interview" (to work as an English assistant teacher) in a week fails I won't even get to use all that weird stuff I learned :D
As a native German speaker, this was hilarious! I'm learning Hungarian right now, so I feel you. I'm happy I grew up with a more difficult language. Makes it easier to learn other languages, because I'm familiar with many grammatical concepts, though with by far not enough, it seems.
You mention the benefits of growing up with a difficult language, but you've decided to start learning Hungarian?! There go your benefits out the window :D
Yeah. I don't know how accurate it was, but Sheldon, on _The Big Bang Theory_ set out, in one episode, to study Mandarin, and he screwed up constantly, but every sentence he screwed up was _grammatically_ correct. He would walk past a couple Chinese people sitting at a table, give them a nod, say something in Mandarin and the subtitle would say, "Long live concrete." Of course, I figured, "Well, if you _apply_ it right, _sure."_
@@ManicEightBall I think you misunderstood his point. He was not suggesting that you couldn't make grammatical mistakes in Chinese. Only that Sheldon got the grammar down pat--but could only speak nonsense because his vocabulary was deficient.
True story: A guy was learning Spanish from a Spanish-speaking friend. He thought he was starting to get the hang of it, and he asked his friend, "Can I say ........."? His friend said, "Yes. Yes, you can say that." "OK, good. And can I say ........."? His friend responded, "Yes. You can say that." It seemed too good to be true. He tried one more sentence: "Can I say ........."? Again, the friend replied, "Yes. You can say that too." The guy thought for a moment then, to confirm that he had it right, he asked, "And what does it mean?" His helpful friend replied, "Oh, it doesn't mean anything. But you can say it."
@@TH-camallowedmynametobestolen That completely changes the meaning of the phrase: "Can I say...?" That reminds me of the time I tried to be smart and tell an Italian guy that I can create a perfectly grammatically correct sentence that makes no sense. And I said: "La bambina pioggia." He looked at me really hard, shook his head, and said: "Nope, that doesn't work, you f'd up." I think he kinda missed my point, but nevermind. Later, he told me that you can say: "La bambina di pioggiare", as in, a girl who brings rain with her. But he says you can't say: "La bambina pioggia." (The girl rained.) But seriously, it met every single specification I gave him: it was grammatically correct: subject and a transitive verb. It just made no sense, but deliberately so. I guess it might have worked on a Spanish speaker instead. They're probably more chill.
I seem to remember part of the joke being that Sheldon, try as he might, only manages to confidently butcher the Mandarin language throughout the episode as he is trying, and miserably failing, to hone this skill. However, there is a point in the episode where he gets startled while listening on his headphones by the mailboxes in his apartment building. He whippes off his headphones and makes an exclamation in Mandarin, and I've heard it's the only accurate thing he says in the entire episode.
I'm happy that I don't share his problems in learning languages, I envy Mr. Washburn for his humour and impeccable timing though. He truly is a great comedian.
Immersed in people talking to you in German accents LOL. English as a first language is a big disadvantage when you're trying to learn another language abroad.
@@Kuralai95 When I visited the Netherlands for a month, after a little while I had basically forgotten I was in a country with a foreign language. Even the signs and the writing you encountered often gave you enough clues through similar sounding words and context for you to get around. Practically everyone spoke English in urban areas and bigger cities. I cant speak on the rural parts, as I never visited those parts.
That bit at the end is hilarious. I'm learning Chinese and that's how my American mind remembers the sheds, by making a an American pictorial reference. It's not easy lol.
I'm doing the same thing. And the more Idiotic or obscene the reference the better it works. A YT laoshi gei wo the suggestion. Keep practicing Bu fangqi -dont quit- in zhongwen
He speaks the truth! A friend used to go Frankfurt on business and figured he'd brush up on the German he learned in college. Once he got there he found out everybody was fluent in English and the only German practice he got was in taxis because the drivers are mostly Turkish and haven't learned English.
Japanese also uses Chinese characters, but made it a lot easier by outsourcing many of the grammatical functions into a separate alphabet/syllabary. At the cheap price of learning another 90 characters! Oh but in return almost all the Chinese characters now have multiple pronounciations. 海の底 = umi no soko, 海底 = kaitei (both mean sea floor)
From someone who is learning Japanese (which has subtle influence from China), I can confirm to the subtlety different broken sheds *smh* 😂😂😂 これは面白かったですよ。
DEƦEƘ HλŁE TM Drop the これは; not only is Japanese a pro-drop language, if anything it should be それ, as これ would imply something you made rather than your addressee.
You can drop the これは if you want to, but it's fine to leave it. When the topic is either you, your conversation partner or something you just talked about, you definitely want to leave it out unless it is ambiguous, but as it was the first sentence, providing a little redundant context is fine and you can see many native speakers do the same. In fact, I'd be even more specific and say この動画 instead of これ, particularly after the English sentence, which kind of removed the video from context. It should *not* be それ, though. It doesn't matter who made it, whether you use これ, それ or あれ is normally determined by physical location of the item you are referring to. In the case of this video, you only have a virtual location - which is this web page. This web page is close to you (as you are on it), so これ is what you should use. If you said, for example その動画, I'm expecting that *this* video is talking about another video. *that* video. Works pretty much the same in English with this and that. (Though in that case, あの動画 would also work)
@@Yotanido is right. There's no need to drop これは here, since it's a comment that's essentially starting a topic (plus changing the subject after what was written in English). If someone were to drop it here, I would expect the whole sentence to be smushed down to just 面白い. Also +1 should definitely be これ and not それ. They're remarkably similar to "this" and "that" in English (with あれ being "that over there"). You wouldn't say "That video was interesting" in this context. Just adding my thoughts so random third parties don't get confused.
@@caro1ns it is such an obscure reference, you would have to have read some very old books, and even then remember it. I have asbergers, so my mind tends to collect off bits, of info like this.
I'm learning German and Chinese and they both have difficult elements. German is "easier" in that it's similar to English, except the grammar is way more complicated. Mandarin on the other has pretty simple grammar, but pronunciation, with the different tones, can really trip you up. I hear that once you get to "Intermediate" level Mandarin is when things really get complicated, but at the beginner level, it's surprisingly easy. Also, you don't really NEED to be able to read and write a language. It's much more valuable to be able to understand spoken Mandarin and speak it. So unless you really plan on living in China, you don't have to learn the characters.
IMHO, Chinese is a lot easier than German. You don't have verb conjugations, plurals, tenses, just words. Sure the words are different, but writing Chinese is great fun! And come on, 44,000 characters is a dictionary, nobody knows that many. You can do fine with only about 4 or 5 thousand.
I agree. I've started learning mandarin and I don't think it's that hard. It's actually extremely logical and there are rules. And yeah, you only need about 3500 to read a newspaper, less to function at most daily things.
Chinese grammar is easy but it is reaaally hard memorizing a single word. It's not phoenitc, thus you must remember far more details than a word in other languages
Absolutely! Just because Chinese is different doesn’t mean it’s hard. I was reading about the Georgian language which seems much more challenging considering the crazy grammar rules and insane syllable structure (something like CCCCCCV at its most complex. The Georgian example of გვფრცქვნი [gvprtskvni] comes to mind)
Crap. English comes from German. Its a Germanic Language and those rules are easy ones to remember. Tenses, pfffft, piece of cake! Trink, trank, trunk = Drink, drank, drunk
Grew up speaking Mandarin and Hokkien. Decided to learn German in my 20s and it was surprisingly easy.. buuuut I forgot most of it from lack of practical use. Spent a year in Taiwan immersed in Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien and was too overwhelmed that I just wound up speaking English lol
We spoke German at home all the time. When I joined the military and was stationed In Germany I thought WOW, I'll be right at home. NOPE, Germany's German and NOT South Texas German..and the words have about 29 extra letters with different meanings for each and every ADDED LETTER. LOL
The Google algorithm sent this to me me bc I am 3 months into my self- learning mandarin journey. Omg this this brilliant. I originally intended to learn only spoken mandarin which is hard enough but about 2 months ago I was convinced by a friend to attempt learning written Chinese too. Wo ai hanyu keshi WO BU AI HANZI !!!! It makes learning integral calculus feel like it was a nursery rhyme. 👍☺ Btw I'd I'd appreciate if someone could help me correct any mistakes I made, above
I am so impressed by all the language knowledge in the comments. Will start to learn my 4th language this year - Spanish :D hope my french will help me and I'll be able to order something in my holiday in october. Do you also decide to learn a language because it sounds really beautiful to you?
I learned Chinese living in California. Can't order stuff off a menu, mostly because I don't know the names of food, but I can have a pretty decent conversation with someone about common everyday stuff. Chinese is hard, sure, but the grammar is pretty simple.
I learned German for four years, then Mandarin for two, so this is just a gem of a video 😂 The waffle iron he's talking about? I know exactly which character he means, and that's so hilariously accurate 🤣🤣
My train of thoughts: -Clicked the video, (consciously?) reads only the "Learning German, learning Chinese." -Half way through the video remembers Firefly out of nowhere... -Thinking of why the hell am just thinking about Firefly? -... -After the video ends noticing the guy is called Washburn, just like the pilot from said show. -Being astonished about how amazing subconsciousness is, if I never consciously noticed his name, yet it sparked a related memory! -... -...Realizing I most likely remembered Firefly just because someone mentioned Chinese... And his name was probably only a coincidence...
The fun places our brains lead us. 😆 Now I'm thinking "Hm, I haven't watched Firefly or Serenity for a while. Nor have I read any of the comics ever. Maybe I should get on that." 🤔😁
I'm bilingual in English and Chinese (lived there for 12 years) and I can wholeheartedly say...he ain't wrong. That language is a mental trip sometimes.
The thing I struggle most with in Chinese/Japanese is stroke order. I started learning the letters not knowing stroke order was important and then half a year later, I came across photos of ancient scribbled-looking brush written letters and I was... overwhelmed to say the least. Time to relearn a couple hundred characters lol
@@voidcastfam Nope it's Mandarin. They don't speak Cantonese here. There is a dialect of Mandarin that they call Taiwanese but only the elderly speak it. Everyone else speaks Mandarin. (Granted it uses the traditional characters and not simplified. Taiwan Mandarin uses a few different sounds too but same language overall.)
TV series are the way to go. I write replacement dialogues for foreign materials and Mandarin is pretty easy to pick up. You know why? They don't conjugate! They don't have tenses!
OMG, ACTUAL TEARS WERE ROLLING DOWN MY CHEEKS BY THE END!!!!! Side note: I wish I could learn either mandarin or cantonese, but I have no ear for the subtle differences in their languages. Damn shame.
I think he makes a good point. Chinese is a tonal language. That's hard enough in general, but for someone who's got a bad ear for tones, or who (like me) can't hit the notes of a "do re mi..." to save his life, Chinese (particularly Cantonese) might be nearly impossible to learn as an adult. Japanese, by contrast, is just as difficult a language for Westerners in general but because it's not a tonal language, being tone-deaf isn't a barrier to entry.
Let it be known that I'm possibly the wisest idiot. As somebody that studies Mandy, Jap, French, es staban and maybe more (I'm so heckin smart, watch me self felatio) The oral takes awhile to adapt to. The Hardest language I've ever had the chance to touch? Russian made me feel as if i was having a perpetual stroke, whilst the Cyrillic alphabet made me want to break my own fingers.
I took two years of Mandarin in college and yeah. That description is on point. (My mom's side is German though and weirdly I struggle with that language.)
I studied German before my honeymoon for about four months so that when I went there I could speak the language done and they knew I was from America like a block away they could tell I don’t know but they are fluent in like Dutch German and English and probably other languages so there are far superior either way. I’m a learn languages
I'm trying to learn German due to my boyfriend being from there and we are planning on going there soon so his family can meet our son. According to him I sound very angry when I try to speak German 😂
Apparently, Belgian-accented French is what you get when your first teacher is Senegalese, your second teacher is from Paris, and your third teacher is Vietnamese. I’ve had two people ask me if I’m Belgian. Nope . . . I just attended a community college.
atikah rostam If I may help... One cannot use a chopstick. You need ... 2 of them to hold food. True story. A chopstick allows you to stir your tea. That is all. TTFN.
LOL. Chinese been in Germany for 3 years still struggle a lot speaking german. But honestly, you don't need 44,000 in speaking Chinese, 3000 characters are enough to read a newspaper.
@#1 Fan For Korean I definitely recommend "Talk to me in Korean" both the books and the site are really helpful. My aunt is Japanese so I learned a little bit growing up but classes really helped me add a base to all the vocab I knew.
I am Chinese and I approve of this message.
Li Liu
I am not Chinese but I can say that the Chinese language itself is much easier than German. And I am German.
Li Liu I thought Chinese people spoke mandarin
Most do, but there are different languages in china, like cantonese, Wu, Min, Jin...depending on the region. Cantonese is a lot harder than mandarin. All the old literature is based on it. Mostly spoken in Hongkong and Macau.
onpsxmember
But the old literature is written in Middle and Old Chinese?
I messed up, I meant cantonese was the only dialect that was also put into writing to preserve the dialect in it's form. There was detailed literature of the dialect itself. Most old literature is written in old literature before the modern (high) chinese replaced it.
Omg...I lost it at "How spicy is your broken tv?" XD XD XD
I am German. I cried laughing. Sats fanni. (That's funny) 😂😂😂
How you proved you're German to Germans:
I am German.
How you proved you're German to everyone else:
*explained the punchline*
@@octopus8420 ja.
Hahahahaha
It’s cool that I read it but heard it in perfect German.
*Säts fanni
Here is the visual aid:
The broken step ladder next to the guys with the golf club with the two seagulls on the park bench with the roof shed drawing - my foot hurts - 我脚疼
Oh wait, there is a chimney on the shed - your foot hurts - 你脚疼
Wait, there's smoke coming out of the chimney - we got a new pope - 我们有一位新的教皇
。。。啥意思啊看不太懂
lmao best comment ;)
Lol
That was really impressive. Good reconstruction. If you didn't do that, I would have thought he's just making stuff up. How on earth does he see a broken step ladder in the Chinese word for 'me'? Well, I guess I can sort of see it. It takes a lot of thinking. The guys with the golf club... Man, that's some wild imagination. The two seagulls on the park bench with the roof shed... Is he like some expert at abstract art or something? How on earth does he do that?
@president camacho Oh, you have no idea. It's far deeper than anything from the West. If you get into the meaning, it'll revolutionise the way you look at the world.
"Oh wait! There's smoke coming out the chimney...we got a new Pope!" OMG! That was priceless!
Wow, an american comedian who mocks the german pronunciation on point instead of stupidly screaming acround and says that's how germans speak - that's actually funny! :-D
He didn't mock anything except his own inability to learn and speak German. He used a comedic German accent, but he wasn't mocking Germans or Germany.
@@KomamuraSajin M.T. was saying that he was not acting like most comedians who usually just try to yell loudly in German to make German language jokes. It was a positive compliment on his routine.
Yeah I am so impressed. :D It really sounds like real germans talking english. Because it isn't exaggerated. Nearly every 40+ speaks this way
Most Americans have literally only heard Hitler, thats why
Vee do not haff such Goodluck vit ze Interdentalfricatiffs, ya?
Chinese vs European languages is like Windows vs iOS: they are two different systems
Windows vs macOS, or Android vs iOS would be a better comparison. While all four are operating systems, a mobile operating system has a different use case and isn't directly comparable to a desktop OS, even if they have many similarities.
I spent some time in China after studying several languages as a history student. Left knowing three words after two months. My ear just can’t pick up the nuance. It was extremely distressing!
The most accurate description of (attempted) bi-lingualism ever!
Tried learning Mandarin to speak with a family of exchange students.
You'll never forget the first time a 3-year-old tells you (with a look of total disgust), "You're doing it wrong!"
😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂
Dude is absolutely right you can say the same thing for different ways different inflections and it means completely different things heaven forbid you have a southern draw
How can you learn Chinese when you can't even speak proper English?
Rowynne Crowley proper English is England none of us speak proper English unless you're in England
Indeed, intonation would change the meaning of a Chinese word. An example would be:I asked him 我问他 . Getting the intonation wrong will mean I kissed him 我吻他
@@charleslittle458 sounds like having a southern drawl might be a bit of a draw back to learning Chinese.
@@xunqianbaidu6917 Yeah, I really don't like how much people from my homeland like rush people. I feel like it makes everything more accident prone. I think that it's highly unideal.
Wow as a German I must say his german accent is scaringly spot on
Me: I've lived in China for five years!
Monolingual person: You should be fluent by now.
Oh my gosh! I lived in Taiwan for several years, and at one point met a random guy on a train who asked me in his halting English, "but if you have already been here for 4 years, why is your Chinese so poor?" I had to keep up a savagely polite grin until I could finally get off at my stop. Well, buddy, maybe because I'm working here full time, not studying full time. Maybe my Chinese is more excusable considering that I'm doing it as I can informally on the side of my other responsibilities, and never studied it formally. So you've actually been assigned with teachers to learn English since grade school through college right? So wHy IsNt UR eNGliSh BetTeR? HUH? Ohhhhh, you mean learning launguages is actually difficult and takes a lot of work? Well WHO COULD HAVE GUSSED THAT!?! .... As you might have subtly noticed, I'm still somewhat salty over this encounter, lol. For real though, studying Chinese can be super fun.
My German instructor used to tell the class: "German isn't hard. Little children speak German!"
"we've got a new pope" got me dying 😂
"How spicy is your broken television?" 😂😂😂😂😂😂💀💀💀💀 I am dead!!!!
I'm learning Chinese rn and It's pretty cool. I would encourage anyone to learn it👍
I live in Germany. Struggling to get fluent. Every time that I use this video to illustrate what expat life is like I re-watch it. Never gets old.
Top shelf comedy - great weaving from one story to another. Barely time to stop laughing.
Well, don't mean to make your head explode, but I learned Mandarin while living in Germany. Probably to a third-grade level, but I can order hot and sour soup and than them for it.
marcdb99 ha ha awesome 👏🏽 comment.
Aww dang, I can only order soup, no way to specify which kind.
I took a Mandarin class while living in Germany, too. :D
@Johnston Steiner 🤣🤣🤣
@@erikaesselbach6685 ...hot and sour soup is: swan la tong. Maybe the middle syllable is wrong.
I love this man!!! He is so wonderfully smart & funny, in a refreshing way. More please! He ought to be famous & the world hear from him all over the place please!
i'm half chinese and half german. this guy is hilarious. Spot on about both, lol.
At first, Mandarin Chinese can be very difficult due to 5 distinct tones, unique pronunciations, and thousands of characters which most Europeans/Americans are unfamiliar with.
After a little bit of in-depth study, Mandarin Chinese can seem fairly easy due to a lack of verb tenses, articles, or genders of pronouns in the spoken language.
After a more in-depth study, Mandarin Chinese will freak you out. There are hundreds, if not thousands of 成语 and 歇后语 with literal meanings that make no sense, such as “杯弓蛇影” which literally means “Cup bow snake shade”. Moreover, there are tons of characters with multiple meanings and make perfect sense when put together repeatedly. Like “单车差点滑倒了,我一把把把把住了” and “我有一个小本本本来很干净”. However, one of the most freaking parts of Chinese is that you can frequently mix one character for another. Just imagine having to deal with a weirder version of “There, they're and their” on a daily basis, such as differentiating between “瞭,撩,燎,僚,嘹”. OR you could also have a character with multiple sounds, each carrying a different meaning. “差” has four pronunciations, which means "mistake", "of low quality", "errand", or used exclusively in the word “参差” to denote "of different length", respectively.
Mandarin Chinese is NOT a very easy language to learn
Although I've heard that the Chinese ideogram for "trouble" is "two women under one roof".
Yup
Your German accent is on point! :D I almost lost my German accent which is great but a few of my friends still have a pretty strong one. I am studying Chinese though at the moment and it sucks... I already know about 20 different translations for the word ma for example :D way to confusing... and if my "job interview" (to work as an English assistant teacher) in a week fails I won't even get to use all that weird stuff I learned :D
How did the interview go?
English is the same to Chinese! Why would they overload a word with so many meanings?
There was a Young Indiana Jones joke exactly about "ma".
OMG I feel your pain. 😂 ma=mom, wipe, linen, size, grasshopper, horse, swear, toad, etc.
There is only one German accent?🤔
Never seen him before & this is bloody hilarious
That last joke works on so many levels, props!
As a native German speaker, this was hilarious! I'm learning Hungarian right now, so I feel you.
I'm happy I grew up with a more difficult language. Makes it easier to learn other languages, because I'm familiar with many grammatical concepts, though with by far not enough, it seems.
Dragon Curve Enthusiast
Hovercrafts and eels seem to be very popular in Hungary.
Oh yes, they are always full of them!!
You mention the benefits of growing up with a difficult language, but you've decided to start learning Hungarian?! There go your benefits out the window :D
@@pteppig Wait what? 😂
Awesome that you (were) learning Hungarian! Who'd have thunk in this day, age and crazy climate...
Kudos to you. :)
I can always watch this guy again after 3-4 months. His delivery is so good.
Yeah. I don't know how accurate it was, but Sheldon, on _The Big Bang Theory_ set out, in one episode, to study Mandarin, and he screwed up constantly, but every sentence he screwed up was _grammatically_ correct. He would walk past a couple Chinese people sitting at a table, give them a nod, say something in Mandarin and the subtitle would say, "Long live concrete."
Of course, I figured, "Well, if you _apply_ it right, _sure."_
No, Mandarin is totally not like that. There are plenty of ways to say something totally grammatically incorrect.
@@ManicEightBall I think you misunderstood his point.
He was not suggesting that you couldn't make grammatical mistakes in Chinese. Only that Sheldon got the grammar down pat--but could only speak nonsense because his vocabulary was deficient.
True story:
A guy was learning Spanish from a Spanish-speaking friend. He thought he was starting to get the hang of it, and he asked his friend, "Can I say ........."?
His friend said, "Yes. Yes, you can say that."
"OK, good. And can I say ........."? His friend responded, "Yes. You can say that."
It seemed too good to be true. He tried one more sentence: "Can I say ........."? Again, the friend replied, "Yes. You can say that too."
The guy thought for a moment then, to confirm that he had it right, he asked, "And what does it mean?"
His helpful friend replied, "Oh, it doesn't mean anything. But you can say it."
@@TH-camallowedmynametobestolen That completely changes the meaning of the phrase: "Can I say...?"
That reminds me of the time I tried to be smart and tell an Italian guy that I can create a perfectly grammatically correct sentence that makes no sense. And I said: "La bambina pioggia." He looked at me really hard, shook his head, and said: "Nope, that doesn't work, you f'd up." I think he kinda missed my point, but nevermind. Later, he told me that you can say: "La bambina di pioggiare", as in, a girl who brings rain with her. But he says you can't say: "La bambina pioggia." (The girl rained.)
But seriously, it met every single specification I gave him: it was grammatically correct: subject and a transitive verb. It just made no sense, but deliberately so.
I guess it might have worked on a Spanish speaker instead. They're probably more chill.
I seem to remember part of the joke being that Sheldon, try as he might, only manages to confidently butcher the Mandarin language throughout the episode as he is trying, and miserably failing, to hone this skill.
However, there is a point in the episode where he gets startled while listening on his headphones by the mailboxes in his apartment building. He whippes off his headphones and makes an exclamation in Mandarin, and I've heard it's the only accurate thing he says in the entire episode.
"We've got a new pope" - hilarious! xD
I'm German and learning Chinese and my Chinese is like this:
"I will have ze nudels ooh ja."
I'm happy that I don't share his problems in learning languages, I envy Mr. Washburn for his humour and impeccable timing though. He truly is a great comedian.
As someone who speaks Chinese literally I feel like people who don't speak it know this is funny but they dont know exactly how funny
I'm jealous! I speak Chinese too, but only figuratively :/
Going to be honest, I didn’t think he said “sheds” the first time and thought to myself, “I never had one like that! What have you been eating?”
I love languages and this guy is brilliant!
Immersed in people talking to you in German accents LOL. English as a first language is a big disadvantage when you're trying to learn another language abroad.
How so?
English is hard to learn too
@@Kuralai95 cuz everyone else will just speak to you in English
The Menagerie oh ok make sense. Though I’d say not “English as the first language” but just as anyone can who speaks english lol
@@Kuralai95 When I visited the Netherlands for a month, after a little while I had basically forgotten I was in a country with a foreign language. Even the signs and the writing you encountered often gave you enough clues through similar sounding words and context for you to get around. Practically everyone spoke English in urban areas and bigger cities. I cant speak on the rural parts, as I never visited those parts.
I've actually met a german person and they surprisingly really talk like that
This isn't a cliché, it is real. I can confirm this, because I am from Germany.
What was so hard about learning German? That being said, I enjoyed this one immensely. Es war hervorragend!
how is your dutch english or any other language? maybe in part thats why
If it's white smoke coming from the chimney "we've got a new pope", if it's black smoke coming from the chimney it's "santa claus had an accident"
That bit at the end is hilarious. I'm learning Chinese and that's how my American mind remembers the sheds, by making a an American pictorial reference. It's not easy lol.
I'm doing the same thing. And the more
Idiotic or obscene the reference the better it works. A YT laoshi gei wo the suggestion. Keep practicing Bu fangqi -dont quit- in zhongwen
He speaks the truth!
A friend used to go Frankfurt on business and figured he'd brush up on the German he learned in college. Once he got there he found out everybody was fluent in English and the only German practice he got was in taxis because the drivers are mostly Turkish and haven't learned English.
Japanese also uses Chinese characters, but made it a lot easier by outsourcing many of the grammatical functions into a separate alphabet/syllabary. At the cheap price of learning another 90 characters!
Oh but in return almost all the Chinese characters now have multiple pronounciations. 海の底 = umi no soko, 海底 = kaitei (both mean sea floor)
From someone who is learning Japanese (which has subtle influence from China), I can confirm to the subtlety different broken sheds *smh* 😂😂😂
これは面白かったですよ。
DEƦEƘ HλŁE TM Drop the これは; not only is Japanese a pro-drop language, if anything it should be それ, as これ would imply something you made rather than your addressee.
You can drop the これは if you want to, but it's fine to leave it. When the topic is either you, your conversation partner or something you just talked about, you definitely want to leave it out unless it is ambiguous, but as it was the first sentence, providing a little redundant context is fine and you can see many native speakers do the same.
In fact, I'd be even more specific and say この動画 instead of これ, particularly after the English sentence, which kind of removed the video from context.
It should *not* be それ, though. It doesn't matter who made it, whether you use これ, それ or あれ is normally determined by physical location of the item you are referring to. In the case of this video, you only have a virtual location - which is this web page. This web page is close to you (as you are on it), so これ is what you should use.
If you said, for example その動画, I'm expecting that *this* video is talking about another video. *that* video. Works pretty much the same in English with this and that.
(Though in that case, あの動画 would also work)
This is adding to the posts above ^^ if you drop the これは it sounds more natural and genuine.
@@Yotanido is right. There's no need to drop これは here, since it's a comment that's essentially starting a topic (plus changing the subject after what was written in English). If someone were to drop it here, I would expect the whole sentence to be smushed down to just 面白い.
Also +1 should definitely be これ and not それ. They're remarkably similar to "this" and "that" in English (with あれ being "that over there"). You wouldn't say "That video was interesting" in this context.
Just adding my thoughts so random third parties don't get confused.
I wonder how many got the smoke coming out the chimney reference
Yeah it took me a minute and I'm Catholic!
@@caro1ns it is such an obscure reference, you would have to have read some very old books, and even then remember it. I have asbergers, so my mind tends to collect off bits, of info like this.
@@jefferynordgulen4436 Actually they still do it, I understand.
Here in Europe it's pretty common knowledge. On the other hand, I wonder how many Europeans got the "zis is because I am from Utah" reference.
@@caro1ns I got it, and I'm NOT Catholic...
I can tell he really has studied, the smoking chimney he mentions is 的, what we would use as a possessive apostrophe.
Why 的 is a smoking chimney?
It's describing it as an image I think
Sure it's de in pinyin just like in Spanish
I am not bilingual but i can sound bilingual. Brilliant idea for a Chinese who wants to learn English
The best part is that these are actually accurate.
I'm learning German and Chinese and they both have difficult elements. German is "easier" in that it's similar to English, except the grammar is way more complicated. Mandarin on the other has pretty simple grammar, but pronunciation, with the different tones, can really trip you up. I hear that once you get to "Intermediate" level Mandarin is when things really get complicated, but at the beginner level, it's surprisingly easy. Also, you don't really NEED to be able to read and write a language. It's much more valuable to be able to understand spoken Mandarin and speak it. So unless you really plan on living in China, you don't have to learn the characters.
IMHO, Chinese is a lot easier than German. You don't have verb conjugations, plurals, tenses, just words. Sure the words are different, but writing Chinese is great fun! And come on, 44,000 characters is a dictionary, nobody knows that many. You can do fine with only about 4 or 5 thousand.
I agree. I've started learning mandarin and I don't think it's that hard. It's actually extremely logical and there are rules. And yeah, you only need about 3500 to read a newspaper, less to function at most daily things.
This man chineses.
Chinese grammar is easy but it is reaaally hard memorizing a single word. It's not phoenitc, thus you must remember far more details than a word in other languages
Absolutely! Just because Chinese is different doesn’t mean it’s hard. I was reading about the Georgian language which seems much more challenging considering the crazy grammar rules and insane syllable structure (something like CCCCCCV at its most complex. The Georgian example of გვფრცქვნი [gvprtskvni] comes to mind)
Crap. English comes from German. Its a Germanic Language and those rules are easy ones to remember. Tenses, pfffft, piece of cake! Trink, trank, trunk = Drink, drank, drunk
Grew up speaking Mandarin and Hokkien. Decided to learn German in my 20s and it was surprisingly easy.. buuuut I forgot most of it from lack of practical use. Spent a year in Taiwan immersed in Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien and was too overwhelmed that I just wound up speaking English lol
Hilarious, even more so cause everything he joked about is so true, lol
We spoke German at home all the time. When I joined the military and was stationed In Germany I thought WOW, I'll be right at home. NOPE, Germany's German and NOT South Texas German..and the words have about 29 extra letters with different meanings for each and every ADDED LETTER. LOL
He sounds like Klauss from American Dad
that Pope joke is brilliant.
Christoph Waltz.... is that you? 😂
The Google algorithm sent this to me me bc I am 3 months into my self- learning mandarin journey. Omg this this brilliant. I originally intended to learn only spoken mandarin which is hard enough but about 2 months ago I was convinced by a friend to attempt learning written Chinese too. Wo ai hanyu keshi WO BU AI HANZI !!!! It makes learning integral calculus feel like it was a nursery rhyme. 👍☺
Btw I'd I'd appreciate if someone could help me correct any mistakes I made, above
I am so impressed by all the language knowledge in the comments. Will start to learn my 4th language this year - Spanish :D hope my french will help me and I'll be able to order something in my holiday in october.
Do you also decide to learn a language because it sounds really beautiful to you?
I'm German, lived in China for half a year and I think Chinese is actually easier to learn than German
Tiny Rick bet you’re fun at parties hahah
@@phoenix732 what do you expect? He's German. Lol
I learned Chinese living in California. Can't order stuff off a menu, mostly because I don't know the names of food, but I can have a pretty decent conversation with someone about common everyday stuff. Chinese is hard, sure, but the grammar is pretty simple.
I tried to learn Chinese characters while studying Japanese, and I endorse this message.
This guy is really special
Bengt Washburn should be famous long time.
As someone learning Mandarin, he speaks the truth
This guy is funny!!
I learned German for four years, then Mandarin for two, so this is just a gem of a video 😂 The waffle iron he's talking about? I know exactly which character he means, and that's so hilariously accurate 🤣🤣
are we all ignoring the troll hugging a hottie?
My train of thoughts:
-Clicked the video, (consciously?) reads only the "Learning German, learning Chinese."
-Half way through the video remembers Firefly out of nowhere...
-Thinking of why the hell am just thinking about Firefly?
-...
-After the video ends noticing the guy is called Washburn, just like the pilot from said show.
-Being astonished about how amazing subconsciousness is, if I never consciously noticed his name, yet it sparked a related memory!
-...
-...Realizing I most likely remembered Firefly just because someone mentioned Chinese... And his name was probably only a coincidence...
The fun places our brains lead us. 😆
Now I'm thinking "Hm, I haven't watched Firefly or Serenity for a while. Nor have I read any of the comics ever. Maybe I should get on that." 🤔😁
The most common 6000 characters will do. And even of those the last 2000 are full of names of plants and extinct animals
I’m Chinese and 5 years into learning German 😂
And there are similar sounds. Its a tonal language. But im with you on the writing part😂
Tried watching this while eating breakfast. I think a piece of bagel just came out of my nose.
Omfg! His Chinese language description!!!😝
I'm bilingual in English and Chinese (lived there for 12 years) and I can wholeheartedly say...he ain't wrong. That language is a mental trip sometimes.
The thing I struggle most with in Chinese/Japanese is stroke order. I started learning the letters not knowing stroke order was important and then half a year later, I came across photos of ancient scribbled-looking brush written letters and I was... overwhelmed to say the least. Time to relearn a couple hundred characters lol
I live in Taiwan and am learning Chinese. It's rough I assure you!
In Taiwan? It is certainly a type of Chinese.
A slang Maybe? I'm pretty sure it ain't Mandarin but Cantonese.
@@voidcastfam Nope it's Mandarin. They don't speak Cantonese here. There is a dialect of Mandarin that they call Taiwanese but only the elderly speak it. Everyone else speaks Mandarin. (Granted it uses the traditional characters and not simplified. Taiwan Mandarin uses a few different sounds too but same language overall.)
@@voidcastfam Funny how foreigners can not tell which region speaks which. Ha ha............
TV series are the way to go. I write replacement dialogues for foreign materials and Mandarin is pretty easy to pick up. You know why? They don't conjugate! They don't have tenses!
Millions of children learn it, so it can’t be hard!
Literally me with the Dutch language living in Amsterdam 🤣🤣🤣
Good stuff!
OMG, ACTUAL TEARS WERE ROLLING DOWN MY CHEEKS BY THE END!!!!!
Side note: I wish I could learn either mandarin or cantonese, but I have no ear for the subtle differences in their languages. Damn shame.
Maybe if you learned one, you'll be able to pick up the differences lol
I think he makes a good point. Chinese is a tonal language. That's hard enough in general, but for someone who's got a bad ear for tones, or who (like me) can't hit the notes of a "do re mi..." to save his life, Chinese (particularly Cantonese) might be nearly impossible to learn as an adult. Japanese, by contrast, is just as difficult a language for Westerners in general but because it's not a tonal language, being tone-deaf isn't a barrier to entry.
Let it be known that I'm possibly the wisest idiot.
As somebody that studies Mandy, Jap, French, es staban and maybe more
(I'm so heckin smart, watch me self felatio)
The oral takes awhile to adapt to.
The Hardest language I've ever had the chance to touch?
Russian made me feel as if i was having a perpetual stroke, whilst the Cyrillic alphabet made me want to break my own fingers.
很遗憾,你只能谷歌翻译这句话了。
I am a mainland Chinese who speaks Mandarin, and I feel Cantonese is a completely new language.
I took two years of Mandarin in college and yeah. That description is on point. (My mom's side is German though and weirdly I struggle with that language.)
I took a semester of Japanese and when we introduced Kanji I was like "okay yeah, I know my limits"
I studied German before my honeymoon for about four months so that when I went there I could speak the language done and they knew I was from America like a block away they could tell I don’t know but they are fluent in like Dutch German and English and probably other languages so there are far superior either way. I’m a learn languages
Brilliant!The people not laughing are....well you know.
I'm trying to learn German due to my boyfriend being from there and we are planning on going there soon so his family can meet our son. According to him I sound very angry when I try to speak German 😂
This should inspire anyone that they could be a standup comic. My gtandmother could literally write these same jokes
Basically, Bob Ross was writing in Chinese, and no one knew it.
Its crazy..because mandarin does have words that sound like the english version of it
He's right about learning Chinese
Very good
Actually learning Chinese isn’t too hard. It’s just it’s hard for me to see all the stokes for the characters because I’m nearly blind.
Too smart
We've hot a new Pope... LMAOROTF
Hahaha I wasn't expecting the part of learning the chinese symbols made me spit my drink out all over the place.
Apparently, Belgian-accented French is what you get when your first teacher is Senegalese, your second teacher is from Paris, and your third teacher is Vietnamese.
I’ve had two people ask me if I’m Belgian. Nope . . . I just attended a community college.
this german accent is on point 😂
I'm German and one of my friends learned Chinese xD need to show this to her.
downward dog flew over some heads
Audiance hears foreign word in punchline: everybody laughs.
Half doesn't even have a clue what wunderbar means...
John malkovich with hair
Studied in a chinese school for 11 years and I can only speak the very basic.. I don't even know how to use a chopstick 😂
atikah rostam If I may help... One cannot use a chopstick. You need ... 2 of them to hold food. True story. A chopstick allows you to stir your tea. That is all. TTFN.
It’s ok, 4500 alphabets will be sufficient ;)
LOL. Chinese been in Germany for 3 years still struggle a lot speaking german. But honestly, you don't need 44,000 in speaking Chinese, 3000 characters are enough to read a newspaper.
My great grandfather came over from Germany, I can’t speak barely any of the language but I speak Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. 🙃
#1 Fan My aunt is Japanese so I started with that and once you learn one it’s a lot easier to learn the others. It just takes practice and patience.
@#1 Fan For Korean I definitely recommend "Talk to me in Korean" both the books and the site are really helpful. My aunt is Japanese so I learned a little bit growing up but classes really helped me add a base to all the vocab I knew.