Can Chinese Write Their Own Language? | ASIAN BOSS

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  • čas přidán 18. 07. 2018
  • If you consider yourself a true fan of Asian Boss, become a member of our community to join the cause: asianboss.io
    We hit the streets of Shanghai, China to find out if they can write Chinese. The opinions expressed in this video are those of individual interviewees alone and do not reflect the views of ASIAN BOSS or the general Chinese population.
    Special thanks to our Shanghai reporter, Jiujiu.
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Komentáře • 9K

  • @maccamacca7787
    @maccamacca7787 Před 4 lety +5270

    Chinese: * 80,00 characters *
    English: *laughs in 26 letters *

    • @user-yt8ju9ml7u
      @user-yt8ju9ml7u Před 3 lety +70

      😂

    • @maccamacca7787
      @maccamacca7787 Před 3 lety +70

      pxstel_boba• You win this time 😂

    • @lookingfordreams3093
      @lookingfordreams3093 Před 3 lety +156

      But English has more words than Chinese characters.

    • @TheGuyegood
      @TheGuyegood Před 3 lety +200

      That's not comparable. in this case, computer wins, becoz there are only two basic letters, 0 and 1.
      Out of those 80000 char, 3000 are sufficient for day-to-day needs. Each chinese character has a basic meaning, just like Latin roots while each individual letter does not have a basic meaning.

    • @leewang2902
      @leewang2902 Před 3 lety +71

      LookingForDreams Chinese also has words which are often formed by two to four Chinese characters so other than characters you need to memorize lots of Chinese words as well while learning the language.

  • @smithsiri9680
    @smithsiri9680 Před 4 lety +7333

    Whenyou realize that drawing a thumb is probly easier than writing the word thumb in chinese...

  • @bananaetmandarine
    @bananaetmandarine Před 3 lety +4254

    Me teaching myself Chinese using CZcams 👁️👄👁️
    What a motivational video full of positive vibes

    • @northwest783
      @northwest783 Před 3 lety +148

      when you know the native speaker fk up on writing some of the characters lol

    • @ektasingh7147
      @ektasingh7147 Před 3 lety +33

      RIP😂😂

    • @dzzhang2107
      @dzzhang2107 Před 3 lety +75

      Yeah. But don't be misleaded. Bad news is you still need to write those characters for hundreds of times if you want to learn Chinese well. Because we've all done that from primary school.

    • @user-qd4gf8hg8f
      @user-qd4gf8hg8f Před 3 lety +42

      too much typing on PC and phones that nobody actually writes nowaday

    • @CheckPointExE
      @CheckPointExE Před 3 lety +19

      @Wong Vanessa bless you i am from Hong Kong also and I have Chinese writing test tomorrow 😀

  • @sunshinechen4761
    @sunshinechen4761 Před 3 lety +672

    if you ask any student in middle or high school, they could easily ace the test since they’re writing every day. When you graduate and stop handwriting essays and start typing, you quickly forget everything.

    • @alexlin8566
      @alexlin8566 Před 2 lety +22

      That's right.And people guaduated can still recognize and type out most of the common characters though they can't write it.

    • @shashankgupta7460
      @shashankgupta7460 Před 2 lety +11

      PhD mathematicians will also struggle in even telling what 8×7 is.
      Though, not saying that they are useless; for a mathematician they only need to know what every terms in mathematics mean and rest of the work is the job of a calculator or a simple programme.

    • @lpi3
      @lpi3 Před 2 lety +1

      @@shashankgupta7460 56?

    • @shashankgupta7460
      @shashankgupta7460 Před 2 lety +1

      @@lpi3 I said they will struggle. I didn't say that they won't be able to give the answer. And how do I know that you didn't use calculator 😂

    • @lpi3
      @lpi3 Před 2 lety +6

      @@shashankgupta7460 you underestimate phd in math

  • @OMEGAZTECK
    @OMEGAZTECK Před 5 lety +8342

    * creators of Chinese language : how many characters should Chinese have ?
    *Chinese language: yes

    • @howtogitgud
      @howtogitgud Před 5 lety +137

      Actually there endless since there is simplified and traditional. Joke aside

    • @howtogitgud
      @howtogitgud Před 5 lety +142

      @Jason Lee idk , Chinese is creative. They can construct a word with other originally Chinese character and make new meaning of it.

    • @sayeemfaraaz2309
      @sayeemfaraaz2309 Před 5 lety +64

      Creator's friend: how many characters?
      Creator: all of em

    • @sarielreigns777
      @sarielreigns777 Před 5 lety +6

      92,000 characters

    • @karhoong92
      @karhoong92 Před 4 lety +23

      @Jason Lee Well, 1 more advantage that can be offer by Chinese characters is to combine a few words into a single character, all I'd say is Chinese characters has better practical expandability compare with alphabet base characters, but same thing will be happening on Chinese characters if you squeeze too many features into a single character and make it unreadable and not understandable

  • @mayu277
    @mayu277 Před 5 lety +12194

    That one guy that says "Sometimes I wonder, why I even went to school" is a big mood.
    EDIT: how would I know the translation is wrong? I don't speak Chinese 😂

  • @jennifermckeithen1498
    @jennifermckeithen1498 Před 3 lety +800

    Native English speakers struggle with English. A good example: "your" and "you're."

  • @ronald3639
    @ronald3639 Před 3 lety +786

    Asian Mom: Such a disgrace, cant even memorize 9000 words.

    • @legoyodaiam2756
      @legoyodaiam2756 Před 3 lety +28

      You get disowned

    • @veryconfused9768
      @veryconfused9768 Před 3 lety +13

      No our mom's are not like that.

    • @ronald3639
      @ronald3639 Před 3 lety +31

      @@veryconfused9768 i am asian and i know that

    • @taten5822
      @taten5822 Před 2 lety +5

      @@ronald3639 same

    • @spqr950
      @spqr950 Před 2 lety +11

      we have a joke: having an english vacabulary of 3000 at age of 5 is enough in the UK, but not enough at Beijing

  • @magmavolt5732
    @magmavolt5732 Před 4 lety +1707

    LANGUAGE: Chinese
    DIFFICULTY LEVEL :Chinese

  • @sarielreigns777
    @sarielreigns777 Před 5 lety +8155

    Chinese Language has 92,000 characters.
    14,000 characters are taught in 10 years of schooling.
    Only around 3,000 characters are needed in daily life conversation or to read a newspaper.

    • @mijou9564
      @mijou9564 Před 5 lety +618

      I'm Japanese and I think I only know 15,000-18,000 characters
      By this point,I should learn it all
      I was raised knowing 3 languages tho.
      And I'll never know all of those characters
      Imma dumbass and lazy as hell

    • @dot6441
      @dot6441 Před 5 lety +424

      why do they have to make it so complicated lol

    • @sarielreigns777
      @sarielreigns777 Před 5 lety +144

      @@mijou9564 I'm Indian curently living in Russia with Russian Citizenship. I learnt this information about Chinese language through reading articles, books and My Chinese Classmates in My University.
      PS: Yes I am native born Indian

    • @yyzhg6894
      @yyzhg6894 Před 5 lety +36

      @@dot6441 to make it more efficient

    • @ryuhayabusa6651
      @ryuhayabusa6651 Před 5 lety +2

      Lol

  • @iamsohea
    @iamsohea Před 3 lety +411

    The situation is even worse for us who write traditional Chinese. I’m in my 30’s. I didn’t really realise the issue until I wanted to send a postcard to my friend while traveling. I suddenly found myself struggling a bit. From then on, I started to write Chinese for 15 mins every day (e.g. copy from a newspaper article) and my muscle memory has returned. It has also become some sort of therapy for me when I can sit down quietly and focus on doing one thing only. 多寫多練習,別無他法!

    • @ruiguo0824
      @ruiguo0824 Před 3 lety +46

      I salute you. After almost 20 years living in an English-speaking country, I struggle to even write a full paragraph in Chinese now...and to think I used to write for the school newspaper and have won prizes in writing competitions in my younger days...

    • @phatphan1403
      @phatphan1403 Před 2 lety +1

      Yes, that is a very good piece of advice!

    • @user-bj2xv7tf9i
      @user-bj2xv7tf9i Před 2 lety +3

      所以简体字是很有必要的~~

    • @user-ep5il4pr6t
      @user-ep5il4pr6t Před 2 lety +3

      可想而知,在當年文盲率高達90%時,中國人學習中文有多麼艱難,直到後來,簡體中文,拼音,新華字典的出現讓這個現象得到了很好的改善

    • @jumpvelocity3953
      @jumpvelocity3953 Před rokem

      @@user-bj2xv7tf9i但是繁体字更好看

  • @nlyrics156
    @nlyrics156 Před 3 lety +612

    "the test won't be that difficult"
    The test: write an essay using traditional Chinese in about 2000 words

    • @landro3552
      @landro3552 Před 3 lety +53

      In which you describe how the law of gravity works in the milky way

    • @enriqueenriqueziii5564
      @enriqueenriqueziii5564 Před 3 lety +15

      I did that assignment in my Chinese class and I just copied it off from Google translate. And the professor still gave me an A.

    • @leechengsiang
      @leechengsiang Před 3 lety +7

      让我写200字都难

    • @ckc985
      @ckc985 Před 3 lety +2

      @@enriqueenriqueziii5564 hahahah u smart

    • @coldfrenchfry5181
      @coldfrenchfry5181 Před 3 lety +3

      @Ziqi Zhu I'm actually proud I knew how to read the entire sentence.

  • @Jake5537t
    @Jake5537t Před 3 lety +5756

    You know a language is hard when even native speakers struggle with it 😂

    • @Jake5537t
      @Jake5537t Před 3 lety +22

      Ghool
      Ikr 😨

    • @agdam0004
      @agdam0004 Před 3 lety +63

      Polish people say heeey 🤷

    • @isag.s.174
      @isag.s.174 Před 3 lety +108

      It's not practical at all, the youngests type so much instead of writing that they forget how to write it. Is it possible that they start using pinyin at some point?

    • @liuziying108
      @liuziying108 Před 3 lety +224

      @@isag.s.174 Not really possible that they only use PinYin. A lot of words with the same sound have different character and with different meaning. If switch to only pinyin it would be chaos

    • @makhloufeleonore2717
      @makhloufeleonore2717 Před 3 lety +23

      @@liuziying108 exactly

  • @Gold139
    @Gold139 Před 5 lety +5355

    Girl: I know all of the characters
    Random reporter: Pls write down "thumb"
    Girl: Eh?
    LUL

    • @goosgoos4571
      @goosgoos4571 Před 5 lety +108

      you have big guts to make fun of her. i assume you know how to write the chinese characters for thumb

    • @Gold139
      @Gold139 Před 5 lety +227

      @@goosgoos4571 sure i do snowflake LUL

    • @Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh
      @Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh Před 5 lety +138

      @@goosgoos4571 lol obviously I can remember after having seen it in the video five seconds ago : 拇指

    • @goosgoos4571
      @goosgoos4571 Před 5 lety +5

      @@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh good for you 👏🏻

    • @Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh
      @Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh Před 5 lety +31

      @@goosgoos4571 But unfortunately I can remember how to write it but I don't know how to say it correctly. I think it was "muzhi" but I don't know is it second tone or maybe first tone?

  • @asdf8650
    @asdf8650 Před 3 lety +98

    For those wondering why people can recognise characters but can't write them. Imagine trying to draw the symbol for nuclear hazards or bio waste, you'd have difficulty drawing it perfect but when you see it you can recognise it immediately.

    • @moondust2365
      @moondust2365 Před 3 lety +30

      True. Same with flags, faces, animals, etc.

  • @kezialoviana3196
    @kezialoviana3196 Před 3 lety +325

    Me : lets learn Hanzi and Kanji
    Also my brain : の

  • @GodronATX
    @GodronATX Před 4 lety +2378

    girl: "i think i know all the characters"
    after toothpaste: "WHATS THE TOP ONE"

    • @eutopiared552
      @eutopiared552 Před 3 lety +59

      hhhhh she is boasting

    • @ellisli4909
      @ellisli4909 Před 3 lety +5

      Lmao

    • @Shirley36
      @Shirley36 Před 3 lety +111

      @Emily Being able to read and recognize Chinese characters is a lot easier than remembering how to write them from the top of your head. We see a lot more characters than we have to write. Especially when you consider the fact that with smartphones & technology, we don't even need to handwrite a lot of characters anymore. We input the pronunciation and pick the correct character from the suggestions.

    • @xiaowang3977
      @xiaowang3977 Před 3 lety +2

      哈哈 她吹牛

    • @s.s7337
      @s.s7337 Před 3 lety +2

      @@Shirley36 Do you speak mandarin?

  • @kecola
    @kecola Před 5 lety +3402

    Haha the guy killed me when he said "at this point I'm just drawing pictures." He and I could be friends 😁

    • @zlz95
      @zlz95 Před 5 lety +171

      kecola Well, the translation was not quite accurate. What he actually means is “I’m writing it with no clues”(我乱写的)

    • @jambread848
      @jambread848 Před 5 lety +20

      I totally agree with you, and in my point of view, that guy looked the most smartest! haha

    • @lyhthegreat
      @lyhthegreat Před 5 lety +13

      actually chinese the characters they used now originated and evolved from pictures way back in ancient china..

    • @orbik_fin
      @orbik_fin Před 5 lety +5

      actually latin the characters we used now originated and evolved from pictures way back in ancient Mediterranean civilizations..

    • @fernandol4773
      @fernandol4773 Před 5 lety +8

      I could be friend with the translator then.

  • @hellothere7389
    @hellothere7389 Před 3 lety +230

    As an adult in China, most of the time all you really need to do is to be able to recognize the characters, which is a lot easier than memorizing each little detail of every character, because a lot is electronic nowadays. Students though, they have to know these for their classes.

    • @hannalowercase5928
      @hannalowercase5928 Před 3 lety +1

      are they very similar to each other or is it easy to recognize between them?

    • @yuantian838
      @yuantian838 Před 2 lety +9

      @@hannalowercase5928 for the natives it is easy to recognize.

    • @chiara6180
      @chiara6180 Před 2 lety +14

      @@hannalowercase5928 年 车 牛, one means year, one means car and the other one means ox…

    • @u2baccount67
      @u2baccount67 Před 2 lety +14

      Recognizing characters is completely effortless for native speakers.

    • @yun-z
      @yun-z Před 2 lety +12

      @@u2baccount67 because we read them everyday but not write them everyday

  • @zhengtingz5711
    @zhengtingz5711 Před 2 lety +337

    As a Chinese learner, this makes me feel so much better! I’ve taken chinese classes at the advanced and superior level, but still forgot how to write a ton of characters 😩😩

    • @shashankgupta7460
      @shashankgupta7460 Před 2 lety +20

      Don't focus too much on learning to write the characters. Instead, focus on being able to recognize the characters just like how Chinese people have to daily be able to recognize the characters.

    • @zhengtingz5711
      @zhengtingz5711 Před 2 lety +3

      @@shashankgupta7460 hi! Yeah that’s what I usually would do, but unfortunately I have to memorize how to write the characters for all of the vocabulary in my chinese class so if I didn’t know how to write them I probably wouldn’t pass😅

    • @indonesianaspie5279
      @indonesianaspie5279 Před 2 lety

      remembering new words in Mandarin? is easy, chinese characters most of the time provide clues

    • @zhengtingz5711
      @zhengtingz5711 Před 2 lety

      @@indonesianaspie5279 I know haha I majored in Chinese and tutor for my school’s chinese program.

    • @RedOctober_
      @RedOctober_ Před 2 lety

      i am native speaker and i thought i was dumb cuz i couldnt remember all the words but i guess im not alone...

  • @veronicah5268
    @veronicah5268 Před 4 lety +5196

    Me: *literally started learning chinese 2 days ago*
    CZcams: give up already
    Edit (3months later): 谢谢你们, actually I've improved a lot

    • @artofvale_1122
      @artofvale_1122 Před 4 lety +157

      I started to learn it 2 days ago lol 你好

    • @hee7426
      @hee7426 Před 4 lety +40

      Me too wha-

    • @iSanrio
      @iSanrio Před 4 lety +74

      artofvale_ is that ni Hao?? I already gave up after 1 week lmao.

    • @artofvale_1122
      @artofvale_1122 Před 4 lety +107

      @@iSanrio yes it is. Try to restart i did more Chinese in 4 days than French in 4 years lol

    • @Emily-9005
      @Emily-9005 Před 4 lety +37

      @@artofvale_1122 omg same Im taking French in school and learning Mandarin on my phone. Second year this year for French and got an app for Mandarin like last month. I know more Mandarin than French but some phrases are the similar to Cantonese so I memorized those and ones used in daily life.

  • @herpaderpz
    @herpaderpz Před 4 lety +4009

    Me: forgets math after leaving school for a while.
    In China: forgot written language

    • @weilin4872
      @weilin4872 Před 4 lety +104

      and forgot math.
      hahhhh

    • @zitronentee
      @zitronentee Před 3 lety +127

      It makes me thinking that studying law is probably harder than math in China.

    • @jamespark9583
      @jamespark9583 Před 3 lety +38

      @@zitronentee You think math is easy? Too young and too simple, sometimes naive!

    • @zitronentee
      @zitronentee Před 3 lety +57

      @@jamespark9583 Well, I'm Asian. And in high school, I excel in math, physics, chemistry, and economy, yet my geography, history, and politics are awful, since they're too abstract for me and I'm not gifted with words.

    • @momomo263
      @momomo263 Před 3 lety +2

      King James 哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈

  • @mashroorhasanbhuiyan
    @mashroorhasanbhuiyan Před 3 lety +92

    The second character in "toothpaste" literally has 10 horizontal lines. Dude, how do they write them neatly?

    • @Propapanda0213
      @Propapanda0213 Před 3 lety +12

      The only way is practice 😁

    • @mistysudios9855
      @mistysudios9855 Před 2 lety +11

      It’s pretty easy once you get like 10 years of experience on it

    • @tarooo0
      @tarooo0 Před 2 lety +12

      we've been writing them since kindergarten 😭

    • @ML-po6vy
      @ML-po6vy Před 2 lety +12

      It's actually not that hard, write "high" first then put a "moon" under it
      膏 = 高 + 月
      Emmmm just realise "high" in Chinese also kind of hard...

    • @mistysudios9855
      @mistysudios9855 Před 2 lety +8

      @@ML-po6vy high in Chinese is a super simple word, as it’s one of the first words taught meaning it’s many people’s first word remembered. It’s taught during kindergarten so it’s pretty simple to remember

  • @kayahisaacforde7140
    @kayahisaacforde7140 Před 3 lety +132

    This gives me hope as a learner, that I don't hvae to be perfect.

    • @anvi7yearsago687
      @anvi7yearsago687 Před 3 lety +22

      Yes, just like your 'have' is also not needed to be perfect lol.

    • @steveleekyon1212
      @steveleekyon1212 Před 3 lety +11

      @@anvi7yearsago687 Golden comment found

    • @enzuki
      @enzuki Před 2 lety +1

      Really unless your in school you don't need perfect Chinese, If you can speak it well and know the commonly used words you can get by pretty well.

    • @rayzhang9453
      @rayzhang9453 Před 2 lety +1

      @@anvi7yearsago687 yes, just like your 'needed' does not also have to be perfect lol.

    • @mzk363
      @mzk363 Před 2 lety

      Ye i agri with u u don hvae to

  • @jungkooksbeautifulvoice7326
    @jungkooksbeautifulvoice7326 Před 5 lety +10354

    Omg how am I supposed to get motivation to learn Chinese now?

    • @Neo-jty
      @Neo-jty Před 5 lety +1020

      Don't worry , you only need to learn few hundres of charactors, than you can understand thounds of chinsese words, you can read news ,use chinese websites, texting with chinese ect

    • @kebabtaco
      @kebabtaco Před 5 lety +841

      This video only shows that few people are great at writing Chinese BY HAND. Even though they can't remember how to write by hand, they can EASILY read and pronounce the characters if they see them. As a learner, unless you have a specific need for it, you don't have to memorize how to write all characters by hand, only the basic ones. (The characters in this video aren't basic).

    • @dansstreet
      @dansstreet Před 5 lety +122

      Learn Traditional Characters and Look at Remembering the Hanzi, by James Heisig. With Traditional characters every segment has meaning and it actually makes sense a lot of times how things are constructed.

    • @acrien
      @acrien Před 5 lety +304

      Isn't that more motivation for you? You don't even need to learn how to write Thumb, Toothpaste, Sneeze, etc in Chinese to be as good as an average Chinese person.

    • @NightcorEDM
      @NightcorEDM Před 5 lety +13

      Baekhyun, Seulgi & Jungkook Just work hard like the chinese.

  • @szetingma5191
    @szetingma5191 Před 5 lety +3110

    We use pinyin too much lol.
    One example of the differences between simplify and traditional writing is the word 'spirit'
    Simplify wiriting 灵
    Traditional writing 靈

  • @kaze-xo
    @kaze-xo Před 2 lety +80

    Fun fact:
    Due to the difficulty of Chinese characters, the Koreans removed Chinese characters (called "Hanja", which made up about 30% to 50% of Korean written language back then) from the Korean written system to make it easier to learn.
    Whereas the Japanese kept the Chinese characters (called "Kanji", which also makes up about 30% to 50% of Japanese written language now) to this day.

    • @user-re2fn3pp1m
      @user-re2fn3pp1m Před 2 lety

      i actually didn't know about the korean thing! thank u :o

    • @lastninjaitachi
      @lastninjaitachi Před 2 lety +2

      Yah its annoying for Japanese. Its the most annoying part

    • @mira-rara
      @mira-rara Před 2 lety +24

      @@lastninjaitachi it sounds ironic but when you get to a more complex sentence in japanese, especially for academia, using hiragana and katakana only make a sentence much harder to read than including kanji.

    • @user-ep5il4pr6t
      @user-ep5il4pr6t Před 2 lety +16

      @@lastninjaitachi Japan might as well abandon Japanese and use a full set of Chinese system, so that the two peoples can communicate without obstacles

    • @lastninjaitachi
      @lastninjaitachi Před 2 lety +3

      @@user-ep5il4pr6t that would make sense.

  • @tomhuang5266
    @tomhuang5266 Před 3 lety +26

    These characters are not hard, in fact, they are very common words, but many modern Chinese in their age of 20-40 forget how to write them because they are used to type the words on their mobile devices or computers instead of writing them on paper.

  • @queertales
    @queertales Před 4 lety +4480

    As a n00b studying Chinese in my free time, it's actually a bit comforting to see native speakers mess up writing relatively basic words. :)

    • @edai5645
      @edai5645 Před 4 lety +139

      queertales 哈哈哈哈哈,祝你学习加油💪会说,读,打字,在生活中就够用了。

    • @zahraismail5562
      @zahraismail5562 Před 4 lety +24

      Yes omg same!!!

    • @tl4336
      @tl4336 Před 4 lety +97

      Well as a native speaker, my recommendation to you is try to talk to a chinese friend, that will help a lot.

    • @AbnerLi
      @AbnerLi Před 4 lety +31

      哈哈哈现在提笔忘字太常见了 要重视这个问题

    • @pzgamerch
      @pzgamerch Před 3 lety +25

      @Hallo! Mijn naam is well, if you know Chinese there is a lot of job available.

  • @bahars305
    @bahars305 Před 4 lety +3729

    Being a Chinese novelist must be the hardest job in the world 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

    • @cribird9263
      @cribird9263 Před 4 lety +279

      Bahar S Chinese has a simplified and traditional version, the simplified is easier and everyone uses it so they are probably fine idk.

    • @kellylizhang
      @kellylizhang Před 4 lety +238

      @@cribird9263 I'm pretty sure taiwan and other mando speaking countries use the traditional writing system but both are extremely difficult and I gave up years ago trying to learn it.

    • @julietdong8246
      @julietdong8246 Před 4 lety +270

      It's actually probably not that bad bc these days when we type Mandarin into a computer/keyboard, we type the pinyin, which is how the characters sound when you say them out loud, and the computer offers you options of words with the pinyin you typed in, so as long as you know how the words sound, you should be able to write as you please.

    • @bahars305
      @bahars305 Před 4 lety +83

      @@julietdong8246 what if you are reading a book and you face a word you haven't ever seen. You don't know how to pronounce it and have no idea about its meaning. You want to search it in an online dictionary but you can't type it or even pronounce it( that pinyin thing can't help). What do you do in this situation? (and no one is around to ask)

    • @yokengz
      @yokengz Před 4 lety +49

      @@bahars305 you can write it online or on an app

  • @ludvigsilva1
    @ludvigsilva1 Před 2 lety +51

    I think mandarin is hard only because of its writing system and pronunciation, but I find its grammatical structure simpler and easier than Spanish and English (the two languages I speak fluently). Greetings from 墨西哥🇲🇽!

    • @regulareverydaynormalguy8789
      @regulareverydaynormalguy8789 Před rokem +3

      totally agree, i find it easy reading Spanish, but the grammer kills me, all the conjugations just blows my mind.

    • @zaiyangzhang4860
      @zaiyangzhang4860 Před rokem +3

      A Chinese sentence can be expressed in many ways.It's like rearranging the same words.

    • @marcopolesine1584
      @marcopolesine1584 Před rokem

      OMG CHINESE CAN'T WRITE THEIR OWN LANGUAGE, guys come on, ...english is too a language different speaking from writing and russian is difficult to write, greek grammar is the most complex, come on guys ..hurry up op op

  • @sleepyfromstress6524
    @sleepyfromstress6524 Před 2 lety +12

    the reason why actual chinese people may forget how to write characters is because nowadays when using computers, they usually use pinyin, and thus this “character amnesia” occurs

  • @doapin6240
    @doapin6240 Před 4 lety +3957

    Me **Already learning chinese**
    Random chinese person: There are about 80000 characters
    Me: *The* *What*

    • @nikogalih9260
      @nikogalih9260 Před 4 lety +203

      I dont even know 3000 words of my native language...

    • @XiGlove
      @XiGlove Před 4 lety +41

      不会写也没有关系

    • @Bluetrainn
      @Bluetrainn Před 4 lety +13

      什么?

    • @Emily-9005
      @Emily-9005 Před 4 lety +21

      Same I'm trying to learn right now but for me its communication. I already know Cantonese but I never learned Mandarin. I know how to speak Cantonese don't know characters, learning Mandarin I know a couple characters but I don't remember what they mean.

    • @kaeyaseyepatch2363
      @kaeyaseyepatch2363 Před 4 lety +93

      Well English has 171,000 words, but we only use 2000-3000 in daily conversation. It's the same concept for Chinese.

  • @leonardozhu3156
    @leonardozhu3156 Před 3 lety +3138

    As a native speaker, I was testing myself while watching this video as well. I have to say this test is intentionally choosing words which are quite common and hard to write in the same time. I won't be surprised that 80% Chinese people cannot write the second character in "喷嚏" (Sneeze), cuz 1. it's really a complicated character. 2. We don't write it very often. 3. This character only occur in this single word, which give it less chance to be written in daily life. Everyone can still read it. Anyway, if you are learning Chinese, don't be discouraged by this video. Think in another way, you don't need to remember every character to learn Chinese, even native speaker can't.

    • @Maya14526
      @Maya14526 Před 3 lety +47

      That's really strange ,even though the characters are hard to learn but I never thought that even native find it difficult ,
      I am learning Chinese ,can u give any advice to improve it ?

    • @nataliechan2050
      @nataliechan2050 Před 3 lety +108

      @@Maya14526 Cuz chinese would not be just about memorising the combination of characters but more on the strokes within a character, and it is really hard to remember the characters because sometimes you just don't write those vocabs often or the components within the character are hard to be memorised. Anyways keep it up, chinese literature is really a lot of fun and you might feel insightful studying our language!:) by the way I use traditional Chinese because I am a Macanese, I think it's really beautiful so I hope you might get to know it as well hehe

    • @Enhafun
      @Enhafun Před 3 lety +6

      well damn

    • @soniachen5739
      @soniachen5739 Před 3 lety +51

      真实,说实话喷嚏我也不会哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈,加上现在基本上是网络时代,全靠拼音。

    • @rickysiu7087
      @rickysiu7087 Před 3 lety +14

      @@Maya14526 If you want to improve, I think you can't treat characters as roman letters. Although they are both a part of word, the former has meaning itself and the latter doesn't. Which means, to a certain extend, characters are words.

  • @somnathganguly9250
    @somnathganguly9250 Před rokem +15

    大家早上好。作为一名印度人,我认为我们亚洲居民应该团结起来,重视彼此学习语言。我喜欢 Chinna,她的人民,传统,最重要的是

    • @lw2519
      @lw2519 Před rokem +3

      Hey My India bro, I love your comment, we should union together, love from China! 你的中文很不错!

    • @USAlove.tsmc.NotYou
      @USAlove.tsmc.NotYou Před rokem

      nice

    • @Neyobe
      @Neyobe Před rokem

      ❤️

  • @addamliu8064
    @addamliu8064 Před 5 lety +772

    I’m native speaker of Chinese. I honestly say I agree with this social experiment. I forgot how to write Chinese.

    • @chihannabi3815
      @chihannabi3815 Před 5 lety +25

      Im german and im forgetting the language. sometimes my sentence structure is just...hopeless (and tbh idont even know how to say it correctly) '-'

    • @maxos-4135
      @maxos-4135 Před 4 lety +22

      @@chihannabi3815 wtf German is nothing get outa here🤣

    • @solarmoth4628
      @solarmoth4628 Před 4 lety +10

      I feel so validated by this, i’m american but i studied chinese for seven years but I forgot how to write so many characters because I usually just type now.

    • @kevinzhu6417
      @kevinzhu6417 Před 4 lety +1

      memorizing will never be as efficient or fun as having a conversation over food and drinks in a Chinese dialect.

    • @owenlo2676
      @owenlo2676 Před 4 lety +1

      I think it’s just they found the elder generation of Chinese people, that just happened to recover from the cultural revolution so that the education of them compare to the secondaries nowadays are much lower , idk , no offence. I’m Chinese as well

  • @nickohiken4990
    @nickohiken4990 Před 5 lety +2910

    do you notice , 2:41 the guy at behind walk backwards

    • @tanteriana
      @tanteriana Před 5 lety +112

      Lol

    • @xlking6302
      @xlking6302 Před 5 lety +262

      sort of exercise...?

    • @koilamaoh4238
      @koilamaoh4238 Před 5 lety +793

      Glitch in the chinese matrix...Need to update their npc codes.

    • @dn9255
      @dn9255 Před 5 lety +83

      it sounds like he's pulling something

    • @mosesjane9456
      @mosesjane9456 Před 5 lety +114

      that is what we often do

  • @alexander1989x
    @alexander1989x Před 3 lety +190

    Girl: "I think i know all the characters."
    Interviewer: "Imma end this guy's whole career."

  • @AthanasiosJapan
    @AthanasiosJapan Před 3 lety +44

    Chinese is an interesting language with a very beautiful script. This script teaches people be to modest and patient. There is no end in learning Chinese.
    Fun fact. Before the introduction of alphabetic script, Greek was written with a script that had ideographic characters, similar in faction with the Chinese characters. For details, please check about Linear script B.

    • @simrankaurshiledar4405
      @simrankaurshiledar4405 Před 10 měsíci

      yesss in ancient times many cultures used characters to convey or write their languages.

  • @mheann4607
    @mheann4607 Před 4 lety +1064

    10,000 characters??? I can only imagine a Chinese version of Sesame Streets whom after 5 years, are still not yet done singing all of the Chinese characters.. 😂😂😂

    • @slamdunk406
      @slamdunk406 Před 4 lety +14

      Mheann Bucalan LMAO!!!

    • @mheann4607
      @mheann4607 Před 4 lety +67

      @@slamdunk406 Now I know why there's no Chinese version of Sesame Street 😂😂😂

    • @slamdunk406
      @slamdunk406 Před 4 lety +48

      Mheann Bucalan Today’s show was brought to you by the character “齉” LMAO 😂

    • @jazzyass5701
      @jazzyass5701 Před 4 lety +12

      A lot of the are really rare and you don't have to know them. Even in very old literature, or maybe the usage of the word wasn't popular.

    • @Lixsyl
      @Lixsyl Před 4 lety +8

      A lot of characters sound the same though

  • @ABcdefgI143
    @ABcdefgI143 Před 3 lety +1936

    for those of you confused about typing:
    chinese has developed a way to represent the pronounciation as pinyin (literally "put sounds together")
    like if I wanted to type out "你好" which means "hello" I wouldn't need to actually write it out on my computer
    these two words are pronounced "ni hao", and so I type "n i h a o" and there's a bunch of options for "ni" and a bunch of options for "hao" and I choose the one that I want to type out because almost every single chinese word has a homophone.
    so basically even if you don't know the exact strokes (like the people here and me sometimes fdjalafd I failed my own languge) as long as you know how to pronounce it and had a basic memory of what it looks like you can type
    ------------------------
    the traditional vs simplified thing
    **taiwan, hongkong, and macau mainly uses traditional today while the mainland uses simplified**
    because traditional chinese is hella hard people decided to simplify the characters to make it easier for people to learn
    for example,
    運動 => 运动 (exercise)
    高興=>高兴 (happy)
    義=>义 (justice)
    參與=> 参与 (participate)
    + almost half of the rest of the words
    although the mainland doesn't use traditional as much (on the left) many can still figure out what it's trying to say based on the knowledge of the simplified version. for example, me myself only knows how to write the simplified version but since the traditional looks very similar I can still type it out, but I won't be able to hand write traditional characters
    there are also characters that doesn't have a simplified version:
    吃=> 吃 (eat)
    玩=> 玩 (play)
    一二三四五六七八九十百千 (one two three four five six seven eight nine ten hundred thousand)
    yeah ok

    • @_anais._.
      @_anais._. Před 3 lety +68

      Thank you for sharing this! ive been learning Chinese for 1 year now and its interesting to find out natives have the same troubles of remembering charters but not pinyin like i do

    • @peepeepoopoo9109
      @peepeepoopoo9109 Před 3 lety +14

      Oh cool counting numbers in Chinese are similar to japanese

    • @ABcdefgI143
      @ABcdefgI143 Před 3 lety +97

      @@peepeepoopoo9109 yeah because the jpn culture is heavily influenced by the chn culture

    • @infires3042
      @infires3042 Před 3 lety +69

      @@peepeepoopoo9109 if anything, it should be japanese is similar to chinese

    • @peepeepoopoo9109
      @peepeepoopoo9109 Před 3 lety +5

      @@infires3042 yeah I guess it depends on the perspective

  • @chaconneind3777
    @chaconneind3777 Před 3 lety +13

    5:04 In that accent, I think that was actually “I’m a programmer” rather than “I’m a correspondent.”

  • @haroldgoodman130
    @haroldgoodman130 Před 2 lety +1

    This is the most interesting of all your interviews. I hope you will do more on other languages and literacy.

  • @ececiel2755
    @ececiel2755 Před 4 lety +354

    2:35 "At this point, I'm just drawing pictures"
    BIG MOOD

    • @leezhangchern9795
      @leezhangchern9795 Před 3 lety +19

      as a chinese, i felt that too sometimes

    • @laobok
      @laobok Před 3 lety +18

      Chinese characters were pictograms once upon a time, so they're not wrong.

    • @NightsChapterSeven
      @NightsChapterSeven Před 3 lety +3

      He never actually says that in the video. Subs are completely made up or was cut from the video. He just says “crap, wrongly written, this shouldn’t be...”

    • @elinacooper9627
      @elinacooper9627 Před 3 lety

      Gross🤣😂😁

  • @CarbonRiley
    @CarbonRiley Před 4 lety +662

    Most of us can recognise and read the words but writing is like a whole new level

    • @jinnimoo
      @jinnimoo Před 4 lety +147

      Its much easier to read than to write Chinese. Your brain automatically recognize the characters when you see it, but it's much harder to picture it in your head. Its basically a photographic memory test. Plus no one is writing anymore, everyone is typing the characters using pinyin.

    • @yosbudi5708
      @yosbudi5708 Před 4 lety +1

      Ni pioaoliang haa 😃💐💐💐😍

    • @deku1581
      @deku1581 Před 4 lety

      Yes

    • @user-su6js9po4l
      @user-su6js9po4l Před 4 lety +11

      exactly, you can read it but when you write it it's like whattt

    • @tempestosfugi9846
      @tempestosfugi9846 Před 4 lety +10

      Wait but how you guys make tests/exams in school when you can’t write yout own language? Or do you use simplified characters?

  • @altazboy
    @altazboy Před 2 lety +4

    I liked this because it makes me feel better about my own lack of ability to remember the characters I study. Also, I was happy to see that among the interviewees, young and old alike, they felt the situation should be reversed through more awareness and more actual writing. That is equally true even in western languages, I believe.

  • @billyma6
    @billyma6 Před 3 lety +13

    I’m even worse- I can listen and understand intermediate phrases but when I need to use them in my own verbal sentences I forget them, never mind knowing how to write them

  • @user-jo1eo7sk4l
    @user-jo1eo7sk4l Před 5 lety +1427

    traditional Chinese is harder to write...
    like
    忧郁 is simplified Chinese
    憂鬱 is traditional Chinese
    they all mean melancholy.....

    • @user-ff2jm8kx3x
      @user-ff2jm8kx3x Před 5 lety +57

      福泽谕吉 Do chinese learn both of them, or learn simplified one?

    • @songpinggong2315
      @songpinggong2315 Před 5 lety +378

      I can read both of them ,but can only write the simplified one

    • @johnny_ng
      @johnny_ng Před 5 lety +279

      흐에에엑 mainland Chinese use simplified Chinese and can read traditional Chinese, Taiwan,Hongkong,Macao use traditional Chinese

    • @user-ff2jm8kx3x
      @user-ff2jm8kx3x Před 5 lety +31

      Alex Wu Oh i didnt know. Thank u for telling me. Then why those places dont use simplified one? It might be more super efficient.

    • @user-ff2jm8kx3x
      @user-ff2jm8kx3x Před 5 lety +23

      Alex Wu so when mainland Chinese write simplified one, people in Hongkong cant understand if they do not know about it, right?

  • @nsebast
    @nsebast Před 5 lety +2014

    I find that Chinese words have very deep meaning. Like the word "好" (hao) or good. It is a character made of a woman and a child symbol. So that's what the Chinese consider as good: a love of a mother to her child. So even though Chinese words are hard, I really love the meaning. You cant get that from any other language.

    • @Aurora-zu3yv
      @Aurora-zu3yv Před 5 lety +315

      Indeed, Some Chinese parents want to have a one daughter(女) and one son(子), because they want to combine the letter of good(好).

    • @momololo3223
      @momololo3223 Před 5 lety +41

      I think it means having a twins with different gender.

    • @FerKzrs
      @FerKzrs Před 5 lety +103

      Absolutely! It is very hard to explain this to someone who does not have any knowledge of the language or any other one that uses this writing system such as Japanese. However, characters do lose a lot of meaning by simplifying them. I dislike them.

    • @RonLarhz
      @RonLarhz Před 5 lety +41

      Fernando Cázares
      Japanese kanji adapted mandarin. It literally says 汉字.

    • @hanchen3932
      @hanchen3932 Před 5 lety +27

      Taiqi Xu 子是不分男女的 child

  • @canpy143
    @canpy143 Před 2 lety +13

    Chinese natives and learners: crying
    Meanwhile Korean learners who are recommended to learn Hanja : For what crime have i been given this penalty?
    👁👄👁

  • @cruelcloud2207
    @cruelcloud2207 Před 3 lety +43

    As a native Chinese I have to say that writing Chinese is not that hard if you keep practicing it - pick any random high school student on the street and they would be able to write relatively well (because ofc they have to write essays at school lol) The problem is that people tend to forget the writing system when they go off to uni or leave school. Typing is totally different with writing in Chinese.

    • @Anna-li8dy
      @Anna-li8dy Před rokem

      Do Chinese type using simplified characters?

    • @phambinhan17
      @phambinhan17 Před rokem +2

      ​@@Anna-li8dy they type with pinyin keyboard

    • @zelinwang7603
      @zelinwang7603 Před 10 měsíci +1

      @@Anna-li8dyuse pinyin but directly handwriting characters is also a method of input, although it is less efficient. It will work in case that someone don’t know the pinyin of a character.

  • @kishore369
    @kishore369 Před 5 lety +2400

    I can write Chinese
    Chinese .

    • @mishu8492
      @mishu8492 Před 5 lety +19

      ᴍᴇ 2

    • @lesleyliu6637
      @lesleyliu6637 Před 5 lety +62

      you typed it

    • @Isegawa2001
      @Isegawa2001 Před 5 lety +59

      _hilarious and original_

    • @maxiapalucci2511
      @maxiapalucci2511 Před 5 lety +12

      Oh yeah?你的汉字不对。我的汉字很好了!不会看这个?太坏了!

    • @Isegawa2001
      @Isegawa2001 Před 5 lety +6

      @@maxiapalucci2511 ベリナイス!日本語話せますか?

  • @Melodyqtt
    @Melodyqtt Před 3 lety +375

    Okay , as a Chinese myself 😓 after watching this video I just find out that I can't write many characters either...

    • @Maya14526
      @Maya14526 Před 3 lety +12

      Even though u can't write those characters but still you're native,and you know the most amazing language in the world , can you help me with the language ,actually I am a learning Chinese, and I feel that without a native ,Chinese is very hard ,can you please help me ,👩

    • @Melodyqtt
      @Melodyqtt Před 3 lety +12

      @@Maya14526 I'd like to help you ,but I don't know how to help you 😂

    • @Maya14526
      @Maya14526 Před 3 lety +1

      @@Melodyqtt do you use whatsapp ?that will be most useful

    • @Melodyqtt
      @Melodyqtt Před 3 lety

      @@Maya14526okay , you can leave your ins id here I will find u

    • @tracybai6546
      @tracybai6546 Před 3 lety +1

      @@Maya14526 I think I can help!I have whatsapp and Im a native speaker

  • @haodo9449
    @haodo9449 Před 3 lety +11

    Chinese: our words are arts
    Also chinese: how do i write "sneeze"!? Its too complicate!!!

  • @Lin_The_Cat_
    @Lin_The_Cat_ Před 2 lety +3

    This is a great point to bring up. As someone who studies Chinese language, specifically 繁體字 or traditional characters, I do notice that it’s easy to forget certain character. However, as soon as you see the character, you immediately recognize it. It’s cool knowing now, though, how this phenomenon is not simply limited to people who study Chinese as a second language.

  • @hoavan6306
    @hoavan6306 Před 4 lety +439

    Me : I bought some Chinese books yesterday
    CZcams : I'm gonna end this dude new year resolution

    • @yanmiao7945
      @yanmiao7945 Před 4 lety +13

      I have some language partners, what tortures me the most during language exchange sessions is sometimes I could not even make a good explanation of why I'd construct a Chinese sentence like that....it's just the way we say it..lol

    • @harshmnr
      @harshmnr Před 3 lety +5

      No don't give up! If these people were writing more simple/common words, they would probably write them all correctly. Plus, even though it's nice to be able to write the characters too, it's not completely necessary to do so in everyday life. Reading is what you'll do more often and it's much easier to memorize how to read characters than how to write them. 😊
      ~:~

    • @harshmnr
      @harshmnr Před 3 lety +3

      @@yanmiao7945 I would probably be the one asking those questions all the time. 😂 I'm always asking my teachers stuff like "Why do we have to use 把 structure here? Why do we have to use 了 here and not there?" etc. and they're often just like, "I don't know why; that's just how you have to say it." 😒😂
      ~:~

    • @Maya14526
      @Maya14526 Před 3 lety

      Your English is really good ,

    • @nganthuy9774
      @nganthuy9774 Před 3 lety

      And how is your Chinese now?

  • @k.c4
    @k.c4 Před 5 lety +696

    When people mock them for not being able to write toothpaste or thumb, yet fail to differenciate though and thought or even your and you're 😬

    • @sealand000
      @sealand000 Před 5 lety +90

      "differentiate "

    • @k.c4
      @k.c4 Před 5 lety +91

      @@sealand000 my first language is spanish so the autocorrector changes the word and when i change it back to how it was, i just skim through so the c got past me. Anything else to mark? (:

    • @princesschanel469
      @princesschanel469 Před 4 lety +15

      @@sealand000 shut up

    • @jinnimoo
      @jinnimoo Před 4 lety +16

      Its much easier to read than to write Chinese. Your brain automatically recognize the characters when you see it, but it's much harder to picture it in your head. It's bascially a photographic memory test.

    • @anywhoyt
      @anywhoyt Před 4 lety +6

      @Lyle Adrian The problem is not the size of one's vocabulary but being able to write with the vocabulary you have. The non-phonetic nature of Chinese makes it harder to transcribe verbal vocabulary into its written form for words whose symbols/spelling one does not know how to write/spell.

  • @darrenvegan4815
    @darrenvegan4815 Před 2 lety +2

    Thank you for this!! As a new learner of Chinese, I get so mad at myself for not remembering how to write certain characters! It is such a relief to know that even native speakers cannot remember how to write them. I feel much better now, :-)

  • @anonymoususer3535
    @anonymoususer3535 Před 2 lety +7

    I will admit this video restored my confidence in my ability to learn Chinese, ive only been learning for about 28 days and to see that Chinese themselves have difficulties id say I'm doing well so far

    • @seebauong9593
      @seebauong9593 Před 2 lety

      Learn to speak is easier than learning to write

  • @badbishangela7640
    @badbishangela7640 Před 4 lety +830

    I want to learn chinese
    *watches this*
    哈哈 :(

    • @cakiepop2038
      @cakiepop2038 Před 4 lety +6

      Bad Bish Angela 哈哈 :(

    • @felcia2317
      @felcia2317 Před 4 lety

      Bad Bish Angela 恶露摩羯座人哦培训

    • @cdrl3170
      @cdrl3170 Před 4 lety +4

      ​@@felcia2317 ??怎么扯上魔蝎座了

    • @NierJpeg
      @NierJpeg Před 4 lety +4

      @@cdrl3170 呵呵,我想他只是随便在键盘上点了几下,就像"核武库顶尖高手" 或 "给我很多我仍见不到",呵呵

    • @cdrl3170
      @cdrl3170 Před 4 lety

      @@NierJpeg 哦哈哈哈哈哈

  • @Ascendeus
    @Ascendeus Před 4 lety +1206

    That’s the big difference with Chinese and alphabetic languages like English or Korean, it’s insanely difficult to master or even learn hence why King Sejong invented the Korean language due to his subjects being unable to learn Chinese. Personally as a Chinese-American I can speak fluently, read semi-fluently, but can barely write. It’s not easy. 😅

    • @beluwuga2573
      @beluwuga2573 Před 4 lety +121

      I heard that the main reason he invented it was because there were too many illiterate in his kingdom because it's hard to write korean using characters. They already have their own language, they are just using the chinese characters to write korean. He isn't illiterate so he knows how hard it is to learn korean using the chinese characters so he changed it.

    • @caovuonglam
      @caovuonglam Před 4 lety +55

      Extremely grateful for 한글

    • @TheDeceptiveHero
      @TheDeceptiveHero Před 4 lety +88

      On the other hand, Korean, just like Japanese, has tons of homophones, and written in Hangeul they’re impossible to distinguish if you don’t pay attention to the context. That’s also one of the main reasons why in Japanese kanji are still used despite having kana.

    • @walterpu8357
      @walterpu8357 Před 4 lety +18

      I forgot how to spell many English words after I have my own phone and laptop.

    • @andy5178
      @andy5178 Před 4 lety +19

      So true. And at least Japanese have hiragana and katakana, which lets them get by knowing "just" 2-3000 characters. You can't destroy a country's tradition and history, but China should definitely do something about this.

  • @faisal8300
    @faisal8300 Před 2 lety +7

    Now I realise how easy korean is 😂😂

  • @erikchengmo
    @erikchengmo Před 2 lety +27

    Learning to write has one advantage: it helps you to memorize the form, and thus you are more likely to recognize the character when it comes up. The same principle can be applied to memorize English words. As a bi-lingual, I find this particular learning experience quite similar: learning how to write/spell is always helpful for the memory.
    (Note: Chinese characters are not equivalent to letters, and the characters are equivalent to English words.)
    I don't think people need to worry about the future of hanzi, because the characters are actually highly functional and practical linguistic tools. For daily users/readers, the existence of hanzi are NOT solely for aesthetic purpose.
    The current practice of digital input actually shows how the Chinese culture (language) is integrated with modern technology.
    The integration between traditions and contemporary lifestyle has actually been a recurring phenomenon that has appeared throughout Chinese history (most of the time).
    Many interviewees didn't seem to think this question through, but the question itself wasn't easy to answer in short.
    Also, the statement at around 6:05 is NOT fully correct.
    Many of the simplified characters were actually derived from historical, alternative forms of traditional characters. Many commonly used simplified characters had already existed throughout history, although their usages were not widespread or mainstream until modern eras.

  • @artificialpanda7173
    @artificialpanda7173 Před 4 lety +218

    0:28 Why is that guy walking backwards in the background 😂😂😂

    • @cloudlaw7979
      @cloudlaw7979 Před 3 lety +76

      some elders in China believe that walking backwards are good for health.

    • @anvi7yearsago687
      @anvi7yearsago687 Před 3 lety +12

      @@cloudlaw7979 really!??

    • @cloudlaw7979
      @cloudlaw7979 Před 3 lety +18

      @@anvi7yearsago687 l don't actually know if it works. My grandma often does.

    • @cocococococonuts
      @cocococococonuts Před 3 lety +24

      Elders love to do it as an exercise. My grandma does it every morning but I never get it lol

    • @edm1207
      @edm1207 Před 3 lety +40

      Walking backwards in china:a master practicing his craft
      Walking backwards in usa:that dude is on shrooms

  • @mrnobody3180
    @mrnobody3180 Před 4 lety +419

    Ok.
    I am chinese malaysian. Honestly, i never passed my chinese language in high school. My english was the best during that time. I often mix some english words when i speak chinese and it's really embarrasing.

    • @sarahmahalingami7792
      @sarahmahalingami7792 Před 4 lety +20

      You must be a Singaporean Chinese. White on the inside but still yellow outside. Speaking as a Singaporean who doesn't confuse the two languages since Eng and Chinese are as different as it is chalk and charcoal.

    • @mrnobody3180
      @mrnobody3180 Před 4 lety +46

      @@sarahmahalingami7792 i am malaysian chinese 😂

    • @Ummmmmmmm841
      @Ummmmmmmm841 Před 4 lety +13

      The Addicted Man my friend was the opposite. Cause his handwriting was messy sometimes he write Chinese in English composition,teacher never found out.

    • @marikojournals
      @marikojournals Před 4 lety +2

      @@mrnobody3180 eh but malaysia teaches good chinese. I am singaporean chinese and i often score 30s percent for my overall chinese exams of the whole year

    • @mrnobody3180
      @mrnobody3180 Před 4 lety +5

      @@marikojournals A good teacher doesn't mean a student with good chinese will be developed

  • @Vnderbilt3
    @Vnderbilt3 Před 3 lety

    Love Asian Boss. Kudos! I agree learning Chinese characters is REALLY a challenge!

  • @hubblehosting8862
    @hubblehosting8862 Před 3 lety +6

    Simplifying the language was necessary so that the people could communicate more efficiently. This also allowed the country to develop more rapidly as a whole.

  • @hungerbulb
    @hungerbulb Před 5 lety +672

    King sejong of korea saw this problem hundreds of years ago and created hangul because chinese was so hard to learn

    • @caitlinmangan2414
      @caitlinmangan2414 Před 5 lety +94

      yeah after seeing this I'm glad I chose to learn Korean instead...I learned hangul in a few days, but no one can ever learn all of the chinese characters haha

    • @user-ws5dg7gp5b
      @user-ws5dg7gp5b Před 5 lety +33

      还好吧,不算太难。

    • @wxhcbjl
      @wxhcbjl Před 5 lety +14

      leeway Y 那是因为有很多字都是不用在平常生活

    • @romanr.301
      @romanr.301 Před 5 lety +58

      Because Korean is not like Chinese; they have entirely different grammatical structures. There was no choice BUT to adapt the writing system. It’s not because of anything inherent to Hanzi; it’s because the monosyllabic characters didn’t fit with Korean words and grammar. And it’s not as though Korean is considered much easier to learn than Chinese, even with a simple alphabetic script.

    • @xynderella
      @xynderella Před 5 lety +6

      @@user-ws5dg7gp5b 我不同意 韩语 比较容易学。

  • @jssc_san
    @jssc_san Před 4 lety +260

    Am coming back here after 1 year learning chinese:
    Me that time : what ??
    现在:什么??

  • @snowycrystalz101
    @snowycrystalz101 Před 2 lety +5

    You should do a version of this video for traditional characters in Hong Kong or Taiwan.

  • @xXHONEYBUNNiiE
    @xXHONEYBUNNiiE Před 2 lety +13

    I grew up in Europe in a Chinese family. I learnt Chinese as a kid but mostly speaking so I can barely read and write. If I want to write Chinese symbols on my phone, I also use pinyin because I know how to say it. And then I choose whatever symbol seems right with my very limited knowledge (I can maybe recognize max. 200 symbols compared to ca. 5000 that you need for daily life). And then I put my sentence in Google translate to double check whether it made sense what I wrote. Works pretty well actually although I can neither write nor READ :D

    • @indonesianaspie5279
      @indonesianaspie5279 Před 2 lety

      Are you chinese or white?

    • @davidsenra2495
      @davidsenra2495 Před 9 měsíci

      So you're fluent in spoken Chinese but can't read it?
      Very interesting.

    • @xXHONEYBUNNiiE
      @xXHONEYBUNNiiE Před 9 měsíci

      @@davidsenra2495 not entirely fluent but I can have normal conversations, I couldn't discuss deeper topics though

  • @yasso6378
    @yasso6378 Před 5 lety +813

    then there is me who wants to learn chinese

    • @modustrollens4806
      @modustrollens4806 Před 5 lety +29

      same here little afraid of the writting tbh lol

    • @tppo1988
      @tppo1988 Před 5 lety +66

      Rishi This your life is too short to lean anything......

    • @jtw10192
      @jtw10192 Před 5 lety +119

      There are literally hundreds of millions of people on this planet that speaks Chinese, how in the world do you think it's dead

    • @someperson6475
      @someperson6475 Před 5 lety +72

      chinese is the most spoken language in the world...

    • @Rosa-kf2ik
      @Rosa-kf2ik Před 5 lety +40

      Rishi This one in ten people are Chinese, we have the most populated country in the world (currently at 1.4 billion). So, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s not going to be dead for a long time.

  • @zi_pun
    @zi_pun Před 5 lety +325

    Just to show you guys how much more complicated some traditional characters are than their simplified equivalents: 1. Turtle 烏龜(乌龟)2. Melancholy 憂鬱(忧郁)3. Taiwan 臺灣(台湾)4. Experience 體驗(体验)5. Switch 開關(开关)⋯⋯There’s much more examples like these. Of course there’s also examples of traditional characters not so much more complicated than their simplified forms. For example, 1. Fish 魚(鱼)2. Door 門(门)3. Red 紅(红)4. Blue 藍(蓝)5. Yellow 黃(黄)⋯⋯As you can see, actually most of the simplified characters and their traditional roots look alike (at least to us Chinese lol), so usually people educated in simplified Chinese can also read BUT NOT write traditional Chinese, and vice versa for people educated in traditional Chinese. Some people though, like myself, can both read and write both simplified and traditional characters because I guess although I’m a mainlander from Guangzhou (educated in simplified Chinese), I grew up with a lot of TV shows from Hong Kong (in traditional Chinese). Hope this is helpful to some of you that are interested in Chinese. :)

    • @hiroshigenn464
      @hiroshigenn464 Před 5 lety +5

      Oscar Pan lol they aren't hard at all, in Japanese I know melancholy 'Yuuutsu' 憂鬱 I know thousands of kanji easy.

    • @zi_pun
      @zi_pun Před 5 lety +40

      Alright. Good for you.

    • @robopecha
      @robopecha Před 5 lety +4

      haha, i had to zoom in to really see them! also i always find it funny that the fish looks like a horse :)

    • @reflectionsinthebible3579
      @reflectionsinthebible3579 Před 5 lety

      Oscar Pan yeah some of those do not look alike or look only half alike.

    • @reflectionsinthebible3579
      @reflectionsinthebible3579 Před 5 lety

      Oscar Pan turtle and melancholy just do not look like their old symbols much at all.

  • @i_zh852
    @i_zh852 Před 2 lety +6

    Another way is they should try typing Chinese but using hand-writing mode sometimes in a while, to practice the strokes more often~
    I agree the Traditional chinese writings could convey very deep meaning and are just simply beautiful

  • @jinlin3317
    @jinlin3317 Před 2 lety +4

    The reason is most of younger used the pinying as input method on their PC and mobile phone. the pinying is focus on the pronunciation of hanzi , but not the structure of hanzi. I always meet the situation that I can pronunce the word, but can not remember how to write it.

  • @zara3016
    @zara3016 Před 4 lety +311

    Imagine having a test in chinese, i would take an hour to write one character😂

    • @christinehaduca5832
      @christinehaduca5832 Před 4 lety +9

      then its time already 😂 i cannot

    • @mochiinuo
      @mochiinuo Před 4 lety +17

      Not really...but yes, it is a little more time-consuming depending on how complicated the characters ur using are lol

    • @julietdong8246
      @julietdong8246 Před 4 lety +17

      When I was younger, I took Chinese School (I'm a Chinese-American), and every week the teacher would give us the vocab words to study, and the next week, she would read them out loud and we would have to write down the characters for each of the words. Let me just tell you this, I failed the test pretty much every week.

    • @carissa4553
      @carissa4553 Před 4 lety +13

      After writing your name
      “Time’s up! All pens down”

    • @stanleyho8009
      @stanleyho8009 Před 4 lety +11

      And then the teacher can’t read your handwriting because you messed up the character

  • @wenyuannathanzhou3062
    @wenyuannathanzhou3062 Před 5 lety +505

    "I can actually write more Traditional Chinese"...at 6:38 It's b/c that guy is from Taiwan. His accent was a big tell.

    • @zebraimage
      @zebraimage Před 5 lety +15

      不过关于繁体字的吹捧也是胡说八道,没有人会在写字的时候去思考造字法和背后的意义,不管简体还是繁体,何况简体字也就是几百个字而已。

    • @oaksoedrgh5974
      @oaksoedrgh5974 Před 5 lety +23

      不一定啊,很多南方人都是这个accent

    • @yorathfenwick1800
      @yorathfenwick1800 Před 5 lety +34

      @@oaksoedrgh5974 我是南方人,这家伙的确是台湾口音,台湾口音和南方口音是有区别的,即使是福建人说的也和台湾口音有很大区别。

    • @oaksoedrgh5974
      @oaksoedrgh5974 Před 5 lety

      @@yorathfenwick1800 谢谢你的纠正。身为北方人,有的时候确实分的不是很清楚

    • @frankhungch
      @frankhungch Před 5 lety +18

      @@zebraimage 又不是要你每天看到都要想 重點在於學習及保存 這是文化
      如果你真那麼不在乎 何不提倡改成使用拼音就好 像韓國跟越南一樣 不是更簡易

  • @theasianpolyglot
    @theasianpolyglot Před 3 lety +10

    As a polyglot who speaks Mandarin, English, Danish, German, French, and Cantonese... I have to say Mandarin and Cantonese are the most difficult :( I share my experiences in my channel where you can hear how much I struggle with Mandarin and Cantonese!

    • @jutau
      @jutau Před 3 lety

      Cantonese has so many colloquialisms and slang that it's fun and annoying at the same time.

  • @rey-uo3qd
    @rey-uo3qd Před rokem +4

    I'm a Japanese high school student studying Chinese.
    I'm relieved to know that Chinese people have kanji that they cannot write as well as Japanese people.

  • @raffaeleallocca2424
    @raffaeleallocca2424 Před 4 lety +423

    "characters are just a way to communicate"
    Boom, thousands of years of Chinese culture gone

    • @vz1115
      @vz1115 Před 4 lety +49

      well I think the guy has a point, could you imagine people not being able to comunicate because the difficulty of their language?. That´s why it constantly changes. by the way, Sorry if my english is not good I hope you understand :P

    • @sephikong8323
      @sephikong8323 Před 4 lety +71

      @@vz1115 Yes, that's actually why Hangeul was created. Chinese characters were never meant to be used by everyone, it was a writing system that was evidently meant to be used by a specialised class of scribes that studied it devoutly whereas Hangeul had the exact opposite philosophy. Saying that Chinese characters are bad at communicating is both right and wrong, wrong because it most definitely works and history speaks for itself, but also right because it most definitely wasn't meant to be used in a day to day basis by the laymen

    • @Meepisako
      @Meepisako Před 4 lety +4

      I mean hey do you love going through the history books of English

    • @SpiderDibs
      @SpiderDibs Před 4 lety +12

      Have you ever tried reading old English? It's basically a whole other language lol

    • @sephikong8323
      @sephikong8323 Před 4 lety +4

      @@SpiderDibs Because it kind of is.
      There is a debate amongst linguists if English is a descendant of Anglo-saxon or if it's a creole and personally, I'd opt more for the creole theory. And there are two points where this has happened : first was during the Danelaw where a big part of Northern England was under Danish rule and the area was heavily settled by Danes as well and you can see that the language there evolved in strange ways, it's not so much that it simply borrowed heavily from the nords, but even grammar was impacted to an extent which is not usual. The second and most obvious case of creolisation (I ...... think that's a word at least) is during the Norman rule. It's still a debated topic but it is very possible that modern English is a very indirect descendant of Anglo-saxon and not it's natural evolution (unlike modern french and german which are direct descendants and you can see the difference in the fact that french and germans have a way easier time picking up a text from the middle age and reading it than English do with Anglo-saxon

  • @olive9514
    @olive9514 Před 5 lety +343

    Lmao I'm Chinese so I'm good
    I remember this post in tumblr like
    " japanese is such a kind language if you can't write in kanji you can write hiragana and everyone will understand
    Meanwhile in Chinese a little change and my mom becomes a horse "
    Which is true,,
    Fun fact when I get overly pissed I start screaming in Chinese it's just a habit lmao

    • @monicapurnamasari1463
      @monicapurnamasari1463 Před 4 lety +21

      For people who dont understand the joke,, the romanized chinese word for mom & horse is actually the same "ma", but has different way to pronounce and different character, though the character is a similar

    • @peisong1114
      @peisong1114 Před 4 lety +19

      From 媽/妈(mom) to 馬/马(horse), all you need is to remove 女.

    • @Groza_Sadika
      @Groza_Sadika Před 4 lety +2

      @@peisong1114 was there that tongue twister, something about mom riding a horse?

    • @peisong1114
      @peisong1114 Před 4 lety +8

      @@Groza_Sadika here you go, 媽媽騎馬馬慢媽媽罵馬 (Mom was riding a horse, but the horse was too slow, so Mom scolded it.)

    • @Groza_Sadika
      @Groza_Sadika Před 4 lety +2

      @@peisong1114 Oh, 谢谢。Btw, is it traditional Chinese?

  • @vnzcz
    @vnzcz Před 3 lety +10

    Japan saw this coming hundreds of years ago, so they have hiragana as a backup plan

    • @anfrex3342
      @anfrex3342 Před 2 lety +2

      That's a lie, they had Harakiri as a backup.

  • @kefler187
    @kefler187 Před 2 lety +5

    I love the one guy at the beginning when asked if he thinks he's familiar with all the Chinese characters, all I hear is a straight up "no" and absolutely no hesitation whatsoever XD!

  • @bepikachuu124
    @bepikachuu124 Před 5 lety +355

    The guy at the back at 2:43
    *me being extra when sees a video shooting😂*

    • @hansroberts2574
      @hansroberts2574 Před 4 lety +7

      Omg I just saw that 😂😂

    • @radhinblitzahmed
      @radhinblitzahmed Před 4 lety +5

      @@hansroberts2574 lol he's doing moonwalk.

    • @juliatzw
      @juliatzw Před 4 lety +7

      he's walking backwards! it's a common exercise in China especially for the elderly :)

  • @chrismay9482
    @chrismay9482 Před 4 lety +201

    0:28 why the woman at the back walkin backwards

    • @wuyi6945
      @wuyi6945 Před 4 lety +5

      She's woman

    • @chrismay9482
      @chrismay9482 Před 4 lety +2

      wuyi lu omg.. I’m sorry-

    • @miguelmontojo9919
      @miguelmontojo9919 Před 4 lety +62

      same person walks backwards again at 2:43

    • @walterpu8357
      @walterpu8357 Před 4 lety +56

      They somehow think this is a good exercise. Old people think this can prevent Alzheimer. I still don’t know why, but it’s actually really fun to do that .Just don’t do that on a crowded street, in a park perhaps.

    • @chrismay9482
      @chrismay9482 Před 4 lety +4

      walter pu ngl... that do sound cool lol

  • @fodorovic
    @fodorovic Před 3 lety

    Interesting topic.Never new about it🌊

  • @andressa_rupf
    @andressa_rupf Před 3 lety +5

    It makes me feel better, but I still thinking hanzi is very important...
    So I will remember this video when I'm studying

  • @rld14344
    @rld14344 Před 4 lety +204

    Teacher: Today we have a surprise essay writing exam.

    • @spaceman6742
      @spaceman6742 Před 4 lety +10

      Yep, it's about corona virus created by chinese

    • @moon_set
      @moon_set Před 4 lety +51

      ​@@spaceman6742 oh look, a moron

    • @egg6220
      @egg6220 Před 3 lety +14

      @@spaceman6742 you're racist bro...

    • @kevinree6461
      @kevinree6461 Před 3 lety +1

      Essay: Write 3000 words about history of China

    • @haeymzmdlcccc
      @haeymzmdlcccc Před 3 lety

      @@Handwritinghelp Be real here. China is a monoethnic country. Chinese is not only a nationality it is also an ethnicity.

  • @AllenWalker15735
    @AllenWalker15735 Před 5 lety +271

    I have always wondered how Chinese people type. Thank you!

    • @AllenWalker15735
      @AllenWalker15735 Před 5 lety +14

      erico1098 Thanks for the additional information.

    • @user-wr5sr1ev8j
      @user-wr5sr1ev8j Před 5 lety +7

      我一直想知道中国人是怎么打字的。谢谢!

    • @user-vy4fe8nj9d
      @user-vy4fe8nj9d Před 5 lety +17

      Meme Generator There are different ways of typing chinese actually. Mostly used is the pinyin, which is typing in the sounds and show the words for u to choose. Another is typing in the strokes

    • @Gugeoji._.
      @Gugeoji._. Před 5 lety +15

      Meme Generator Here in Taiwan we type differently, we have a system called "bopomofo", for example the word for China (中國)is: ㄓㄨㄥ(中) ㄍㄨㄛˊ(國), but I don't know how Hong Konger type Chinese since they don't speak Mandarin much, so they definitely can't use pinyin to type.

    • @arabellat5133
      @arabellat5133 Před 5 lety +8

      I wonder if increasing the use of stroke typing could help people remember how to write characters better.

  • @yzhang2008
    @yzhang2008 Před rokem +2

    Nowadays students type Chinese characters on computer more than they write on paper. This is a major reason.

  • @BernhardKohli
    @BernhardKohli Před 2 lety

    Each language will have quirks that are hard to learn, like the cases in German or the subjonctif in French, etc. It was impressive how educated, yet humble the interviewees were - they knew the words were chosen to be hard to write (eg. everyone would have got ren/person correct or shan/mountain, etc.), yet they were self-critical instead of defensive. Inspiring!

  • @user-mn3tr7zr3p
    @user-mn3tr7zr3p Před 5 lety +404

    Girl: I don't know them all, only the commonly used ones
    Me:Hahaha so you know about 50-100?(I know there are a hell lotta characters but not the exact count)
    Girl: I know only about 3000.
    Me: .......................

    • @pacificdawn5999
      @pacificdawn5999 Před 5 lety +22

      Mridula J 😂Don’t worry. English is even harder. We have to remember 10,000 words for the TOEFL test.

    • @diao8023
      @diao8023 Před 5 lety +29

      Honestly, its not really that much. You take those 3000 characters and combine different parts and they create new characters, some might be so uncommon that nobody thinks about them. 😂

    • @minhtudo
      @minhtudo Před 5 lety +10

      Stephanie D.
      Only 3000 character but combined words are too much and alot of idiom

    • @Ghosty716
      @Ghosty716 Před 5 lety +34

      Tim Lou, and that is harder how? 10 000 english word are still made by 26 letters, 3000 characters can make more words than you'll ever know

    • @michalpitr4474
      @michalpitr4474 Před 5 lety +15

      @@pacificdawn5999 toefl is ludicrously simple to be honest. So i wouldn't really compare the two

  • @OrDinarMan
    @OrDinarMan Před 4 lety +88

    Me: I will learn and study Chinese, yahoohh!!!
    Asian Boss: I don't want you to be in trouble.

  • @laoleadventures
    @laoleadventures Před 2 lety

    nice video, it helps reduce my stress recently, i am learning Chinese myself and get stuck with memorizing characters and become mad, now i know even native speaker still face the same problem, so it made me less worry now.

  • @medisitafebrina802
    @medisitafebrina802 Před 3 lety

    Cool video! Would be badass if you make this video but with Thais and the Thai language.

  • @AllatonceIvan
    @AllatonceIvan Před 5 lety +56

    Haha I’ve once forgot how to write my name in Chinese during a test! HARDEST QUESTION OF MY LIFE HAHA

  • @myhoang369
    @myhoang369 Před 5 lety +300

    Well, in Vietnamese, you can always write a word perfectly right no matter how hard it is to pronounce or if you've never heard that word before :) Also, you can pronounce a word 100% correctly by looking at its written form as well even if you have no idea what the word means :) and I feel grateful for that :)
    Anw, I'm studying Chinese, and from my point of view it is such an amazing language. Chinese intonation is really comfortable to listen to, and Chinese characters are so interesting to learn that I never get bored of them. In fact I enjoy writing the most among the 4 skills. Being a Vietnamese also makes it much easier for me to learn Chinese, since both languages have many things in common (especially a large part of Vietnamese vocabulary was borrowed from Chinese which we call “Han-Viet” words, and these words must account for like 60% of our total vocabulary I believe)

    • @realdeal5712
      @realdeal5712 Před 5 lety +8

      Really? Vietnam is that convenient? I might learn it

    • @leisiyox
      @leisiyox Před 5 lety +11

      @@realdeal5712 That happens also in finnish and spanish!

    • @alria2133
      @alria2133 Před 5 lety +19

      Actually alots of European language have that feature (example is French which makeup Vietnamese's writing now). Except English !!!!

    • @user-uo1dv6pd3u
      @user-uo1dv6pd3u Před 5 lety

      Oh ok I see 🤔

    • @phuonglinhnguyenngoc8934
      @phuonglinhnguyenngoc8934 Před 5 lety +3

      nope it’s nowhere near 70-80%

  • @marisolflandez3964
    @marisolflandez3964 Před rokem

    Great content. I'm learning mandarin and this is enlightening

  • @naveenmanjhi5776
    @naveenmanjhi5776 Před rokem +2

    What a relief! I'm learning Chinese, the language has nearly 100k characters. I feel so relaxed seeing that we only need about 2-4k to communicate or read articles online or go to any visit any place that uses only Chinese characters.
    Still It'll take me about 3-4 years to learn those 2-3k characters and another 5-10 years to master it 💀

  • @asdx88
    @asdx88 Před 5 lety +91

    As a Korean(i really loved studying Chinese when i was in high school and then, I met a great wall of Hanzi)
    Hanzi 😭
    Pronounciation 😰(most difficult part)
    Grammars 😍 (it's totally different with Korean but easy to understand)
    When I learn Japanese,
    Grammars 😄
    Pronounciation 😙 (slightly difficult for tsu and j sound but mostly ok)
    Kanji 😭
    Fyi, for English,
    Grammars 😅(not that hard, but i don't think i can ever be perfect on this...) Pronounciation 😌
    alphabet 😍
    Newly created words and phrasal verbs i can't even guess the meaning 😢

    • @haroldzee2978
      @haroldzee2978 Před 5 lety +5

      Nice emoji

    • @raynoldregan3669
      @raynoldregan3669 Před 5 lety +1

      JY Jang
      I have selective photographic memory so it's easy for me to learn any and all languages.
      I just kinda watch chinese movies, read chinese online news, and memorize the entire dictionary.

    • @rowo175
      @rowo175 Před 5 lety +6

      Cute comment

    • @xiaoyugao9567
      @xiaoyugao9567 Před 5 lety +2

      You’re so cute

    • @zhangluis1880
      @zhangluis1880 Před 5 lety

      加油