/lit/ - Literature

>>17861102
they're racist against non whites, in case you're an hispanic in the US

>>17861102
Don't do it. Someone post the /int/ post about the guy who learned Chinese and massively regretted it.

>>17861102
enjoy hell OP

>>17861102
me too OP, i'm planning on moving there after i get my math degree. bumping for interest.

DON'T. LEARN. MANDARIN.

There are two really good Chinese language exchange discords that you can find with the regular search feature on Discord. I go on them every day to chat a bit and listen to others talk, which is extremely good practice. There's actually a lot of Chinese people, who go on there to get help with their English.

Before that, try the Pimsleur courses, the Integrated Chinese series, and more than anything, use the HSK as a guide, because it is a test designed by the Chinese government with formerly 6 and now I think 10 levels that has identified for you a good order to learn vocabulary and grammatical structures. Using something like this as a guide helps to give you a foothold and checkpoints in what can otherwise be an overwhelming task.

Unfortunately, you really need a tutor for at least a few months in the very beginning to help you with the pronunciation, or you stand very little chance of being understood. For Westerners, the tones are just too hard to hear and reproduce without some guidance by a native speaker.

Once you can carry on a basic conversation, use HelloTalk or other language exchange service (in addition to what I've mentioned above) to establish a genuine friendship with a person you want to talk to every day, and then talk to them every day. I really do mean every day. This is absolutely invaluable. I have been talking with the same Chinese girl for 18 months and I would consider us to be real friends now and the effect writing to her every day (and talking occasionally) has had on my Chinese is enormous. Having a true friend who you want to talk to will make you use Chinese every day, even on days when you don't feel like studying, because it ends up not really feeling burdensome like studying would.

Overall, learning Chinese is a very attainable goal if you are willing to devote 1-2 hours to it every day, and I really do mean every day. I can now carry on conversations about most topics, be understood, and enjoy most dramas and TV shows. It's an extremely rewarding experience and once you get over the first couple humps, it's a truly thrilling experience unmatched by learning any European language, in my opinion. When you can make a Chinese person laugh at a joke you made in Chinese or have your pen pal confide something in you because your personality has come through in your Chinese writings and she has come to consider you a true friend, it is thrilling.

Devote 1-3 hours to it every day and I guarantee that it will be the most rewarding experience in your life.

I am near-fluent now, so I can offer more specific advice if you would like it. The bottom line is: do it every day; make friendships with people who you would want to talk to every day through language exchange services; start with a tutor (though you won't necessarily need this indefinitely, but it would be helpful); watch soap operas (the Korean ones dubbed into Chinese are some of my favorites); and keep you long-term goals in mind to power through.

>>17861136
Hispanic is not a race retard

>>17861263
>>17861192

>>17861291
yes, but just in case he's not hispanic he could be non white, and it would be likeable to happen

>>17861334
likely* (heh)

>>17861192
This sums up what a mandarin teacher used to tell me. It’s not worth it. Unless you study it diligently for at least 3 or 4 years and then decide to move to China for a couple of years to master the language, you’ll never be fluent enough to earn the respect of the middle/upper classes.

>>17861263
I will also say that drilling vocabulary is probably more important for Chinese than for European languages, because you're not going to come across identifiable cognates that make remembering things easier. There is more "grunt work" to do with Chinese than for most languages because you have to learn how to identify the characters by sight and also don't get any "free words" like in Spanish or French, where the meaning is immediately obvious to an English speaker.

The most important thing is to add into your study pattern the consumption of media that you genuinely enjoy or whose story compels you to keep reading (because of the plot, for example). You want to *want* to study -- to achieve this, some of your study materials (like soap operas) should interest you because they are truly interesting. It is to easy to fall into the trap of trying to study "efficiently" with textbooks or other highly structured resources, but these will inevitable be boring and provide your brain with no compelling, fun experience to make it *want* to study. You should not feel a mere "duty" to study, because it's not sustainable. You need to find resources in Chinese that truly make you want to do the work, because otherwise it's just too frustrating and discouraging.

Serious recommendation, read Chink moege VNs with the texthooker once you get past HSK 4. It will get you accustomed to sentence structure, slowly introduce unfamiliar words, have context clues that can be relied on (sounds, expressions), and is largely conversational. I recommend not to read something too literary, as their way of phrasing things is daunting until you learn more. And historical Chinese is laughably complex for any non-native speaker. You really have to be completely fluent to pick up something like Water Margin in Chinese

>>17861102
>so I can move to China

Not Taiwan? Are you sure?

>>17861102
The guy from the pic you posted has a recommended literature chart

>>17861144
Why is that one greentext about the steel salesman the one and only response people ever have to learning Chinese?

>>17861263
Do you know of any spanish discords

>>17861891
I don't, but I recommend going to R*ddit - they gave me the lead I needed to find the Chinese ones, and I imagine it would be even easier with Spanish. Just go to the language learning subreddits, either the general one or the one for Spanish specifically.

>>17861102
>move to China
lol

I find Chinese to be an interesting language and Mandarin Chinese is what I am learning (I also know English, Spanish and Punjabi). I would like to go to China someday (and I hope the political situation between the USA and China remains stable enough to let that happen). That said, living in China is a big jump. Are you ethnically Chinese? I don’t think China would be a nice place for non-Chinese and non-White people.

>>17861102
>What do you recommend doing
Go to >>>/int/

>>17861102
>learn Chinese
>move to China
You've inadvertently sold your soul OP

>>17862914
Moving to China is extreme, but I fail to see how learning a language (besides English) is a soulless activity

I've moved to China, I've studied Chinese, but I can't recommend you lit in the language because having studied it for years I still get filtered by most books. Reading in Chinese is simply not an enjoyable experience. Chinese lit is either heavily vernacular with dialogue written in regional dialect, or pompously verbose, and laden with obscure idioms and literary allusions. I can recommend you Chinese lit in English, though. But no one here is interested in that.

Learn Russian or French. Languages that will expand your mind and soul.

>>17864384
>French
How to into français?

>>17861192
The absolute worst part of doing business in China is the nightly mandatory binge drinking and whoring. A lot of people like to joke "haha party and women haha" but it is a real nightmare. Every single night for weeks at a time going to some shitty restaurant with all the business partners, drinking shitty Chinese liquor, then going to some shitty brothel. At least with the brothels you can slip out, but half the time they will book a private room at a restaurant and bring the whores in there, after excusing the female employees of the company, and you have to watch 20 naked ugly middle age Chinese business men heaving over prostitutes while ear splitting karaoke music plays. And if you don't participate they think you are gay and don't want to do business with you.

Bigger companies often hire white expats specifically to do the partying so their actual employees don't have to, but with smaller companies you have to get involved.

>>17861102
You ready to wait. I’ve been trying to go to Asia for 2 years and borders don’t look like they’re going to be opening until 2024 at least.

>>17863715
How long have you been learning? Is Classical that different from Mandarin?
I would love to read the Chinese classics in the original, but I've read people that say morw or less the same as you. Sinking thousands of hours to still get filtered makes me think that I would be better off with German or Russian. Especially since my only drive towards China is the lit (no intention of moving or doing bussiness).

>>17863715

Not OP but do you have any good recs for contemporary Chinese lit in English anon? I've read a few (Ge Fei's Invisibility Cloak, some Eileen Chang, some Qiu Miaojin (technically Taiwanese, idk if you were just considering writers from specifically mainland China or not)) but I'm interested in finding more. The ones I've read were just what I came across randomly and thought looked interesting, I've got no idea who are supposed to be major writers or not.

>>17864746
>How long have you been learning?
4 years in total, i lived there for two years and have continued studying (albeit probably not as hard as i should) since coming back home.
>Is Classical that different from Mandarin?
It *is* different, but I think that difference is exaggerated. The problem isn't so much the grammar or the sentence structure, although the brevity can result in ambiguity, since the modern language is rife with idioms with origins in the classical language, rather it's the habit of using obscure characters in classical texts that make them a nightmare to read, for learners especially, but for native speakers too. Saying that, most of my interaction with Chinese nowadays comes thru engaging classical texts with the help of modern translations and commentaries. A lot of editions of classical texts in Chinese include a modern translation alongside the original. I've no intention of reading any more novels in the language. It's a pain in the ass and not worth the effort.
>Especially since my only drive towards China is the lit (no intention of moving or doing bussiness).
i moved to China and studied the language on a whim purely because I had the opportunity. Even though I've read a decent amount of Chinese lit, I don't see it as especially good or interesting outside of a few outstanding works, too few to merit learning for the sake of reading in the original, an idea I think is kind of a meme desu. Considering the history and the population, compared with Europe and the Americas, it's a cultural wasteland frankly.

>>17864764
i particularly like these novels because they avoid the sentimentality that plagues a lot of Chinese works:

Cao Naiqian - There's Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night
Liu Heng - Black Snow
Lu Xun - Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
Mo Yan - Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

p.s. NYRB have a new Ge Fei translation out that looks quite good, and Columbia do a good series of Chinese lit in translation, worth looking up.

>>17865109
Based anon. I'm a year into learning, can't talk for fuck, but am getting to the point of understanding kid's tv.

Have you read Can Xue, what do you think of her? I have a translation of one of her collections and it seems 50% obscure for obscure's sake dreamy meandering and 50% the best shit ever.

Also moving to China soon. I took two intensive courses in Uni and spend half an hour on Duolingo everyday to keep me sharp-ish.

>>17865133
Glad to hear of your progress, anon. Can Xue's not really my thing at all, but my friend who's into pomo shit thinks she's exceptional. My literary tastes are more realist. I think the Cao Naiqian book mentioned above is the best thing out of China that's been translated into English, it's very much on the absolute other end of the spectrum to Can Xue.

>>17865109

Thanks for the recs Anon, I'll check them out. All of the Chinese lit I've read so far has been from NYRB, so I'll give the new Ge Fei a look too, though I'm admittedly not completely sold on him - I remember enjoying The Invisibility Cloak when I read it, but now a year later I can't say it had any lasting impression on me at all.

>>17861102
>I want to learn Chinese
>so I can move to China

>>17861192
it's a 4chan post so it must be true!

>>17865744
I'm not OP but I don't see why his statement is drawing so much confusion. If there's nothing keeping you in your country and you don't like it there, China is probably one of the best places to go. By all accounts, they have a bright future.

>>17861263
Great info, anon. I've been learning Chinese on and off for some time and I can echo the need for regularity. At my peak last lockdown, I'd spend over an hour a day drilling vocabulary by writing words on paper and even though I had to suspend it for lack of time now, lot of it remains in memory.
I also have Beijing Uni Press graded readers on their way and I literally listen to audio from NPCR and one other textbook to drill hearing and memorise pronunciation.

So, do I need to go to fedora forums to find those discord channels you allude to?

Go to Japan instead

>>17864441
>The absolute worst part of doing business in China is the nightly mandatory binge drinking and whoring. A lot of people like to joke "haha party and women haha" but it is a real nightmare. Every single night for weeks at a time going to some shitty restaurant with all the business partners, drinking shitty Chinese liquor, then going to some shitty brothel. At least with the brothels you can slip out, but half the time they will book a private room at a restaurant and bring the whores in there, after excusing the female employees of the company, and you have to watch 20 naked ugly middle age Chinese business men heaving over prostitutes while ear splitting karaoke music plays. And if you don't participate they think you are gay and don't want to do business with you.
>Bigger companies often hire white expats specifically to do the partying so their actual employees don't have to, but with smaller companies you have to get involved.
Literally the same as Japan except the whores.

>>17866121
>So, do I need to go to fedora forums to find those discord channels you allude to?
https://discord.gg/chineselanguage

>>17865109
Have you read any Chinese poetry? I'm surprised no one's mentioned it yet considering how important the Tang poets are in the Chinese canon.

>>17866235
i've read a few of the zen poets, i'm fairly familiar with chinese buddhist terminology so it was alright, and a while ago i memorized a bunch from the shijing. A project i've been working on for a while is extracting interesting expressions from classic chinese lit to use in my (chinese) writing. so i intend on getting thru the major poets eventually.

the enthusiastic effortpost upthread has made me feel a little bad about being so down on the whole thing, though my inherent cynicism makes me doubt the near-fluent claims, i reject a fluency as possibility altogether, but anyway, it's made me think that maybe i should give one of these language partner apps a try, maybe it'd change my outlook

>>17865983
>it's a 4chan post so it must be false!

>>17861102
>I want to learn Chinese so I can move to China
retarded thirdie, you do it the other way around, go to china and learn chinese there, uneducated pleb

>>17865983
found the shill

>>17866323
>go to china and learn chinese there
Honestly, if someone was kidnapped and dropped into a random part of China, how long would it take for them to go from illiteracy to fluency in Chinese?

>>17861102
People here fucking hate China so don't be dissuaded and take anecdotal shit like >>17861192 this with a massive grain of salt. Chinese people love it when you try and speak their language and will be very encouraging.

For learning the language, Integrated Chinese is the Mandarin version of Genki, it's really good. Throws you in the deep end with the characters straight away, doesn't baby you with pinyin until lesson x. You really need to start memorising characters right off the bat, aim for 3-5 a day and you can start reading simple books in a year.

It's essential that you get your pronunciation right. I recommend you get a teacher at the beginning and periodically to brush up on your diction, English speakers normally struggle with the retroflex sounds (zh, ch, sh, r). Drill listening to tones, they're not as bad as everyone says once you get over the hurdle of recognising them.

The most important thing is constant practice and repetition. You won't get anywhere if you don't put practice, practice, practice. I can't stress enough how important it is to memorise characters at a reasonable pace - if you only learn 10 a week it will take you 3-4 years to be fluent assuming you retain them all.

>>17866201
Just to add: I know it's a subreddit's Discord, but it has been far more helpful to me than 4channel has been

>>17866436
at that pace you'd only know at most 2000, that's nowhere close to fluency, only enough to read a newspaper article with effort

>>17866458
What is fluency then
My goal (I dunno how ambitious it is) is to be able to read Dr. Suess tier stuff in Chinese by the end of the year. Right now I am just learning tones. Is it doable

>>17866464
> Right now I am just learning tones
No way lol

>>17866509
I’m not the anon you were talking to, I am very new to Chinese

>>17866329
Hong Kong will be destroyed

>>17867053
I wonder if people who wanted to learn Russian in the Cold War also had the political tension memes to deal with

>>17867071
Meds.

>>17866548
And that's not the anon you were talking to either (i am), as to your question, I'd say fluency is being able to express myself as naturally as i do in english and to be able to read books as easily as i can in English. But maybe people mean something else when they say fluent.

>I want to learn Chinese so I can move to China
>so I can move to China

>>17867142
fag

>>17861102
Dumb fuck.

>>17861102
>so I can move to China
Do you plan on teaching English or what?

>>17861192
This is just boorish racism. There’s cunts everywhere. An actual reason not to learn Chinese is that it’s difficult to settle there as a westerner

>>17868769
>I don't like to hear the truth, therefore, it's racism
???

>>17868769
>boorish racism
woman detected

>>17861192
Funny larp but I'm not going to China to be an Alibaba nigger businessman

>>17863715
post links faggot

>>17869677
cope

>>17870287
t. Jap

>>17861102
Chyna

>>17861102
Enjoy being spied on you shit for brains. I wouldn't move to Chyna unless I was an actual spy which honestly I could be just to spite the US government which I hate with a white heat of ferocity.

>amerilards shit up another thread

>>17866369
Depends on the person I guess, I have found in my experience learning to speak a language is easily than learning to read it.

>>17868769
>This is just boorish racism.
> An actual reason not to learn Chinese is that it’s difficult to settle there as a westerner.
That’s exactly what he says in>>17861192

>>17861102
What makes you think they'll let you in? Unless you've been invited or you're a tourist you'll be told to fuck off. If you say you can speak chinese they'll be even more suspicious.
>>17864441
Exactly right. The manifest self-loathing and utterly desperate shallow hedonism is truly astounding. They make westerners seem ascetic.

>NEEE HAO WOH SHIR MAY-GWO-RENN
>Aiii-Ohh! You-ah Chinese-ah sooo good! We make friends yes?
>既然我們是社會主義者,我們必須也是反猶主義者。因為我們想戰勝最可惡的物質主義和拜金主義,你怎麼能當一個不是反猶主義者的社會主義者?
>Ohh :( You-ah Chinese-ah not so good. I no understand. *removes you from wechat*

Move to china anon. Don't listen to these salty americoids. Insha'Allah china will nuke america

>>17864441
I know a few people who do business in China and they’ve never mentioned the whoring (drinking, yes) and trust me they would have mentioned it.

>>17870446
Implying the US government isn’t already spying on us? We have social credit score too it’s just based on how much you hate white people and not based on doing good for the country like China.

Just be aware that if you do ever move to China and decide to come back to the US, you’ll be basically blacklisted from military service or working for the government and things like that. Well, okay. You won’t be blacklisted but it will make things very difficult.

>>17872411
you were so close to common sense until the last part

>>17872431
It’s true. Look up the things you lose or gain social credit score for in China.

>>17861758
because it sums up what everyone eventually experiences when they have to deal with chinkoid businesses themselves, and no more needs to be said

>>17861758
because it conviniently absolves them of all fault in failing to learn the language
it's good they didn't learn, because bad things would happen otherwise
now even newfags can just post that image and never have to think about learning Chinese again
also Americans lack the mental faculties to effortpost so they just gather other people's opinions and defend them to death

>>17872718
it's literally a sample size of one
my friend made a bunch of Chinese contacts that he now uses to run a fulfilled-by-amazon passive nearly-passive income scheme, and he's never told me about anything close to what's in that greentext

>tfw ywn move to a cozy small town in china
>inb4 seethe
i'm asian btw

>>17873638
>cozy small town in china
population 3 million

so many people go to SEA to become monks
wonder if people go to china as well to take refuge in taoist/buddhist monasteries

>>17872426
> you’ll be basically blacklisted from military service or working for the government
the horror

>>17872071
>>既然我們是社會主義者,我們必須也是反猶主義者。因為我們想戰勝最可惡的物質主義和拜金主義,你怎麼能當一個不是反猶主義者的社會主義者?

>>17865744
China has advanced way past the west.
Look at the map. The entire country is one giant city.