In this episode, we welcome back Wesley (from our last episode) to share some of the more fascinating aspects of the Chinese language including:
– How abbreviations work in Chinese (and how they differ from English)
– Why Chinese can’t be the next global language
– Why understanding Chinese culture is so important to understanding Chinese
– The actual meaning of “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon”
– How chengyus are formed, used and developed
– Sarcasm in Chinese culture and how it’s used
– How he learns and uses chengyus, and how this differs from how native speakers learn them
– Why accents in Chinese don’t matter
– Why Chinese TV has Chinese subtitles
– How the writing system of dialects like Taiwanese has evolved
– The multiple ways that dialects can be subtitled
– “False friends” in Chinese
– How colors in Chinese are used differently than they are in English
– Why language learning is a series of plateaus with no distinct peak