There are a lot of languages to choose from; it’s easy to get lost in the choice and not dedicate yourself to one. I’ve jumped between Spanish, Japanese, Latin, and now I’m on Chinese.
In addition, from my mild experience, Chinese does seem more difficult than the alternatives out there.
So what’s your reason?
My current reason is the amount of speakers. There’s (last I checked) over 1.3 billion Mandarin speakers. That’s an entire different world that I have little to no clue about.
Since I have some Chinese friends and I get Chinese food pretty often I wanted to learn their language. It would be cool to order in Chinese. I want to see their face light up when I pull it off one day
Watching those videos of foreigners out-of-nowhere speaking Chinese are definitely entertaining.
Must feel pretty nice to be the guy doing the surprising!
A friend of mine studied Chinese for something like seven or eight years some time ago, and got to the intermediate level. We chat of many things, and among these, Chinese has been popping up now and then, to the point that it’s aroused my curiosity. So I suppose it’s a mixture of trying something new and getting to know my friend’s world better.
I’ve been learning English all my life; apart from that, I studied Latin for one year at school (and I loved it!), German for four years, though I’ve forgotten everything (I got this job where I was supposed to go and live in Germany, though it didn’t work out in the end), French for one year (it didn’t appeal to me at all, so I thought I’d have a go at it to make sure, and confirmed I didn’t like it!), and Italian for one year (I loved it, but I had to stop because I got a new job that left me no free time). Knowing myself, I suppose I’ll quit Chinese before long, too, but who knows?
I echo that same reasoning of their being so many speakers of Mandarin, an entirely different world and culture out there to explore. Additionally, ever since I was little I have actually always wanted to travel to China. Growing up in the US, at least where I live, China was kind of given this aura as being like the complete opposite of the US, and it kind of mystified China for me. I feel like most people actually have very little understanding of China and it’s culture here in the US. For most people I talk to that’s why they wouldn’t want to travel to China and would rather go to a country like Japan that they understand more, a country that aligns more politically with the US, but for me it was the opposite in that it only built more interest for me to go to China. I plan on going next summer so I’m putting my nose to the grindstone and getting to work on learning Mandarin. I also have lots of Chinese friends and Chinese food is among my absolute favorite!
As a mono-lingual English speaker I always though being able to speak a 2nd language was very cool, but I had no motivation other than to vaguely wish I can learn them without effort. But then I started dating and eventually married my ethnically Chinese wife. Her family are originally from Shanghai, but moved to Australia when my wife was 4 years old, so my wife grew up here in Aus and is an Aus citizen etc. At home her parents spoke Shanghainese (i.e. not Mandarin), so my wife doesn’t actually speak Mandarin. Once she finished high-school and moved out to go to university, her parents moved back to China. Having live in Aus for ~18 years her parents English wasn’t that bad when I first met them, but that was ~18 years ago. While it was never great, slowly though their English got worse and worse. I thought about learning Shanghainese because that’s what they all chat in, but no dictionary, hardly any teachers, no real resources of any kind, and far more niche. My in-laws told me don’t bother, just learn Mandarin so I started to learn Mandarin to be able to chat to them in around 2012-2014 ish.
I initially made good progress, but then wife and I had our first kid and I didn’t study for over 6 years and forgot basically everything. Once the kids got old enough that I had free time, and my in-laws English worsened further I restarted learning in ~2020. They’re in their late 70’s now, and their English is almost non-xistent these days, they struggle to talk to my kids, but I’m still learning Mandarin (all be it pretty slowly).
It’s a pretty weird setup though - my in-laws chat to my wife in Shanghainese, I chat to them in Mandarin, and I talk to my wife in English. Always funny when we’re in China and I (the very white guy) is the one talking Chinese while my Chinese wife mostly uses English. I get to feel special though so it works out well for me
