The agonies of an ABC learning Chinese
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As most readers of Language Log know, ABC means "American-born Chinese". Depending upon how (in)sensitive their parents are, learning Chinese can be hell, and leave them scarred for life.
The actors in this video are brilliant and the tale it tells reveals so much about the trials and pitfalls of learning Chinese overseas.
If only little Paul's dragon mom had let him learn "xuéshēng" for "student" instead of 学生 or 學生, he would have been literate in Chinese within a month, rather than never.
Selected readings
- "Pinyin for ABCs" (6/14/20) — also brilliant! must watch!
- "Linsanity" (2/16/12)
- "Writing Sinitic languages with phonetic scripts" (5/20/16)
- "The Westernization of Chinese" (9/6/12)
- "Pinyin memoirs" (8/13/16)
- "Pinyin for the Prez" (10/25/18)
- "Pinyin in practice" (10/13/11)
- "The impact of phonetic inputting on Chinese languages" (12/9/19)
- "Pure Pinyin" (10/15/16)
- "Pinyin vs. Sinographs" (7/20/19)
- "Too tired to love: new set phrases in Pinyin" (12/23/19)
- "Pinyin for phonetic annotation" (10/27/18)
- "The uses of Hanyu pinyin" (5/22/16)
- "On not speaking Taiwanese" (12/2/18)
- "Receptive multilingualism" (11/27/18)
- "The future of Chinese language learning is now" (4/5/14)
- "Firestorm over Chinese characters" (5/23/16)
- "Backward Thinking about Orientalism and Chinese Characters" (5/16/16)
- "Chinese character inputting" (19/17/15)
- "Stroke order inputting" (10/30/11)
- "Cantonese input methods" (1/20/15)
- "Google Translate Chinese inputting" (1/27/13)
- "Creeping Romanization in Chinese" (8/30/12)
- "Chinese Typewriter" (6/30/09)
- "Chinese typewriter, part 2" (4/17/11)
- "Abandoning one's mother tongue" (1/6/17)
[Thanks to rit malors]
Mark Liberman said,
June 6, 2025 @ 3:50 pm
Compare "No sabo kids", 9/16/2023. And the relevant YouTube collection…
Jonathan Smith said,
June 6, 2025 @ 4:58 pm
ruguo bei zhidao wo bu renshi Zhongwen you mei shi 如果被知道我不认识中文又没事 etc. etc. Yikes, same guy wrote the titles.
Re: "literacy" in pinyin — problem is there's almost nothing to read.
Wonder why the Chinese / Chinese-American gehe 隔阂 'estrangement barrier' should be so profound, a phenomenon which leaves the latter "diasporic" community on rather a lonely island given persistent flagrant othering/racism in the U.S… I guess that it is at least on balance an economically prosperous island?
Speaking of which why is the Chinese (admittedly kinda niche) term Huayi Meiguoren 华裔美国人 (lit. 'American of Chinese ancestry') better than English "Chinese American" and way damn better than "American-born Chinese" which is practically scandalous… mysteries.
Victor Mair said,
June 6, 2025 @ 7:56 pm
Where was Hebrew literature before 20th-century Hebreew speakers started to write it?
Victor Mair said,
June 7, 2025 @ 4:24 am
And how much Hangul writing was there at the beginning of the 20th century, compared to how much Hangul literature there is now, such a proliferation, in all genres.