Video summary
The video critiques a popular piece of advice suggesting that learning Chinese characters and tones is a waste of time, arguing instead that this approach leads to significant long-term difficulties for learners. The speaker emphasizes that while Mandarin grammar is often considered simple compared to European languages due to the lack of gender, articles, or complex conjugations, the language compensates with high contextual complexity and unique structural elements like measure words and aspect markers. Unlike Spanish, where rules can be mastered and then applied automatically, Chinese requires a fundamental shift in thinking patterns because nearly every concept found in English does not have a direct equivalent. Consequently, relying on shortcuts that ignore these linguistic realities creates barriers that are much harder to overcome than the initial learning curve suggests.
One of the most dangerous pieces of advice highlighted is the suggestion to ignore tones entirely and pronounce words "freestyle" without regard for pitch. The speaker explains that while this might seem manageable in the early stages or when communicating with other foreigners, it quickly becomes a liability when interacting with native speakers who expect standard pronunciation. Ignoring tones from the start trains learners to speak in a way that is unintelligible to locals, leading to a situation where common words are misunderstood completely—such as confusing "mother" with "horse." Unlike languages with pitch accents like Japanese, where context often saves communication, Mandarin relies heavily on correct tonal usage for clarity; failing to master this early forces learners to spend hundreds of hours later undoing bad habits that have become deeply ingrained.
Similarly, the recommendation to avoid learning characters initially is presented as a short-sighted strategy that hinders progress once a learner reaches an intermediate level. Although it is theoretically possible to function in China without reading or writing, doing so effectively limits one's ability to navigate daily life, read signs, understand subtitles, and communicate efficiently with locals who expect literate speakers. The speaker argues that characters are not arbitrary drawings but essential components of the language that allow for pattern recognition and vocabulary expansion. While technology can help guess meanings via pinyin input, relying on it indefinitely prevents learners from internalizing the logic of the writing system, ultimately slowing down their ability to read and comprehend complex texts as they advance.
In conclusion, the video asserts that the only sustainable path to fluency in Mandarin Chinese is to embrace both tones and characters from the very beginning, despite the initial frustration they cause. The speaker admits that learning without these elements might offer a temporary speed boost, but the gains are quickly lost when learners hit the intermediate plateau where reading and accurate pronunciation become necessary for genuine communication. By struggling with these challenges upfront, learners avoid the painful realization later on that their progress has stalled because they cannot be understood or read by native speakers. The ultimate message is clear: there is no getting around the core components of the language, and ignoring them guarantees that a learner will eventually hit a ceiling where further improvement becomes nearly impossible without going back to fix foundational errors.
Read the full video transcript
What's up, grinders? Welcome back to the
channel. Today, we're going to be doing
a react to this video right here.
Learning Chinese characters first is a
waste of time. Now, I've already seen
this video. We're not going to react to
the whole thing. Probably react to about
half of it. Uh because the second half
is not really needed. However, I'm going
to say straight up when I watched this,
I was like, whoa, this is like there is
so much bad information here. It's not
funny. Now, the guy seems like a super
chill guy, nice person, everything. like
no hate on him, but the advice here is
absolutely terrible when it comes to
learning Mandarin Chinese. And take this
from someone who's at an intermediate
level already in the language, okay?
Because well, just like everyone else,
when I first started out, I thought I
could get away with this [ __ ] as well.
So, I'm going to uh watch the video.
We're going to react to those parts and
I'm going to tell you what's really
going to happen if you think this way.
>> Today, I'm going to show to you why
Chinese is one of the easiest language
you could learn. First of all, it is
already well known that the grammar of
Mandarin is ridiculously easy. There's
no
>> Now, when people say the grammar of
Mandarin is easy, they describe it as
easy because they look at what European
languages have and Chinese lacks that.
Therefore, Chinese is easy. But Chinese
has to make up for that. It can't just
get rid of that stuff without any loss
to function of the language, right? So,
Chinese becomes difficult in other ways.
It becomes highly contextual. There's a
lot of aspect markers which we are not
used to using as foreign as like uh
westerners. Okay. And then it has its
own random weird systems like the
measure word system. It sometimes it
almost acts like a case system with
specific words acting as case markers
like bar which then takes the object of
a sentence and slaps it basically to the
beginning of the sentence changing it
from a a subjectverb object to a topic
based language. There's so many aspects
to the grammar which are complex in
different ways that we would expect and
then to add on top of all of that it
becomes more difficult just due to the
way the language thinks. So as someone
who's also learning Spanish right now
and I'm now also learning the grammar of
Spanish because I took a very input
heavy approach. Okay? I am going through
the grammar phase of Spanish and I can
see why people say it's hard. It's
because there's obviously a lot of
different endings and those endings
change based on, you know, is it male,
is it female, is it plural, is it, you
know, like is the subject plural or not?
Because obviously verbs and nouns of
sorry, objects, they all change. Okay.
Now, realistically, I'm looking at all
this and going, okay, I can see the
complexity there. But once you learn
those rules, the thinking of the
language, like how how a Spanish person
thinks, it's not far removed from how
someone who speaks English thinks or
Espiranto thinks, okay? Like it's still
pretty much the same language just with
some extra rules added on top that make
things more complex. Mandarin Chinese,
however, thinks different and that's
where the complexity comes into it. Not
so much in the the literal rules of the
grammar you need to learn, it's in the
fact that you need to change your
thinking. no gender, there's no article,
there's no case, there's no plural. And
uh yes, basically every single concept
you found in the English language does
not exist in the Chinese grammar. So
that is well known. However, there are
two major difficulties people use to
prove that Chinese is
>> So obviously I always fundamentally
disagree on that aspect. Okay, I prefer
Spanish grammar because I know once I've
learned the rules and I've automated
them, then I can basically just think
with my English brain, you know, like
you're not too far off the mark there.
There's obviously some minor
differences, you know, in how things are
swapped around, but eh, it's not that
difficult. Like, I'm starting to get the
hang of it already. Okay, but with
Chinese, it's just you just got to think
different. Everything operates
differently. It's
>> actually very hard to learn. People
would say, "Well, your grammar is easy,
but you have characters." For example,
this one.
such characters is a bit useless because
there's no association between the way
it is written and the way it is
pronounced and this brings me
>> now obviously some people are going to
go down the comments section they're
going to say well for specific
characters there is a phmic component
and then there is also like a meaning
component and sometimes the phmic
component you know is related to
pronunciation uh so if you see that
component you know across most words
it's going to be similar well at least
1,000 years ago blah blah blah blah okay
I get what he's saying right now is like
obviously you look at that like
especially the you know the one on the
right ma that they're being horse okay
that's just a pictographic character
like it was literally just someone who
drew a horse a couple thousand years ago
and now that's what they use for horse
to the second major difficulty people
use to say that Chinese is very hard to
learn the pronunciation for example this
one is pronounced ma and people would
tell you that if you pronounce it
slightly incorrectly not ma but ma then
you actually land it in a different
character a different So this means mom,
this means horse. So then people say
this is so subtle. I can never master
it. And uh this is really difficult for
me to learn. And indeed those people
they are partially right because these
two aspect the characters and the
pronunciations are the source of almost
all the pain the Chinese.
>> Okay. So as a learner tones are a pain
at the start. Once you get past it, you
will always screw them up at some point
or another that's unavoidable, okay? But
they're not so difficult down the track.
Characters are just a a constant ongoing
annoyance because you're just constantly
learning more of them. Now, I've made
videos on characters before. There's
lots of systems out there that claim to
teach you characters, you know, using
their special method about how you
learn, you know, the different
components and then that gives you this
amount of characters and you use these
funny little stories to remember them.
Realistically, at the end of the day,
you're basically going to brute force
your way through the characters. Brute
force recognition. If it comes to
writing, even more brute force, okay?
Like you will learn each little element,
then you add them together. But then
obviously with traditional Chinese and
simplified Chinese, it's different.
Traditional is actually probably easier
to remember in some ways while
simplified is like easier to write but
there's more exceptions because
obviously characters have been modified
uh to be simplified but these things are
just ongoing pain. Realistically I think
that the difficulty for me and Mandarin
Chinese it's just the way of thinking
like it's it's always hard to just get
into the mindset. When I'm talking about
way of thinking I also mean you know the
the semantic ground that the words
cover. So like if you look at say
English, Aspana, Spanish, most verbs for
instance, the their meaning is almost
the same across all three languages.
Sure, you say them differently, but
there may be some semantic shift. You
know, some might some verbs might have a
little bit more space, you know, more
things they can cover in one language as
opposed to another, but generally
they're lined up. Men are in Chinese.
It's just [ __ ] everything's just
different. Okay? It's just all
different. Like only the most basic of
words and even those will okay like for
example the word ya which can mean going
to want
about to
you know and like a need like it's got
so many different meanings okay like it
does not it's not an easy word to learn
it's a very common word it's not an easy
word to learn because it has so many
different meanings okay then you got
that times thousands and thousands where
all the word like nearly no word matches
up with English so there's So there's no
point where you just look at one word go
okay that's it English meaning cool now
I can move forward it just doesn't
happen
>> imaginary than real so that by the end
of this video you will no longer be
afraid of both of them and you will not
have the pain people used to suffer in
the standard way of learning Chinese
okay let's start with pronunciation
so my thesis is that you should forget
about the toms completely you should for
>> this is where he lost me I was like wait
what
okay now I'll let him Forget about the
first to ma second to ma ma ma ma. All
these four tones you should forget about
it and act as if they don't exist. You
should pronounce you should pronounce
every character freestyle without the
tones.
>> Pronounce every character freestyle in a
language where the tones literally
determine the meaning.
>> And uh and you would say well if I do it
this way I would not be able to
understand. I would sound ridiculous.
Well, first of all, in the beginning,
you might sound ridiculous, but
gradually through time, it will get
better.
>> This doesn't happen, and I know this
from experience uh with others who were
learning Mandarin Chinese who tried to
just [ __ ] freestyle it. Like they
didn't they tried to like just listen to
the word without ever learning any tones
and just kind of mimicking it. Okay,
someone who's such as this guy here who
knows English, when he hears you
speaking Chinese, he'll be like, "Oh,
okay. This is kind of what you mean."
like his ear adjusted to a a non-native
speaking his language. You try to pull
this [ __ ] off with someone who doesn't
speak English in China, good luck for
them understanding you, okay? Like
sometimes they even struggle
understanding other people from freaking
other regions, you know, when they're
they're all speaking the standard
dialect, which is okay. So, like if you
try to just freestyle the [ __ ] no one's
going to understand you. And you're then
going to cement in I don't like to use
the word fossilize because it's got lots
of different meanings, but like you're
then going to train yourself to speak in
a very very very English manner because
you're trying this from day one. You you
can't even recognize the tones at this
point. You're just recognizing general
ups and downs within words and the and
the sounds of the language. Okay? And
it's not like you're going to be able to
just slowly over time adjust this in
position. No, you're going to have to go
back later and spend a [ __ ] ton of time
fixing everything up. And what you will
notice from people who did this and then
went back and fixed stuff later on is
the words that they learned later on
after they, you know, started fixing
their tones sound good. And then the
most common of words in the language,
they screw up. They always just screw up
because they practiced it for
potentially hundreds of hours or used it
for hundreds of hours with the wrong
tones because it was just based on how
they [ __ ] vibe vied it. Okay? and
it's now almost damn near impossible to
undo without like potentially hundreds
of hours of just practice on that one
little thing. Okay? Like, you don't want
to do this. This is the worst, absolute
worst advice, especially for a language
where it actually makes a difference.
Now, I know with languages like Japanese
with pitch accent, you've got people in
both camps. Some are like, "Oh, it's
important. You need to do it." And
others are like, "Nah, bro. It's it's
okay. It's not really that important."
There's only a few words where like
pitch accent really makes a difference.
In Mandarin Chinese, you screw up one
tone, people will generally understand
the rest of you, like the rest of what
you're saying based on context. You
screw up a couple of tones in a row and
it's very unlikely they understand you.
Okay? If you're vibing the whole [ __ ]
sentence, no one's understanding you. No
one. Okay? They're going to ask for real
life subtitles.
>> And second of all, which is the more
important argument is that 100 years
ago, Mandarin is not a phenomenon like
it is today. 100 years ago, 99% of the
Chinese people speak a language that is
very different from Mandarin, at least
in the pronunciation aspect. Each word
is not pronounced the way Mandarin has
it pronounced today. So that our ears,
the ears of Chinese people, we are
trained in the difference between the
local way of pronouncing it, the way in
our village, in our city or in our
province and the TV way, the way the
>> Okay, so basically the TV way is
basically how any foreigner will learn
the language unless they live in
country. It's why people will say in the
comment section, you know, sometimes I
sound like a [ __ ] TV broadcaster in
Mandarin Chinese. Okay. However, you
can't use this to get away with it and
say, "Well, if locally they all
pronounce it different in their local
accent and then there's a standard way."
Well, then yeah, they that sounds right.
Yeah. Like, I could just mix and match
and it won't matter because, you know,
everyone locally in their local region
speaks differently. Yeah. But they all
follow a system. Everyone locally, they
may adjust the tones differently. like
where my wife comes from, you know, her
region which is Shandong in in her
specific area when they're speaking
locally, they may reverse every second
tone. Okay? So like actually the second
tone and make it a fourth tone, they may
end up doing that. Okay? But there is a
logic to it and everyone locally knows
that logic obviously instinctively it's
a native language. But if you're just
[ __ ] willy-nilly everything just
however the [ __ ] you want, no one's
going to understand you. It's not like
you're going to be like, "Oh, right now
I'm speaking, you know, and then next
minute I'm speaking and then next
minute, you know, it's like you you
can't just [ __ ] take one word from
here, one word from there, one." Like,
it doesn't make sense. The only person
who might be able to understand you was
probably someone who's like listened to
hundreds of hours of students trying to
learn Chinese and they've literally just
ear adjusted to just bad Chinese.
>> The people in Beijing, the the important
people pronounce it in the TV. So we are
our ears are we can do this switch very
very easily.
>> And
I don't know why he's presenting this
idea as if this also applies to for it
doesn't. I've experienced it firsthand
when I was a a beginner in Chinese.
Okay. I'd screw up a bunch of tones, you
know, and suddenly no one understands
you. This is terrible advice. Terrible.
Maybe you the guy here is so ear
adjusted that this works for him. You
know he can
>> so that if you pronounce ma in the wrong
way we will not think ah you are not
talking about mom now you're talking
about horse. This is ridiculous. If
you're talking to a Chinese people with
more than two grand sales we will
understand are you talking about the mom
or are you talking about a horse
>> and that is true as long as you only
screw up one word. And you might say, I
have seen videos online where people
pronounce it incorrectly and it sounds
it has a totally inappropriate meaning
and it's ruining the whole situation.
This is like when you go you've got the
help desk call with someone out of
India. This is not me picking on
Indians. Okay, maybe it is. But anyway,
cuz I literally had this encounter
yesterday at work. Okay, I got called
into a phone call with my work colleague
who was on the phone with one of our
help desk guys over in India. And it was
clear as day that this guy learned
English, but he learned English and
whatever local dialect it was, okay?
Like there was no attempt to learn
actual English phonetics. And when he
was speaking, me and my my colleague, we
had to literally work together to piece
meal together what this other guy was
saying. I'm sure his grammar was fine
because the few times when he pulled off
the words fine, like it it it made
sense. But it was so obvious that he'd
never put any attempt into actually
learning to speak English to any type of
standard that anyone would recognize and
we just could not understand him. Okay?
And this isn't a language where it is
highly forgiving. English is highly
forgiving in a lot of ways. Mandarin
Chinese is not.
>> Those examples you see online, they are
artificially constructed for dramatic
effects to fool people. But in real
life, nobody will have you
misunderstood. This uh this dramatic
effect exists only in artificial
context. Okay. Well, we have this uh
pronunciation issue out of the way. You
should if you're a Mandarin Chinese
learner, I've literally seen these
comments before. You are one and you've
had to go back and fix your tones
because you made this mistake. Please
let me know down in the comment section.
I never did. Luckily, I learned
correctly from the start. Uh mainly
because I just got a lot of correction
and feedback. Okay? But if you're
someone who went through this and I've
seen these comments before, you know how
painful that this is. Please drop a
comment down below for others.
>> Pronounce it. You should learn the
Chinese language as if the tones didn't
exist and then just just vibe it
through. In the end, after one or two,
>> don't don't vibe, please.
>> It will just magically get better. And
if it didn't get
>> Okay, I I I got to stop interrupting.
>> Get better. It does not matter so much.
Okay, that's the pronunciation aspect.
And uh now let's concentrate on the more
serious difficulty which is the Chinese
characters. How?
>> Okay. So originally when I learned
Chinese I was the person who's like I'm
not going to learn these chicken
scratches. What am I ever going to need
this [ __ ] for? I'm just going to learn
how to speak and understand. That's good
enough for me. And it kind of works at
the start for a little while and then
you realize [ __ ] every single word when
written opinion looks exactly the same.
Like every single word. Okay. What are
they? And why is every single word just
it just seems like a jumble. And when
you learn the characters, you're like,
"Oh, okay. So these words all share
meaning." Oh, okay. Well, what happens
if I randomly put together these two?
Holy [ __ ] that's actually a word. Oh,
okay. So, like, I know you would be
inclined and it makes logical sense at
first because, you know, that's how kids
learn. They don't learn characters and
stuff, but you're not a kid. You're not
going to spend 10,000 hours just
listening to a language, okay? And then
like have constant feedback from adults.
So, let's just scrap that for a moment,
okay? I know it makes sense in a lot of
ways, but trust me, the pain at the
start is massively offset slightly after
the start when you actually start
learning characters. And the thing is
there's no way you're getting around
this. You are going to be learning these
if you actually want to use this
language.
>> Am I going to show you that it is more
imaginary than real?
>> So it is true that it takes a lot of
effort and memory cells to try to
remember how one should write this. One
should write the line here and the line
here. This is very difficult. It is
true. But I would argue that you should
try to learn the Chinese language
completely without characters. You
should act as if the Chinese characters
does not exist. Well, this is a very
radical statement. So I need to unpack
it a little bit. So when people think of
the Chinese language, they immediately
associate it with such characters as if
these are intrinsic aspect of our
language. Without it, our language could
not work. If I if I act as if the
Chinese characters do not exist and
trying to learn the manner in this way,
what am I even learning?
I know of one guy who got really high
level in Chinese and never learned the
characters. He was married to a native
and the native was also a teacher of
Chinese. So she was more than happy to
help him basically learn without using
characters. He got to a very good level
in the language and then he needed to
learn characters as soon as he went to
China. He realized that there was
literally no way to get around in China
without the characters. You can't do it.
It's not like there's pinion written
under every single sign. Like you will
basically be illiterate. Okay. In a
country where everything runs by a
phone. Everything there. There's no way
of getting around this. You you need
characters. Now, maybe you could like
Could you imagine how bad it would be as
someone who's like learning Chinese and
you're pointing your phone using like
Google Translate to like, you know, look
up characters or whatnot when you
already speak the language. Like sure,
not learning the characters at first
might speed things up initially. It
slows things down once you get to the
more intermediate level and then once
you get to a more advanced level, like
characters are actually a they're
massively helpful at that point because
you start noticing the patterns between
how you can put them together and even
guessing words.
>> My grandma or my grandpa or most of the
grandparents of China in their brain in
their mind they don't have such things
because they are illiterate because we
were very poor. They didn't go to
school. They do not read or write
Chinese characters. But of course, they
speak it flu fluently because that's the
only language they speak fluently. So,
first of all, it is theoretically
possible that Chinese language functions
without the characters.
>> Of course, but I guarantee you if they
can't read the characters, they're
calling him up every day and saying,
"Why is this thing doing this thing
over? I'm trying to click on this thing
in the app. I don't know what it is. I
don't know what it is. Can Can you just
come around here and fix this?"
>> It's like my dad with the VHS. Yes, he's
still got a VHS. Second of all, I'm
going to prove to you that the Chinese
characters are very artificial
attachment to the Chinese language. It's
a bit very unnatural if we really force
our way if we put characters as the
focal point of our learning program. So,
it is very uh unnatural. Let's see why.
So, for example, this character
is pronounced long. In ping, we write it
as L O N G. So, my my thesis is that you
should use pinion all the time. Long LG.
use the Latin characters instead of
using the Chinese characters if you are
trying to learn the Chinese language.
Why? Because this is the character from
the for the dragon. This means the
dragon long. However, this character, we
do not write dragon this way for a
thousand years. For the longest time in
Chinese history, we write the dragon in
this totally unrelated way that looks
completely different from the current
way we write it.
This is the way we wrote the character
for dragon. You see that has nothing to
do with Shu. So when did the change
happen? Why do we no longer use this way
anymore? Because the communists, the
government, they decided that illiteracy
is a huge problem that the population
cannot recognize the characters. And
this is a lot simpler than this one. So
they just artificially through political
force decided that this should be the
new dragon because it's simpler. And
this old dragon, we no longer use it
anymore. Even though people um in Taiwan
and Hong Kong still use the traditional
characters because they have a different
government, because they have a
different political situation there. And
by the way in Japanese, Japanese also
use some of our characters. Um, in
Japanese the dragon also is one of the
kangis is written even again differently
like this has nothing to do with the
simplified way or the traditional way.
So you see that the association between
the drawing between the character and
the pronunciation long is not something
like logic.
>> That's completely true but it doesn't
really mean anything at the end of the
day. If you actually want to be able to
use this language, sure, you could go to
your phone and type in pinion, but then
it's going to give you like 20
characters to select from, you're going
to be like, uh,
if you can't recognize it, you can't
recognize it. You could guess it's
probably the first one. If you write out
the whole sentence, it will probably
guess each character in the sentence for
you, the opinion, and you can select it
all and hope for the best. And I mean
hope for the best, cuz sometimes [ __ ]
it creates some random [ __ ]
>> It's very arbitrary. So that um so that
it makes no sense. There's no intrinsic
sense. Okay, good. That's the first
point. When you learn the Chinese
language without characters,
theoretically, you should be able to
speak the language fluently and
understand uh it fluently when somebody
speak it to you just like our my
grandparents uh do it. This is
theoretically possible because our
grandparents are living examples of it.
However, you say I also want to read it.
So, for example, when I send a text
message to my dad, I do not write these
characters. So for example, if I want to
say dragon, I do not write this uh and
this and this this complicated character
and send it. No, I write long. I write I
type into the keyboard LG and the
software take takes care of the
association for me. I don't remember in
my mind how should I write long. I type
in LG just as the way I would say it.
And then the software recognize that oh
hey you hey you mean long.
>> Yes, but it doesn't always get it right.
It's like right 80% of the time and it
can be more right the longer the
sentence you write. You're literally
shooting in the dark cuz if it suggests
more than two options, there's a good
chance it's probably the first option in
the list, but it could be the second one
and you don't know. You don't know.
>> By the way, I also don't type into the
software which pronunciation it is,
which tone it is. Mom, I think it's the
second pronunciation, the second tone.
We also don't write this. In our mind,
the only information, the only key
information to save is L O N G.
>> That is true. But the tone is only
important in spoken language
>> and then the software will recognize hey
you mean long I will put this character
out for you. So you see in real life
when even when we are texting with the
characters we don't save this
information we save this information in
our brain and uh this information is
delegated to other things to the
software because this is again not the
intrinsic part of our language.
Well um you say but I find the
characters interesting. I want to learn
them. I want to be a
>> Okay. So, I'm going to stop the video at
this point right now because the rest of
this just kind of it goes off on like a
little bit of a tangent. It's not
related to the two points I wanted to
cover. So, realistically, I'm going to
say like I know
you might think, okay, no, this like
Spanish, you could you could probably
just wing it. Just try say the words,
just mimic the sounds of the language as
much as you can. Learn the tones or
you'll [ __ ] regret it later. Trust me
on that one. I have seen so many people
who have basically resigned from not
using Chinese anymore. Even though
they're at a pretty good level just due
to the fact that no one [ __ ]
understands them. They can write like,
you know, on phone, computer, all that
type of stuff, they can read it
perfectly fine. They can talk and as
long as you kind of are ear adapted to
them, you can kind of get what's going
on. But there's nothing more frustrating
than giving out full sentences and the
other person looking at you and going,
"Huh?" because that's what will happen
if you don't learn the tones. That there
is the absolute worst advice. Now, when
it comes to characters, that one's a
little bit more and more. It depends
what you want to do with the language.
Eventually, if you seriously want to get
this language to any good level, you're
going to have to learn the characters
anyway. And sure, you can come back
later and do that. Things might be
faster or they might be slow. It really
depends. Like my personal feelings based
on my journey so far is that you know
learning without characters initially is
faster but then once you get to the
intermediate level having the characters
available is faster. So any like gains
you get in that initial part you're
going to massively lose out in the
intermediate level anyway. So you might
as well just struggle a little bit more
up front and then get those benefits
where it really matters at that
intermediate plateau where everyone
[ __ ] just gives up on a language.
Okay, cuz the beginning stages like I'm
sorry to say this is a difficult
language. You're going to spend a long
time learning. There's no getting around
this [ __ ] Okay, you're going to have to
learn all this stuff. Unfortunately, the
Chinese decided that the characters are
a part of their language. And if you
want to live in the country, you want to
travel in the country, you want to
[ __ ] you even want to look at
subtitles in the goddamn language, okay,
to to check what you're hearing. It's
all in characters. You're going to have
to be able to recognize that [ __ ] And
if you can't recognize it and you're all
you've like and there's like they said
five things and you're trying to figure
out what that sixth word is and what are
you going to do? Like count each
character. 1 2 3 4 5. Okay, the sixth
one's the one I want. Then go to your
dictionary, handdraw it out to look it
up. No. No. It's it's not a it's not a
good way of going about things. So I
hate it as much as the next guy. You got
to learn the characters. The tones,
there is no getting around that. If you
do not learn the tones from the
beginning, you are hard [ __ ]
yourself. That's pretty much it. Hope
you guys have enjoyed this video. I'll
see you all in the next one. If you're
not there, I will find you and I will
say a totally incomprehensible sentence
to you and your response will dictate
your survivability.