I was born in China, immigrated to Canada with family when I was a kid so it wasn’t my choice, now I’m a Canadian citizen, which came with dropping my Chinese citizenship. Later became a socialist and really admires what China has been doing and wish I’d never left.
Now, because I have a Chinese birth certificate, I could in theory get Chinese citizenship reinstated if I drop my Canadian one, and go back. And there are days where I want to see about doing that. BUT, I really don’t know anyone in China (yes I have family there but none of them are that close to me, don’t really think I’m “can I crash with you while I get my life together over here” close, at least), but even more damningly, I can’t speak or write Chinese that well (and it’s one of the hardest languages to learn so), and I grew up under Canadian culture and am pretty alienated from Chinese culture, etiquette, and social rules. Especially Chinese pop culture that people my age are into–this makes the language barrier worse because of how contextual a language Chinese is, there are tons of slang and references that are used in place of formal words that, even if you were formally educated in Chinese language, you might still not get unless you’re really knowledgeable in the culture. So my chances of getting a job or even fitting into a friend group isn’t that great.
If you go to China and get a Chinese citizenship, the Canadian gov’t won’t tell China that you have a Canadian citizenship. Also you can keep your Canadian citizenship while you live in China on a visa for a while. Besides, the best way to learn the language and culture is to yeet yourself over there :)
I don’t particularly care for keeping Canadian citizenship if I get my Chinese one back, and you’re really trivializing learning language and culture. It. Takes. Many. Years. Speaking as someone who had to learn English as a second language, and that was in elementary school… It’s much harder to do so as an adult simply because you’re expected to be better and more formal at language. What are you going to do in the meantime when you can’t communicate well or read documents from the office, or even read trivial stuff like street signs, or write a basic email? In school, I had to be exempt from a lot of standard writing assignments, instead being given easier, ESL ones while I learned English. What profession is going to do that for you?
And Chinese is one of those languages where you don’t just sound it out. Each character gives you no info on how it’s pronounced, each spoken word gives you no info on how it’s written. You have to memorise those. And tons of completely unrelated words written completely differently have the exact same pronunciations (think reed vs read but for thousands of words). It also means you can’t just punch the letters you don’t understand into a translate app, because there are no letters.
IMO, the only way to be fluent in Chinese enough to immediately start participating in society over there is to take a community college course, or several, on Chinese language before you go. Remember, it’s consistently ranked as one of the hardest languages for native Western language speakers to learn.
What exactly do you mean by this? A citizen of China? Which province; which language? Do you wish to be born as someone who only speaks Mandarin despite their Chinese parents’ native tongue being one of the hundreds of other Chinese languages?
The categorization of ‘Han Chinese’ as an ethnic group is false nationalist propaganda. It is an arbitrary racial grouping. There is no such thing as A Chinese Culture, there are countless Chinese cultures. “Chinese” is an umbrella term legitimised only by the massive influence of the state and has nothing to do with the actual diversity of its peoples. Each of the so-called subgroups of ‘Han Chinese’ are NOT dialect groups but in fact full-fledged ethnolinguistic groups. The uniformity of Chinese people is spread by communists to erase minority cultures and languages and force them to assimilate into their imaginary ethnic group. China has more languages than the whole of europe, and the preposterous categorization of say Hakka or Wu or Yue or Min as merely dialects of a Chinese language is how a dominant people destroy the multiplicity of its societies. It’s why China government officials will vomit up the sheer ignorance to say “96% Chinese Tibetans can speak Tibetan” and happily continue to ban the use of the dozens of other ‘non-standard’ indigenous Tibetan languages. It’s how the Chinese diaspora all over the world are losing their mother tongues to Standard Mandarin. It’s how every Muslim in Xinjiang is being surveillanced. The moral of the story is FUCK IMPERIALIST CHINA!!!
Learning a language is hard, but so is everything else thats worthwile. And even if you cant have a full conversation, its useful to know some basics. Especially if you have Chinese family or friends. To get started, why not watch some Chinese series or movies? Anyway they are much better than the trash coming from United States. I recommend Go Ahead. That site even has a learning mode which looks very helpful.
I was born in China, immigrated to Canada with family when I was a kid so it wasn’t my choice, now I’m a Canadian citizen, which came with dropping my Chinese citizenship. Later became a socialist and really admires what China has been doing and wish I’d never left.
Now, because I have a Chinese birth certificate, I could in theory get Chinese citizenship reinstated if I drop my Canadian one, and go back. And there are days where I want to see about doing that. BUT, I really don’t know anyone in China (yes I have family there but none of them are that close to me, don’t really think I’m “can I crash with you while I get my life together over here” close, at least), but even more damningly, I can’t speak or write Chinese that well (and it’s one of the hardest languages to learn so), and I grew up under Canadian culture and am pretty alienated from Chinese culture, etiquette, and social rules. Especially Chinese pop culture that people my age are into–this makes the language barrier worse because of how contextual a language Chinese is, there are tons of slang and references that are used in place of formal words that, even if you were formally educated in Chinese language, you might still not get unless you’re really knowledgeable in the culture. So my chances of getting a job or even fitting into a friend group isn’t that great.
That’s why.
Really cool info.
If you go to China and get a Chinese citizenship, the Canadian gov’t won’t tell China that you have a Canadian citizenship. Also you can keep your Canadian citizenship while you live in China on a visa for a while. Besides, the best way to learn the language and culture is to yeet yourself over there :)
I don’t particularly care for keeping Canadian citizenship if I get my Chinese one back, and you’re really trivializing learning language and culture. It. Takes. Many. Years. Speaking as someone who had to learn English as a second language, and that was in elementary school… It’s much harder to do so as an adult simply because you’re expected to be better and more formal at language. What are you going to do in the meantime when you can’t communicate well or read documents from the office, or even read trivial stuff like street signs, or write a basic email? In school, I had to be exempt from a lot of standard writing assignments, instead being given easier, ESL ones while I learned English. What profession is going to do that for you?
And Chinese is one of those languages where you don’t just sound it out. Each character gives you no info on how it’s pronounced, each spoken word gives you no info on how it’s written. You have to memorise those. And tons of completely unrelated words written completely differently have the exact same pronunciations (think reed vs read but for thousands of words). It also means you can’t just punch the letters you don’t understand into a translate app, because there are no letters.
IMO, the only way to be fluent in Chinese enough to immediately start participating in society over there is to take a community college course, or several, on Chinese language before you go. Remember, it’s consistently ranked as one of the hardest languages for native Western language speakers to learn.
And that’s why I wish I was born as Chinese!
What exactly do you mean by this? A citizen of China? Which province; which language? Do you wish to be born as someone who only speaks Mandarin despite their Chinese parents’ native tongue being one of the hundreds of other Chinese languages?
The categorization of ‘Han Chinese’ as an ethnic group is false nationalist propaganda. It is an arbitrary racial grouping. There is no such thing as A Chinese Culture, there are countless Chinese cultures. “Chinese” is an umbrella term legitimised only by the massive influence of the state and has nothing to do with the actual diversity of its peoples. Each of the so-called subgroups of ‘Han Chinese’ are NOT dialect groups but in fact full-fledged ethnolinguistic groups. The uniformity of Chinese people is spread by communists to erase minority cultures and languages and force them to assimilate into their imaginary ethnic group. China has more languages than the whole of europe, and the preposterous categorization of say Hakka or Wu or Yue or Min as merely dialects of a Chinese language is how a dominant people destroy the multiplicity of its societies. It’s why China government officials will vomit up the sheer ignorance to say “96% Chinese Tibetans can speak Tibetan” and happily continue to ban the use of the dozens of other ‘non-standard’ indigenous Tibetan languages. It’s how the Chinese diaspora all over the world are losing their mother tongues to Standard Mandarin. It’s how every Muslim in Xinjiang is being surveillanced. The moral of the story is FUCK IMPERIALIST CHINA!!!
Learning a language is hard, but so is everything else thats worthwile. And even if you cant have a full conversation, its useful to know some basics. Especially if you have Chinese family or friends. To get started, why not watch some Chinese series or movies? Anyway they are much better than the trash coming from United States. I recommend Go Ahead. That site even has a learning mode which looks very helpful.