Hello everyone, welcome to Hangout with Glossika! This is episode 1. My name is Imad. And today
I have two lovely friends: Robert Hi.
and Gemma, right? Yeah.
As you should know Robert and Gemma they help us to record the
European Spanish course with Glossika. Exactly.
So you might have heard their voices if you studied European Spanish with Glossika.
You've been here in Taiwan for...? For more than seven years, right? I wanna ask if you have had any
interesting stories or funny things that happened during your stay in Taiwan, or until you learned Chinese.
Funny thing, we started learning Chinese in Barcelona in Spain
before knowing that we were coming here as a hobby.
And then, when we arrived here, was like, oh I really need to learn Chinese.
Did you have any problems like...confusing things? Yes.
Robert was working from the beginning, so I did try to do the shopping by myself
And one day I was boiling, what I thought was milk, but was not...it was liquid yogurt so
it started to bubble, and
I was like what’s happening? Because everything is in Chinese. Yeah.
All the labels,
the ingredients...everything. Exactly! And you see an English word, and
you don’t even pay attention to anything else. Exactly.
You recognized a single character. It’s a character for milk,
so that must be milk for sure.
Exactly, sometimes that’s not the case.
And then is milk yogurt and yogurt
Exactly, what about you, Robert?
My story is a bit more recent. You would think that I should have better Chinese by now.
But we were we were planning to move recently to a new apartment.
And we asked we call a moving agency to help us with the moving. And they call me like okay,
what time should we make the moving? And I said okay, 10:00 in the morning.
And I thought they were saying 10:00 in the morning.
And then they told me like to confirm at 10:00 in the morning.
And I said yes, yes 10:00 in the morning. And then it happened that
they arrived at home at 4:00 in the morning. 4:00 a.m.
Because of the “10” and the “4”.
It’s si and shi.
But when you speak very quickly, you don't really pay attention
so they came at home directly at 4:00 in the morning. I was
expecting they would be more surprised if I was telling them to come at 4:00 in the morning,
they would react like, “really? 4:00 in the morning?”, but they just said, okay 4:00 in the morning for sure?
Yes, so that was like a year ago, after six years. It’s still a simple mistake but...
I understand. I understand. Chinese. The tones and everything.
You rely a bit on the under context when you learn, right? So when you talk in Chinese
sometimes you don't pronounce very
not very thoroughly the tones, and you rely on the context for the other
speaker to understand you. Can you tell us, what are the benefits of being fluent in Chinese?
It’s true that I’ve been learning for a long time. Basic conversation, at least basic conversation I can have.
So maybe that’s why they say that if you don't go really far into a conversation, it sounds like okay,
you can defend yourself, right?
One thing that helps is that I really learn by listening, so I listen the pronunciation they have for the words.
And then I repeat it. And I repeat it again. And I listen again. And then I jump to use it.
Okay, if you’re not fluent,
Like what would it be the difference if you could not speak Chinese in Taiwan?
Or if you're fluent, what do you think would be like? What do you think would change?
I think speaking Chinese here is really helpful. Because mostly it can really help you opening a lot of doors.
Like if you are traveling around the island, you can really ask for something as basic as what time the bus will come
or what time this museum closes or something like that. If you work in Taiwanese companies,
most of your co-workers only speak Chinese, so you can really socialize much better.
You miss a lot of fun stuff,
like you cannot really get to know the people because their language is very limited.
So even for example, my English and their English might be limited, so you cannot get into a really
deep conversation or a friend status right?
If you could learn or be fluent in another language,
what would it be?
I think I would like to learn something more close to Spanish,
like Portuguese or Italian.
Why? Because it’s easier to learn?
I think it would be easier.
What about you, Robert?
Umm,Taiwanese for sure. Taiwanese?
Yeah ....it’s due time, right? It’s about time...living here seven years.
You’re learning Japanese also?
Yeah, I tried I've been learning some simple Japanese.
Learning Japanese after learning Chinese would help because of the characters and the similarities.
Yeah, there’s some part you can really re-use from Chinese.
At least some of the meaning of characters are reusable.
The grammar in Chinese is actually very easy. It's simpler. It's easy to get the basic.
You can start speaking Chinese very quickly, in terms of grammar.
What does learning languages mean to you?
Learning language is like, it mixes a bit of challenge, intellectual challenge,
because you really need to force yourself to repeat the exercises and keep memorizing things,
but on the other on the other side, this is really a discovery.
Because at the same time you are discovering the language,
you are discovering most likely the culture of a different country,
or a different continent even, right?
It has this mix of like hard time and fun time at the same time.
You keep learning and you keep doing [making] mistakes.
At the beginning, the first month are [is] like really stressful
because you keep talking and maybe people don’t understand you.
But after... there is one day that just clicks and you can communicate with people and people answer you.
You'll feel so happy. Yeah.
Exactly.
For us in Europe, Chinese is like a very strange language.
When we don’t know a language, or how it sounds, we say it sounds like Chinese.
If I see you on the street, let's say in Europe or anywhere else,
I would never guess that this guy is fluent in Chinese.
Yeah, exactly. It's very unique. You’ll never guess.
It’s not common.
So, that day you start speaking some Chinese and communicating with some other person in Chinese,
it’s like okay wow, that’s a good feeling!
The good feeling of learning a language.
What about you, Gemma?
To me it means freedom to travel, to make friends. And my family has always encouraged me
to learn languages and no matter what you do or where life takes you, the more languages you speak, the better.
Can you share with us some tips on becoming fluent in Chinese?
I know there are a lot of people who want to learn Chinese,
especially like European people or who are very far away from Chinese.
What are your tips? In Chinese?
Um, well yeah, you can.
Okay, my learning method is through listening.
I’d listen, listen, and keep listening.
Then, I’d say it, say it, then say it again.
That’s great! Sometimes people just give up after a few tries, thinking that they’ll never get it.
But you’re not like that. You keep trying.
The most important thing is finding a way to actually use the words,
then you’ll remember it. You might not get it the first time,
but on the third, or fifth time, you’ll slowly pick things up.
For all the people who want to learn Spanish, what are your tips?
If you see a conjugate, a verb conjugation page,
you’ll see that there are many verb tenses.
Forget it,
just use what you need to use and try that they write [to write]
because when you write, you will find out what you know
and you will discover what you still don't know
and want to know.
We said that Chinese grammar is easy
and the most difficult part is the tones.
How did you overcome this problem and how did you make progress?
For example, with pronunciation and tones,
I worrying [worried] too much about the tone itself, about memorizing the tone.
And, what I did was constantly listen.
Listen sentence, listen [to] music or listen...
Listen is the key, especially when you talk to people,
you listen to how they pronounce. You pay attention to that
or you watch YouTube videos or TV shows in Chinese.
You repeat what you listen
and that's how the pronunciation improved on my side.
You don't remember, oh, this is second tone or this is third tone.
You do just remember how to say the word.
You have to memorize the pinyin, the character, the tone and the meaning.
It’s four things you need to memorize, and then the grammar.
So when you want to make a sentence,
you have to be thinking about too many things, and it just doesn't work.
It's like you will talk very slowly and you will talk like a robot.
Not forget about it, but just
absorb it in a different way.
You just remember how the word, the words sound.
Can you tell the person, let’s say who wants to learn Chinese?
Maybe he thinks, I will never be fluent in Chinese.
Just takes time, repetitions and efforts,
but for sure I mean it's challenging but it's very exciting also to learn a new language.
And it's totally possible. Totally possible.
Thank you again, guys.
No problem.
Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Gemma.
Thank you. Thanks for inviting us.
This is the end of the episode 1 of Hangout with Glossika.
Thank you again for watching and let us know in the comment down below:
What do you think is the best way to learn any language
and please don't forget to subscribe and see you in the next episode. Thank you guys again.
Thank you. Bye!
The weather is nice today
How do you say in Spanish and how do you say in Catalan? Just wanna hear the sound…
Hi, I’m Robert. I’m very happy to be here today, talking to you guys.
It is Glossika talks. And if you have any question, you can leave a comment and we'll be happy to answer.
Hi, I’m Gemma and it was an honor to be the first participant in the Hangout with Glossika.
I hope you find the video entertaining enough. Any comments, we’ll be happy to answer.
Thank you!