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#none of my family speaks mandarin because we use dialects
sun-pluto · 2 years
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i think it’s a. very specific experience when you grew up being taught english as your first language, but because your parents speak multiple languages, they speak them when they don’t want you to understand what they’re saying. so instead you grow up eavesdropping and secretly learning that language so you can understand what they don’t want you to hear.
i’m pretty sure i speak for a lot of people HAHA but it’s still specific!!!
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pumpkinpaix · 3 years
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once again, please do not reblog this or take this personally, it is a vent post and I need to just be really unkind in a public space for a second. i love you.
god i swear every single time I think I’m getting better at not letting myself be swept away by an all-consuming rage over an inconsequential bad take, someone manages to prove me wrong, and then all the floodgates go crashing open and suddenly it’s summer again and I’m being called a race traitor, white apologist, mandarin supremacist as if i am not orders of magnitude more familiar with racial conflict and identity trauma the fucking gall of it “u know mandarin supremacy is like a big deal right, my family speaks dialect first and mandarin is violent” oh PLEASE tell me fucking more!! TELL ME MORE!! about how it’s mandarin supremacist to use a mandarin romanization system for a source material that is fucking, get this, in mandarin
tell me, someone who has lost no fewer than FOUR FUCKING DIALECTS in just two generations of my family history. tell me about the trauma of not being able to communicate with your own family, tell me about feeling untethered, tell me about your suffering all while dismissing the inherent complexity of my lived experience and invalidating my knowledge of my own language because I was born in the US. wow thank you so much for confirming that you ARE one of those people who think i am a hollow, rootless thing, that water cannot run through me, all while I am smiling and gritting my teeth and trying so fucking hard to be gentle when you will not grant me the fucking courtesy of considering me a fully realized human being. choke on it assholes.
it’s so fucking unfair that you attacked me personally and then had the audacity to be pissed because “how were you supposed to know” when I tried to be transparent about it. and then to be so self-important as to think that we make policy decisions as “revenge” against “POC”? why do i bother, why did i bother, why do i ever try when it takes less than an hour for people to tell me how much they missed my point every single fucking time oh im sorry you think i’m assuming that people know less than they actually do? maybe i wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been spouting clear misinformation about a job that i am currently doing as if you were some kind of authority on the matter. you think i’m assuming malice when there is none? fucking check my goddamn mentions. you think i don’t understand what happens when a non-white person talks about racism online? check my fucking mentions you stupid fuck
and all the while, there’s just this constant stream of self-aggrandizing fake-woke bullshit that could not have more obviously come from a shallow, young euroamerican leftist take on intersectional praxis that is so self-deluded they think they can cast themselves as w/wx, a righteous hero standing up to popular, immoral opinion all while demonstrating that they have completely and fundamentally misunderstood his character due to their utter lack of cultural context. i keep thinking i’ve seen the worst of it, but you all just find new and awful ways to surprise me. sure, say some angry shit and people will eat it up bc everyone seems to think that anger is an indicator for validity. thanks! i love experiencing relentless racism from both sides of the equation and then being told i’m the fucking problem. wow! revolutionary! it’s not like i’ve been experiencing this my whole life, but sure, go off i guess! demonstrate to me every day that actually, maybe i shouldn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore! show me that compassion is worthless! do it! fucking do it!!! show me that i’m the stupid one for expecting anyone to approach me as an equal because who goes back when they keep getting burned when am i going to fucking learn
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andthepetalsfall · 4 years
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disappointment, a lump swallowed with each bite
Summary: Syaoran’s relationship with Yelan is complicated.
A/N: I had a friend post this a while back on AO3 as an orphaned fic (she came up with the title), mostly because I felt I might have revealed too much about myself. But I feel there’s so much about Syaoran’s Cantonese heritage left unexplored, both by fandom and CLAMP, that I want to tap into it myself. Writing this felt a little raw, but it meant a lot that this resonated so much with Canto readers I thought I’d share it here. I hope you enjoy.
[AO3]
Syaoran’s life has been a series of disappointments, one after the other.
Disappointment is the first memory his mother shares with him over dinner. “When I married, I moved to Hong Kong to be with your father’s family,” she explains.
He nods as he ravenously shovels roast pork into his mouth and his eldest sister reminds him to chew slowly.
“But I was originally from Shanghai. I tried to teach you Shanghainese when you were very small, but you never used it.”
“You used to cry, ‘I want to talk to Mama!’ because she doesn’t understand Shanghainese,” the second eldest suddenly remembers with a bright smile.
“Yes, and she would tell me, ‘You married into a Cantonese family, let the boy speak what he wants. You have to teach him Mandarin and Japanese later on anyway.’ You were so resistant, your Mama asked what the point was of teaching you Shanghainese when your sisters spoke it but never used it.”
His mother reaches for more gailan. Although his mother and grandmother had shown nothing but respect for each other, he’d always noticed a cold air between them. “I remember I was very...”
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Syaoran doesn’t say anything and picks up the pork more delicately.
It’s the third Qing Ming Jie since his father’s death and he can’t relate to any of the stories his sisters and mother laugh over as they lay out the food and incense.
“Didi, you remember?” his Ga Jeh asks. “All our cousins were playing with each other, but you stayed in the corner practicing your magic by yourself. You were two.”
“You always wanted to be alone, even back then,” the second sister adds.
“Baba was laughing at you and called you his little lone wolf,” the fourth sister says.
“Oh, is that where ‘Syaoran’ comes from?” His family never used his real name, it was baobei to his mother and didi to his sisters. On occasion they called him Syaoran or Siu Long, dialect chosen on a whim.
But when he frowns, they see he doesn’t remember any of it, so they silently reach for the incense and pray. He looks at the red name etched on the tombstone and the emptiness he feels hits him like a train. How must Baba feel knowing his only son doesn’t remember him?
He already knows the answer and as he takes the incense, all he can think is, I’m sorry.
“Again.”
For the thirty-fourth time in a row (he’s been keeping track in his head), he strikes his sword into the ground and in a split second the faintest trace of a magic circle glows beneath him. Then, just as suddenly, it fades.
His mother rubs her temples and Syaoran braces himself for the lecture coming to him.
“How many times have we tried this and you still don’t understand it?”
He doesn’t protest that he’s trying, because she’ll only counter that he’s not trying hard enough.
“Your mind is off somewhere else and you’re not focusing properly. Do you not understand how vital it is that you get this right? Don’t you know what it means to be a descendant of Clow Reed? The only magic child of this family, no less!”
He doesn’t say that technically, they’re descendants of his mother’s family, and that Syaoran’s own mother wasn’t related to him either, just married in.
Still, his mother somehow senses what’s on his mind and says, “I know it is not my bloodline. But when I married your father, his family became my family. You think your Mama just let any random outsider marry her only son? No, it didn’t matter that I had magic in my veins. It took me ten years to perfect my magic and even be considered worthy of the prestige of the Lei clan! And now you have a chance to be Master of the Clow because it is your birthright! What did I work so hard for if all you want to do is throw it away?”
Syaoran bites his lip and feels hot shame welling up inside him. He fixes his stare at the ground so his mother doesn’t see his wet eyes.
“Don’t look at the floor. Look at me.”
He complies and sniffles.
“Do you want to be Master or not? Answer me.”
“I do,” he whispers, unable to control the shakiness in his voice. All he wants is to be like any other second-grader and go play at the park or something.
“Masters of the Clow don’t cry. Go again.”
The thirty-fifth time isn’t much better than the last, and he can slowly feel his mother giving up.
As he holds the results of his Japanese exam, his hands tremble. He’s not worried about his other scores, but he’ll need to work twice as hard in this area if he wants to keep up with his Japanese classmates next year.
That semester had been a flurry of sleepless nights, cramming and studying over and over to perfect his language skills. It had been one of the few times in his life when his mother relaxed her strict exterior, quietly bringing a bowl of sweet pears to his room and placing it on his desk.
“Study hard, baobei.”
He sharply inhales as he opens up his results, and exhales when he sees the red 100 on his kanji scores. His eyes scale down to keigo.
96.
Four points. He was only four points away.
He’s far, far from the bottom of his class, but it’s not enough. The endless complaints from his classmates, none of whom he’s ever played with or been friends with, saying, “My mom always asks why you can’t be like your classmate Lei!” or praise from his teachers, “Let’s all follow Lei tung hok’s example,” are never enough for the Lei clan.
He neatly folds the exam and slides it into his backpack.
When he submits his papers to Tomoeda elementary he gives them his real name. It sounds foreign even to him.
“Rei—” the office lady frowns. “Sorry, how do you pronounce that?”
Maybe he shouldn’t have started off with Cantonese. And then he has the craziest idea. “Ah—never mind,” he says, furiously scribbling out his name. “Use this one.”
She purses her lips into a tight line. “Ookami?”
“It’s, ah, a traditional name,” he lies through his teeth, hoping his accent isn’t too heavy. “Li Syaoran.”
“The Chinese use such interesting kanji,” she murmurs, scribbling down some notes. He doesn’t remind her that kanji came from China first.
“Well, you’ll be in Terada-sensei’s room, Li-san. It’s down that way.”
It all fits, in a way. When has he ever been worthy of his own name?
“He speaks kinda funny.”
“Chiharu-chan, he’s from Hong Kong. You can’t expect him to speak perfectly on his first day,” the quiet girl with chestnut colored hair reminds her.
“I heard Terada-sensei saying if he needed help he could talk to Tomoyo-chan,” the one with glasses interjects. “The way he repeated her name was sooooo cute. Daaai-daaau-jiii.”
It’s not malicious, the way they’re giggling. But he keeps his expression stony and vows not to say any other name.
...
His face is burning as he runs. He’s failed to retrieve the cards on his first day, and the boy…
The boy was beautiful.
He thinks of his mother’s warning. “Don’t play around with girls.” She’d wrinkled her nose. “Especially Japanese girls. You remember what they did to our country?”
She’d never thought to warn him about boys. It would never cross her mind he would tell her something like that.
He prays, prays, prays he’ll never need to.
...
The ocean wind is icy and pinches at his skin, but he’ll never show weakness like the girl beside him. How was this whimpering thing, who was never raised with a quarter of the discipline he has, deemed more worthy to be Master than he was?
But the more she talks, the more he realizes he has never known a night like this. A night of no training, no studying. Just the crashing of ocean waves and a light conversation under the moonlight.
He’s not thinking when he says, “Well, I feel that way about him too, but…”
He freezes as he realizes and holds his gaze at her, anxiously waiting for her response. What will she say? Will she tell people? What if, Heaven forbid, it gets back to his family?
But she carries on like it’s nothing. He’s brave enough to press her further about her infatuation, and she asks him the same.
“Both you and I are so much younger than Yukito-san, but we can’t help it,” she says. “We just… like him.”
When she smiles, it’s genuine. It’s serene. There is no judgment in her jade eyes.
When his form reappears in the cave, she doesn’t reprimand him for not having the strength to fight off the card. She thanks him.
It’s a foreign feeling.
“They call me a different name, Ma.”
Even though she’s only on the phone, he knows she’s frowning. “Oh? And what’s wrong with the name we gave you?”
“They can’t pronounce it. It has nothing to do with you.” With the safety of distance, he can be a little bolder.
“And this new girl? How does she have the cards?”
“Cerberus chose her. There’s really nothing I can do about it, especially a Guardian made by Clow himself.”
“Hm. Are they treating you well?”
He thinks of those jade green eyes. “The people in Japan are very nice, Ma.”
“I see.”
An awkward silence hangs between them.
“Baobei?”
“Mm?”
“Have you eaten yet?”
“Yes,” he lies, eyeing the sword he’s been practicing with all night.
“Never forget to eat, Baobei. You need your strength.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Ma.”
...
She’s shocked when he tells her he lives alone.
“Then you have to do all the laundry and cleaning and cooking all on your own?”
Okay, maybe it’s a little odd for a ten-year-old to live alone in an apartment, but it’s not like she doesn’t do housework either.
“Well… yeah.”
“That’s so cool!”
There’s not an ounce of sarcasm in her voice, which flusters him.
“But… don’t you get lonely?”
Lonely?
He’s never been asked that before. He thinks of the phone call with his mother the night previously, where she instructed him to keep an eye on “the new girl” and reminded him to dress warmly.
“Not really.”
“So cool!” the girl gushes.
It’s such a trivial thing, housework. Maybe she’ll praise anything, but she’s never commented on his shortcomings.
Before he can say anything, her stomach grumbles. It makes the corner of his lips twitch.
His hands are trembling as he tells his mother the news. No, he won’t be Master of the Clow.
Sakura is.
He has a million counterarguments backed up in his head—no, he didn’t just give up. (Okay, maybe he did.) Yue deigned it. He was not about to go against two Guardians of Clow’s own creation. Clow predicted this would happen, anyway.
But she doesn’t yell. She doesn’t scold.
“Good,” she sighs. “I’m glad you were able to help this Kinomoto girl achieve her birthright.”
“Her birthright?” Syaoran asks, half surprised and half amused.
“Aiyooh, if Clow wanted it, who are we to go against him? He ought to have left some hints, though!”
He almost laughs.
“You did your best, baobei. And you helped the new Master. For that I’m grateful.”
Syaoran doesn’t know what to say, but maybe no words need to be said.
“Now, this Kinomoto—you certainly talk about her a lot.”
“What are you saying, Ma?”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“MA!”
“Aiyah, don’t be like that, I’m your mother! You have to tell me everything!”
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Ok I’m going to word vomit for a bit cause I haven’t slept in over a day lol and I’ve thought about this a lot, and recently after the LBotW cover+synopsis came out it’s been back on my mind.
So I’d always just accepted without question that yeah Jem grew up in China and speaks Mandarin Chinese, and his dialogue in Mandarin is always spelled out in standard pinyin ok ok not much to question there. But the last time I reread TID it finally came to me that, wait a second, Jem grew up in Shanghai.
In the 1860s.
Someone from a Shanghainese family in the 1860s would not grow up speaking speaking Mandarin, they would be speaking Shanghainese. This means Jem’s mother was originally from another city? In fact, I’d really like to ask Cassie which regional variant of Mandarin does Jem speak, and how is he finding speaking the language in modern day China? I’m intrigued!! What is it going to be like in LBotW, seeing him in his hometown where he grew up not speaking the local language?? Aaaaah
More linguistic and historical pedantry and word vomiting under the cut sdjfkjd:
Obviously, for modern readability, none of TID/TLH era characters are going to speak in exactly the way they used to in their historical time periods. However, the point remains that there’s been far fewer changes in regional speech in England than there’s been in China in the last 150 years. And there’s far less regional difference of language/dialect in England than in China, too.
Modern Mandarin didn’t come into widespread usage in Shanghai until the mid 20th century, when the Beijing variant of Mandarin was voted to become the new standard language, and the government instructed schools to start teaching in Mandarin rather than the local regional dialects.
There were other regional dialects of Mandarin that were in wide usage at canon’s time period, too, particularly the Southwestern variant. (In fact, outside of standard Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin remains the regional dialect with most speakers to this day.)
However, few people in Shanghai in the 1860s would know how to speak Mandarin, any variant of it. To be able to communicate with those from other areas, businessmen and government officials, perhaps, would learn the Beijing guan hua (官话, literally translating to “official-speak”) that would become standard Mandarin. The average person though, would speak only the regional Wu language, more commonly referred to as Shanghainese. Others who spoke Mandarin had to have moved to Shanghai from elsewhere.
The difference between Mandarin and Shanghainese is not like just, say, Yorkshire English compared with American West Coast English. As Jem himself says in CP, Shanghainese is practically unintelligible to someone who speaks Mandarin (which is to be expected, cause it’s literally a different language). And even the difference between Standard Mandarin and Southwestern Mandarin is pretty huge - it would also be hard for speakers to understand each other. (My dad’s side of the family speaks Southwestern Mandarin in the Chongqing dialect, and whoo boy it’s so different I still have a hard time understanding them when they talk)
The Mandarin Jem speaks is essentially just the standard Mandarin nowadays. I’m assuming Cassie just defaulted to the standard Mandarin, because 1) there isn’t really any standardized romanizations of the regional dialects or languages so it’d be harder for the wider audience to understand if she tried to regionalize Jem’s speech and 2) I honestly just don’t think she wanted to put in that much effort lol and her translators seem to just know Mandarin (though perhaps not that well, considering the mistakes and anachronisms and just like, the overall weirdness of Jem’s Mandarin in the books to me, but I digress).
What that means for me - in terms of understanding Jem as a character and headcanons and what-if’s for AUs even:
So we know Jem’s family moved to Shanghai (from London implied) because Jonah was offered the job as head of institute (and btw what’re his qualifications, why this random white Englishman for the Shanghai institute???) Jem learned Mandarin from his mother, which means his mother is likely originally from somewhere that spoke Mandarin. Maybe Beijing? (I remember Jia Penhallow nee Ke is from Beijing, right?)
Because if Wen Yu did speak Shanghainese, why wouldn’t she teach her son, when they had no reason to believe they would ever move away from Shanghai? Was Beijing Mandarin then already the shadowhunter standard in China long before the mundane government standard? If it gets clarified in LBotW that Wen Yu is from Shanghai but somehow she doesn’t speak Shanghainese then Cassie better give me a good explanation lol
But what of Jem’s tutors when he was growing up? Did they know how to speak Shanghainese? Did Jem pick up bits and pieces of the language, did he eventually gain a passing understanding of it despite not being able to speak it?
What would it mean for Jem if he actually full on cannot speak or understand Shanghainese, growing up in a city that spoke pretty much only that language? He wouldn’t be able to roam the city or visit markets or converse with local mundanes. He wouldn’t be able to connect. It would make for an even more isolated childhood, on top of being the only child around.  There’d be a huge disconnect there, even more than him in London with British mundanes. It would also add different meaning to when he thinks about missing his hometown. What does he miss? The buildings, the scenery, the food. But not the people then. And it would mean more shadowhunter aloofness toward mundanes. What would that say about Jem’s upraising and personality development?
Other option: What if Jem is able to understand Shanghainese though can’t speak it? Who would he have learnt it from - a tutor, local Shanghainese shadowhunters, local mundanes?
Jem learned many languages while he was a Silent Brother (I think is what’s implied). What if he took this time to finally learn Shanghainese, to reconnect with his roots?
Jem’s Mandarin is understood to be the Beijing dialect for more meta reasons, but what if he actually speaks the Southwestern dialect?? Wen Yu killed a bunch of Yanluo’s demon kids lol in Lijiang, a city in Southwest China. What would it mean if his mom was actually originally from Southwest China and spoke that dialect, and passed it on to his son? Would Jem have learned and adapted to current standard Mandarin during his years as Silent Brother? There’s a crackfic here somewhere in which Malec and co. get to Shanghai and expect Jem to act as guide and translator BUT NO ONE IN SHANGHAI CAN EVEN UNDERSTAND WHAT HE’S SAYING -
Final note on Shanghainese and the current Shanghai:
After Mandarin was established as the standard national language and the Beijing dialect the standard pronunciation in the 1930s or 50s, there was a huge push for getting people to speak (only) standard Mandarin. There was a period of time in 70s/80s when schools would be overzealous, and teachers would even ban the speaking of Shanghainese in classrooms. A lot of people from the last generation would grow up not knowing how to speak their parents’ language, or they would neglect to teach their children the language in favor of teaching only Mandarin. This caused the current generation - including me :( - to be mostly unable to speak the language. Most everywhere in Shanghai will speak standard Mandarin, though cab drivers, streetside food vendors, etc, might still be more comfortable speaking Shanghainese. There’s a push now for reeducation, because they fear the language will start to die out at this rate. My grandparents and my mother are all Shanghainese, and they can all speak the language. I can understand Shanghainese fully, but I can barely speak it. It makes me quite sad tbh.
Final final note lol: all this is just me, word-dumping from memory. This is what I remember of the language history of Shanghai, from what I learned and what I’ve heard from my family. This is not academically researched, nor have I fact-checked every single thing, so please don’t take anything I’ve said as absolute!!
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purplesurveys · 4 years
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673
Language survey! I love when surveys have cute lil gimmicks like this.
Country? Howdy, I come from the Philippines. Do not recommend.
Do you have a second language in your country? I don’t think we have an official second language today. Below our two official languages (Filipino and English) we have hundreds of native languages spread out across different regions and provinces, like Cebuano – but none of them are officially second languages. I do know that for a time, Spanish was mandated by law to be our second language and it was even required to be taught in all schools, but it was scrapped quite some time ago.
How many languages do you speak fluently? Just two – Filipino and English. I can sometimes read Cebuano through context clues because some words sound very similar to Filipino, but I wouldn’t survive reading a conversation, much less a novel.
Does your language have words adopted from English? We have SO MANY. Filipino has admittedly been underdeveloped and neglected, and the country has always put much more effort in learning English under the belief that it would help us economically and compete in the global scene – it really shows the worst of colonial mentality. Unfortunately that meant our own language was put in the backseat, and a lot of people continue to put a lot of shame onto those who are more fluent in Filipino than English. A few examples: We usually refer to science as ‘siyensa,’ even though the native word for it is agham. Biscuit is just ‘biskwit,’ leader is just ‘lider,’ and gadget is just ‘gadyet.’ In essence, we use a lot of English words, just given the Filipino spelling to mimic how we would pronounce them.
Is English important for an individual in your country? Like I said, speaking in English is prized and more important than knowing and loving our own native language. It’s a result of nearly 400 years of being colonized by Spain, US, and Japan, and these countries’ efforts to eliminate any piece of native culture than we had left. By the time we gained independence, we’ve put so much pride in people who can fluently speak English, and embarassment to those who can’t.
What language you like speaking in? Not to sound like a hypocrite lmao but English. It’s easier to learn and more convenient to use, and consider it an effect of the aforementioned patronizing/excessive promotion of the English language over here. 
What’s your favorite language? Maybe Korean? It’s easy to understand and learn, and it has a very rich history as well.
What’s the native language spoken in China? Don’t they have a bunch of languages as well? I know the official one is Mandarin, but like us they also have other regional ones like Cantonese and Hokkien.
What’s the strangest language have you ever head? Don’t wanna sound racist/language-ist but if I absolutely had to answer this question, German has always sounded a bit strange to me haha. I think cos it sounds a little aggressive???
Do you wish your country has another language instead of the present one? Not really. I just wish more people appreciated Filipino. We have a beautiful native language, and I wish we were a little more proud of it.
What language do the neighboring countries of where you live speak? We’re an archipelago so we technically have no neighboring countries. But coming from an Austronesian region, the closest countries to us have languages that definitely have Malay origins.
What languages are spoken the most throughout the world? I know Mandarin is the most-widely spoken language, followed by English and then maybe Spanish? andddd I’m guessing Hindi is also somewhere at the top considering India’s population.
Do you know anyone who is monolingual? Aren’t a bunch of Americans? Hahahaha
Do you know anyone who is bilingual or multilingual? Nearly all Filipinos are at least bilingual.
Would you like to raise multilingual children? It honestly depends on where (geographically) I end up when I have kids. If I end up staying in the Philippines, I’d raise them the same way I was – learning Filipino and English. But if I end up migrating somewhere with a native language, I would encourage them to speak in all three. I definitely won’t make my kids forget their Filipino roots.
Can you think of some disadvantages of being monolingual? I’m not monolingual but I’m guessing it would be a pain to be in a country where most people are speakers of a different language. I’ve been to countries where people spoke zero English and it was sooooo hard to communicate and get to places then.
What other languages are spoken in your nation, including minority groups and the languages of immigrants? PH has a very rich culture and we have tons of regional languages, which include Tagalog, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Ilokano, Maranao, Ivatan, several variations of Bikolano, Aklanon, Chavacano, Kapampangan, Tausug, Surigaonon, and literally a hundred more. My country is also a favorite for immigrants because of the climate and the cheap cost of living here, so we also have a healthy population of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic speakers.
Do you think that a language other than English should be used as an “international language”? I know Mandarin is slowly racing to become a new lingua franca, but I’m already happy with English.
When you study a language, do you like to study reading, writing, speaking and listening? Writing. I want to make sure /I/ can apply it first before I read or listen to other people.
What dialects does your language have? There are so many dialects in our various languages. In Tagalog there are Batangueno, Marinduqueño, and Morong dialects; Cebuano has a Boholano dialect; and Bikolano has tons of dialects spread out in Bicol’s different municipalities.
What languages are spoken in:
Brazil? I’m gonna guess Portuguese. But I did think for a long time that their official language was Spanish lmao.
Mexico? Spanish. Hi, fellow colonizees!
Switzerland? Ok, I’m gonna take a wild guess with German because there’s a family from a show I watch – The Return of Superman (a Korean variety show that shows little kids bonding with their dads lmao) – that features a Swiss mom, and she and the kid solely communicate in German. I dunno the other major languages, though.
Australia? English, for the most part < Yeah, this.
Canada? I think French and English < Also this? Lane can confirm! Hahahaha
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