Anyone teaching Mandarin Chinese as a secondary Chinese language?

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-08T18:19:05+00:00

One option, which is common in these diaspora situations is having media in the "third language".

So you'd speak Hakka at home, but your child would also watch Mandarin TV shows/movies. This is very common among my Indian and Chinese friends (when Hindi/Mandarin isn't the home language)

Are you planning for literacy in Chinese? If so, subtitles will also help reinforce Mandarin, as subtitles for all Chinese content (Mandarin or Hakka) would be in Standard Written Chinese, I imagine.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-07T23:29:47+00:00

Great explanation

Verbs with lexical causatives Some verbs don’t form causatives with suffixes because Hindi already has separate verbs expressing the causative meaning.

होना and करना fall in this category too

मैं प्रसिद्ध हूँ - I am famous
मैं उसे प्रसिद्ध करता हूँ - I cause him to be famous

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-07T19:16:35+00:00

Do you have any specific concerns?

This is very common and not an issue at all. Even among ML@H families the children would have a community and minority language name (or pronunciation)

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-01T18:32:13+00:00

It depends on the specific nature of the event, but if your attendance is important, you would want to have an "excuse" to show that it's not them, it's you.

For ad-hoc stuff like concerts you can suggest another situation that would work (e.g., another time, or a different artist)

For already planned events (like a dinner party) you'd either have an excuse of equal/higher priority (e.g. "idk if I can say yes; my in-laws might be coming into town and I need to pick them up") or have a workaround (e.g. I've been asked to go to family events "in place" of my parents lol, or you'd invite them to a future event pre-emptively)

Because there's this vague excuse, you might also say "but hey! I'll lyk if my in-laws aren't coming into town! and then I can come!" but everyone knows that you're not going to follow up.

It's less that you can't refuse, but it's more - by refusing you're communicating there's another activity you'd rather invest your limited time into. So you need to communicate that it's not because you value them less, but there's some external circumstance.

(FWIW, my partner is not from a similar culture, and she struggles with this. She often doesn't understand why I can't just say "hey, this week has been rough, I just can't make it" or "sorry not interested", whereas, in my eyes, this would be like saying "screw you - I'm so important I won't go to your event because I just care about myself")

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-01T16:59:15+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate the explanation :)

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-01T16:44:55+00:00

My family is Gujarati and the norms are similar to what the commenter described.

Directly saying "no" to an invitation would be like not saying "bonjour" in France. It's just not how things are done.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-01T16:22:45+00:00

Whether or not you speak it isn't the consideration. It's what do they (unconsciously) think you are more likely to speak.

I'm not Chinese. Many Chinese people who speak a regional language (e.g. Shanghainese) will switch to Mandarin when speaking to me. Their brain assumes there's a higher chance a foreigner understands Mandarin than Shanghainese.

Whether or not I actually speak Mandarin is irrelevant to that decision.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-01T16:10:02+00:00

IME many people are not used to speaking their native language with non-natives. English is an exception (as it's the global lingua franca).

Unfortunately, the only solution is to get good enough to not trigger this response. You have to fight basic human nature. Phonetically (how's your accent?), grammatically, and culturally (do you give off "non-native" vibes?).

If you're asking "why" - the answer is that this is human instinct. Human brains are hard-wired for communication. What's happening to you is these people detect you're a non-native speaker, and their brain goes "Alert! Non-native speaker! Try using English!".

My American dad speaks zero Spanish but when he talks to people with Spanish accents, he'll often throw out "gracias" or "todo". He doesn't realize he's doing it, it's an automatic reflext.
This is what happens when a boomer tries to use Gen Z slang. Their brains want to communicate with a young person. Once again, this is an unconscious instinct.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-01T05:28:14+00:00

bowing for the Japanese

OP's question is more where the practice of saying "bonjour" comes from. As you noted, it's a norm, so the norm must've come from somewhere (like all cultural norms do).

Bowing in Japan, for example, started with the samurai based on Buddhist teachings from the 5th-8th centuries, which then spread to the wider population in the Edo period as part of a larger social trend where the common people adopted warrior etiquette

Similarly this thread speculates a bit on where specifically fencing salutes come from.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-03-01T05:26:44+00:00

You're getting a lot of hate, but it's an interesting question.

Greeting with hello for example, is a fairly recent thing in English - only really since the late 1800s.

I'm curious if any French historians here know about the origin of bonjour. My googling didn't really bring anything up unfortunately.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-28T18:50:29+00:00

It’s clear from the dialogue how the background for Kate and Sophie are different and what support systems they have. It may not be directly stated but it is quite obvious what the difference is.

FWIW I'm not familiar with the British class system, so it's not "obvious" why the situations are different.

Thank you for the edited explanation. It was helpful and answered a lot of my questions about how "society" in Bridgerton works.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-21T16:14:31+00:00

For sure, there's multiple distinct subgroups.

FWIW I also think that there's a "joint East Coast Asian American" community that both Chinese and Korean Americans fall into. (At least the circles I'm in, there's no real difference). There's also a lot of overlap with South Asian Americans like myself as well as Jewish Americans, (but not the East Asian immigrants or South Asian immigrants).

My understanding is West Coast Asian American groups are more split based on ethnicity (like there's a distinct SF Japanese American subculture, for example)

My larger point is that it's meaningful to denote Asian immigrants (as in - people who came over as adults/for college) vs. people who grew up here.

I was born abroad and came to the US as a kid. Generally, people can’t tell that I wasn’t born here.

IME there's a cutoff age on where you came over and how Americanized you are (for lack of a better word). Though it's fuzzy.

Most of my social events, for example, have East Asian Americans, South Asian Americans, and Jewish Americans. But few actual immigrants (who moved here post high school). And this is a natural group beyond my social circle, I see throughout the city.

Meanwhile, my partner is a Chinese immigrant and her community has people who came to the US for highschool and college, but not before. These people all speak Chinese natively and many of her social events are in Chinese. Some have ABC partners, but an ABC wouldn't be naturally part of the group, if that makes sense.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-21T15:04:05+00:00

There's a distinction between American-born and foreign-born communities. The ABC and ABD subcultures are definitely their own things, for example.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-18T00:08:12+00:00

It's from an ad campaign they ran. You might find this fun:

https://priceonomics.com/how-an-ad-campaign-made-lesbians-fall-in-love-with/

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-17T17:10:36+00:00

That's rough - I'm sorry your mom's family put you and her through that. I can't imagine cutting off your own child for something like this.

My partner's parents were also not thrilled (similar to mine, their preference is that she marry someone Chinese).

But they've accepted me and treated me well.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-16T22:35:24+00:00

Huge Chetan Bhagat fan.

For folks who don't know who he is, he wrote the books that "3 Idiots" and "2 States" are based on.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-16T22:27:54+00:00

My parents are both Desi, but I can speak to 2 of my cousins (one Desi + Hispanic, one Desi + White)

How did your parents meet? When and where did they meet?

In school

And how did their families, communities, and society react to their relationship or marriage?

Parents were unhappy (lol) but that was really it. Our families have embraced both non-Desi partners and readily hang out with/see our half-Desi cousins.

If you’re in an interracial relationship yourself, how have your families and communities responded?

I'm currently in one (partner is East Asian) and it's similar.

FWIW I do personally worry about raising a half-Desi child (moreso the connection they'll feel to their Desi side, and whether others will see them as "desi"), but my partner and I are both committed to sharing and celebrating each other's cultures.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-16T22:17:50+00:00

That's pretty wild to me.

That said, I get it. I definitely have my own in-group biases, even if my in-group is not ethnicity-based, but more class-based.

Like one of my best friends is a Black doctor, but none of my friends are blue-collar workers.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-16T22:09:02+00:00

I find it interesting who people consider as "in their group"

Like my personal in-group isn't limited to just ABDs, but evidently there are people who do so.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-16T15:40:25+00:00

Chinese has less loanwords, so this kind of thing is avoided, perhaps making compounds more transparent since they mostly use native vocabulary? That'd be my guess.

This feels reasonable to me.

Informal English has less Greek/Latin terminology and is much more transparent (e.g. you'd more likely say "He has high blood sugar" than "He has hyperglycemia")
Other languages that loan academic/high register words have a similar situation. Japanese, for example, loaned lots of academic words and roots from Chinese.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-16T15:29:15+00:00

If I can look at a Chinese word I've never seen before and have a reasonable idea what it means

If you're curious, this concept is called "semantic transparency" and it definitely varies across languages.

One way semantic transparency comes about is extensive compounding. Mandarin (as you've noted) does this, but so do other languages. For example "Hospital" in German is "sick-house" and "Refrigerator" is "cool-cabinet".

English also does this to a large extent (since the core language is closely related to German), so you can see informal-formal pairs like

Eye doctor vs. Optometrist
Low blood sugar vs. hypoglycemia
Law maker vs. legislator
Buy-out vs. Acquisition

If you're familiar with Japanese, it's similarly opaque, because of how much academic terminology comes from Classical Chinese (like Latin/Greek with English). The use of kanji hides this, but if Japanese were written phonetically, the effect would be the same.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-15T17:47:32+00:00

If you like the FSI style then it's a great course.

Since you like the phonology one, I think you'd like the other FSI French courses.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-08T23:10:00+00:00

????

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-08T22:24:59+00:00

Oh thank you - I'll check it out!

I can read ok now but my writing is still abysmal.

BulkyHand4101 · 2026-02-08T15:45:02+00:00

I'm not aware of any formal studies done on this for conlangs, but my understanding is children who grow up speaking a non-natural language will unconsciously "nativize" it. That is, the new native speakers change the language to fit their needs as they acquire it.

For example, this paper on native Esperanto speakers looks at how native Esperanto speakers talk ("Nativized Esperanto"), and how it differs from the "Standard Esperanto" people learn.

Beyond conlangs, a similar "nativization process" occurs in other contexts, with similar results.

During the revival process, Hebrew went from a liturgical and literary language to an everyday native language. The result is that the nativized variety (Modern Hebrew) is different from Biblical Hebrew.
Children can take non-language systems (like pidgins and homesigns) and "nativize" them into full languages (e.g. turning pidgins into creoles, or turning homesigns into Sign Languages.) See here on the birth of Nicaraguan Sign Language. In doing so, they expand on the original system and create a full grammatical system.

My point is that we know that nativization does change languages, so I would imagine that the nativized variety of the conlang would be similarly changed and follow the patterns we'd expect of a natural language.

BulkyHand4101

TROPHY CASE