Language Choice

General
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1

Okay so random question: What language should I learn?

For a few years now I’ve been trying to decide if I should learn Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, or Korean.

Here’s background on me first:
I’m a 16 year old 50% African American 50% Caucasian male in Southern California. I look like a normal kid but I’m super “Asian” on the inside. Like so Asian I listen to KPOP, play Pokemon, watch Anime, read Manga, and prefer an Asian woman over any other.

At first, I wanted to learn Mandarin because it would open up a whole field of international business for me. Not only would it make getting into college a lot easier (with more scholarships) but it would make getting a job easier. However, recently I kinda decided against Cantonese and Mandarin because of the difficulty of the language. I know I can learn the language, both written and spoken, but I feel like I’d be too lazy to put in the work. Also, I wouldn’t really want to live in China :stuck_out_tongue:

Before I wanted to learn “Chinese” though, I wanted to learn Japanese. At first, it was purely so I can play Japanese Pokemon games before the English translations came out.
But now I’ve realized that it would also be nice to not have to read the English subtitles under the good animes :laughing: But above that, I would love to live in Japan. Honestly, I don’t really like America. I appreciate everything it has done for the world, but its economic and social state right now are just poop and most likely getting worse, and I want to move internationally. At first I considered moving to Britain where I didn’t have to really change anything, but then I realized I could learn Japanese, move to Japan, pwn at Pokemon (VG and TCG), have a solid job, live in a great economy, and find the woman of my dreams ;D

And the only reason I really wanted to learn Korean was when I was dating this asian chick and we were super into KPOP and she was actually considering training to be a KPOP star and all that and I was like “That would be cool - learning Korean to listen to KPOP and become the 2nd black KPOP star :grin:”. But now that we broke up, Korean is kinda out the window, but ya never know :stuck_out_tongue:

Sooooo ya, know that you just wasted 10 minutes, wanna help me decide which language I should learn? Thanks :grin:

2

Well by all means discount my input because it is not based on what might be best for your future (career, scholarships etc.). I am very partial to Japanese! I am absolutely fascinated with the food, the culture, the customs, everything! Japan is way high on my list of places I’d love to live, and Japanese is 1st on my list of languages I wish I could learn. So I am going to say Japanese!

3

I am bias towards japanese because my wife is from Japan but dont kid yourself! Japans economy is terrible right now. Better than USA but its still not good. Japanese is easier than the other languages although with the growing success of china, mandarin is probly the smartest choice business wise. Of course this depends on what type of business you plan on conducting.

4

If you think you could learn it, I’d go with Mandarin. Not only would it be the better choice when considering the career benefits, but the challenge would make leaning Japanese a lot easier. So I’m pretty much leaning towards eventually learning both, but going with Mandarin first.