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Heyy everyone! 我叫 Sebastian

In fact, Sebastian is not my real name, but in the non-Asian language environment, I prefer to use this name :slight_smile: OK, this is my story.
My real name is Tran Viet Anh, translated as 陳越英, I was born in Thai Binh, Vietnam – a small city 100 km from the capital Hanoi. I’m 25 and I’m a programming student. I’m a naturalised citizen of the Czech Republic, but my core is still Vietnamese. Since I was 3 yo, I’ve been living in Prague, Czech Republic. My mother and I emigrated here to reunite with my father, who’s already lived and worked here for a while. So I consider myself to have 2 mother tongues – Czech and Vietnamese. Thanks to that, it has always been a bit easier for me to learn a foreign language, I’ve learnt English from school quite easily and wondered why it’s so hard for everybody else in the class.

Quite recently, 2 years ago, I’ve decided to learn Chinese, the so-called hardest language in the world, just for the heck of it and for fun. I chose an introductory class at Coursera.org and from then my enthusiasm haven’t faded at all. I spend a lot of my free time learning Chinese from various sources, especially Youtube and from googling. I’m fascinated by the beauty of the Chinese characters and since I prefer aesthetics over functionality, I’ve decided to learn the traditional script. And because there’s a plenty of learning materials in simplified but a scarcity of materials in traditional, I’ve come across @Fiona’s MandarinMadeEZ channel and just loved the way she teaches (especially the videos with her sister Iona, she’s supercute, funny and beautiful, say Hi to her for me :joy:). I’ve watched all of her videos there and felt so happy that I can learn Chinese with traditional characters comfortably, without searching the dictionary all the time to look up for them. I also like the LearnChineseNow channel, where Fiona was a host in one video here.

From all the researching I’ve done in finding the best possible main source for learning Chinese with traditional characters, I find Chinesepod the most cool one. I can still watch FIona and her wacky, enthusiastic way of teaching, use the cool user interface and very helpful learning tools provided here. Oh and speaking English with a British accent, a big plus for me :smile:

In the near future I hope I’ll get to study sinology and pedagogy in the Charles University in Prague and then be able to study abroad in Taiwan to level-up my game in the language, experiencing, studying and enjoying Chinese culture, food, life, people and much more. Chinese culture is an endless sea of rich history, great inventions, awesome people, a great inspiration and influence to my own Vietnamese culture. I can’t imagine how much I can learn from all of it. I already learn a great deal of Vietnamese just from learning Chinese, because it’s so deeply influenced by it! And maybe get lucky and meet y’all guys from Chinesepod :smile: In the far future, I’d love to live in my home home country Vietnam, be an awesome teacher here and stay in the East-Asian territory as long as possible.

I also learn, besides Chinese, German, Russian, Korean and Japanese. I would also love to learn Cantonese (to watch all of those cool Hong Kong films in original). Guess I just like to learn new writing systems :sunglasses:

Chinesepod, 加油! 你們棒極了!你們的好粉絲 陳越英。

2 Likes

Nice to have you here. Story is interesting. I’ve been at for a similar amount of time and also study japanese and cantonese on the side albeit definitely not as seriously as I do mandarin.

I gotta say tho, to me, traditional is more functional. The traditional are consistent in their use of the radicals. So once you know the radicals its all easy from there. Also traditional is used in Chinatowns abroad. And, once you know traditional the simplified are a breeze. Old chinese, korean and japanese was written in traditional so you win there as well. So as it may seem on face value that simplified are more “functional” the truth is they are not.

Welcome to the forum.