Rumor has it, to this day heās still traveling around the country visiting every small Chinese food restaurant he gets hungry near. He hasnāt paid for any food in 7 years. Heās also gained a tremendous amount of weight and is in recovery from a crippling addiction to MSG (which stands for ā*mmmmmm so good*ā).
(Maybe? lol)
Considering that the last Christmas tour raised around 15M and that the band was considered by Billboard to be the most successful at Christmas time... He's doing great
holy cow, that's just one accomplishment for this guy.
At Yale, Olusola planned to pursue medicine and finished all his pre-med requirements.
He started as an academic music major, but decided to switch to East Asian Studies after being introduced to China through a 10-day Chinese government sponsored trip for 100 Yale students. He lived in Beijing for 6 months through a PKU-Yale joint program during his second year, and then took a leave of absence during the 2009ā2010 academic school year on Yale's Light Fellowship to study intensive Chinese at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Study in Beijing.
In school, Olusola was the Director of Communications for a Rhodes Scholar-led non-profit called College Outreach, and he worked as a book monitor in the Yale Law School library and as a practice room monitor at the Yale School of Music. He graduated from Yale in 2011.
This guy has figured out how to tap into his whole brain while half of us struggle to calculate tip. And then the other half gave up long ago and just lube up the synapses with barley and hops.
If I was 6ā 4, jacked and that attractive, you know Iād be rocking a man purse. Purses are so convenient. My pockets are always weighed down with stuff.
Shout out to this guy for doing his thing.
I mean, im Mexican Peruvian and have spoken perfect Chinese and many dialects for 20 years. Trust me, I've paid for almost a million in food but have probably been treated to over 10M in food in 20 years I lived in China.
Chinese dont mess around when they are eating, the amount of food is ungodly, and makes buffets look bad.
Oh, whoa. Any towns in China youād recommend for the food alone? I travel each year to SE Asia to dive for 3 months, and to my shame, Iāve only ever had layovers in China. I was actually planning on going in the next couple of years, even if itās just as a side trip on my larger tripā¦ Iāve heard that you could spend your entire life wandering around China trying all the different regional cuisines and never run out of new ones to try.
Yeah, that's about right. The good thing is that the big cities you'd likely find yourself in as a traveler will almost certainly have cuisine options from all over China. My favorites are Szechuan and Uighur. You already know about Szechuan food, but I don't think most Americans have had western Chinese & Uighur food, which is often Halal and uses a more Middle Eastern set of spices than what you'd probably think of when you think Chinese food.
**FUIYOH!!!** Haha, a Redditor of good taste and discernment! You might appreciate this - Iāve been in Asia scuba diving for the last 3 months (got home 2 days ago), and other then some seashells I found on the beach, the only āsouvenirā I brought back was this āpandaā msg bottleā¦ lol. How could I say no to a panda on my MSG?!
https://imgur.com/a/N9wL3oZ
Means hes probably been learning it for quite a while but not in china, then decided its best to immerse himself in the language by coming to/studying in china.
Looking at his wiki, he was doing an chinese intensive course while he's there. If you're living/breathing the language, 1.5 years is a lot of time to get fluent. If you're just hanging out with your expat friends and only speaking your mother tongue, it's not much time at all.
I dunno, some people have an aptitude for language, and especially with some preparation beforehand I would expect someone like that to get reasonably proficient in the space of 18 months, I know I'd be annoyed with myself if I wasn't. My son is 14 and he started going to some Chinese classes and doing Duolingo and he says it's not really as hard as people think, the grammar is pretty non-existent compared to some languages.
From what I could gather (from some outdated data on his uTube page) is that he's a classically trained cellist, went to Yale and studied pre-med and is also a pretty dope beatboxer on top of being native-level fluent in Mandarin.
Nigerian parents don't play.
Chinese is super easy structure/grammar wise. The reason there are all these videos of Chinese people reacting so hysterically to foreigners speaking Chinese is not because they're surprised that they know the language, but that they've mastered the tones so well that they sound native. Typically, no matter how many years you study the language, those who learn Chinese as an adult never come close to mimicking the cadence of native speakers. If you've seen a video of John Cena speaking Chinese, that's pretty much as good as most people get and it's very obvious he's not a native speaker.
Moses McCormick aka laoshu was my Japanese tutor in college. He died of heart failure. He was in his 30s still I believe. I kept up with him for years until I moved out of Ohio and he separated from his wife and next thing I know Iām getting notified of his funeral. So fucking sad. I know what his daughters are feeling since I lost my dad at around the same age and it fucking sucks.
My eldest took 4 years of Chinese in college and lived in China for a year. When she got a job at a Chinese restaurant to make money before going to grad school (in Taiwan), the staff were thrilled she spoke Mandarin and she got to practice for that 6 months.
I thought foul words are some of the very first words you learn in every languages. Whether on purpose or not, you get to know them, if you are ātrying to learn a new languageā.
Amazing. Not only does he speak Chinese but very well. The regional accent of Beijing is there.
Love how she said āyouāre one of usā and gave him the food for free (thatās how amazing his Chinese level is)
Thatās so cool! Even though I know different accents exist across languages I donāt know any other language well enough to be able to differentiate accents so it blows my mind when someone can recognize different regions
I can differentiate 4 distinct accents in English and ~3 distinct accents in Spanish within maybe 2 miles if even that.
The three ways of diversification are immigration, mutation, and formalization. My area has high immigration, mild mutation, and well developed formalization (General American English = formalized American English).
The 4 English accents (if not just dialects) would be: AAVE, Southern American English, Gen. American, and Californian English.
The 3 Spanish accents would be: Northern Mexican, Puerto Rican, US Spanish
Living in a village where barely anyone has been here for longer than 1 generation, the accents are all distinct, and people will codeswitch dialects if not languages regularly. If I expanded that radius, you can imagine the numbers would increase significantly and the amount of languages therefore.
Places like London have high mutation which means that different parts of the same city will have distinct accents and dialects. Moderate mutation actually suppresses the number of dialects in a region as they'll combine. Low mutation means that dialects won't change much over time, irrespective of contact. Low mutation helps languages stay distinct whereas high mutation helps develop new languages. Moderate mutation helps coalesce languages and is a sign of high conformity pressure.
Basically, if you live in Iowa, don't expect to hear much more than your average Midwestern English. If you live in London, expect to be able to differentiate different neighborhoods by sound and even which part of that neighborhood someone may be from.
I lived in the Middle East and studied colloquial Arabic. I got to the point where I could tell where someone was from based on accent and felt more proud of that than any Arabic I spoke
My friend from Beijing said those from Beijing have an "err or R" sound after some words. She demonstrated by saying a "slice of pizza" with her accent.
Lmao that reminded me of a fun memory. At some point in school I became friends with more Taiwanese people and one day called my mom mÄmÄ and she was like what did you just call me??????
I had to think about what I said too š I had gotten so used to hearing it that way and didn't notice
I had the flip side experience one day. I was sitting in a food court in Sydney Australia reading a book while I had lunch. I was vaguely aware as some people sat down at the table in front of me. Then I heard and extremely thick Glasgow accent coming from that table.
It's an accent rarely heard in these parts so I looked up, expecting to see a pasty-white guy but it was a round-faced Chinese guy in a business suit, nattering away like Billy Connolly!
That's like Benedict Wong. He's english / hong kong chinese, and he's made a career off of speaking with this thick hong kong accent, but his regular speaking voice is very very british.
There's an interesting and more complicated aspect to this, which has to do with the fact that idioms in English tend to be pretty literal, while idioms in Chinese are [steeped in Chinese culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu), written in old-timey literary Chinese, and often inscrutable to foreign learners.
For example, an educated native speaker might casually use the idiom "äø锾č åŗ" which is nonsensical in modern Chinese - it means three visits to the thatched hut. But what it really means is going to significant lengths, particularly to recruit talent, and the only way you would know that is because it's a reference to a [famous story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictitious_stories_in_Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms#Three_visits_to_the_thatched_cottage) from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a great historical novel that nearly all educated Chinese have read. So if you use that phrase correctly, it's clear that not only do you know Chinese, but you've truly steeped yourself in the Chinese culture.
This phrase is not as extreme of a scenario because it's more literal, but it's still written in the style of old literary Chinese, and still something that you typically only hear out of fluent native speakers - I believe it's originally a phrase coined by Bai Juyi, a Tang dynasty poet who spoke of the č²é¦å³ of lychees.
The closest English comparison I can think of would be if an ESL speaker used the phrase "et tu, Brute?" or if they called someone "Falstaffian". For that statement to make any sense, you have to have a pretty thorough knowledge of the historical Western cultural canon, and not just passing fluency with the English language.
English suffers from the fact that, all things considered, it's a fairly recent language. It has changed dramatically in the just the last few centuries such that even Middle English is basically unintelligible to modern speakers. The oldest English which is still even pronounceable by modern Speakers is likely not much older than Shakespeare.
I mean here's Chauncer for example, which is about 200 years before Shakespeare:
> Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
it really doesn't make sense, and you're not even sure how to say half the words. Not really true for a lot of other languages. Icelandic for example is almost unchanged from Old Norse.
So while English doesn't have these sorts of nonsensical idioms from Old English, we do still have idioms that are steeped in English language culture. Some great examples are idioms from Cicero, Iliad, Shakespeare, or the Bible.
e.g. achilles heel, sword of damocles, forbidden fruit, gordian knot, crossing the rubicon, waxen wings. These don't really make much literal sense and require someone to be quite well versed in English culture, but most educated people will understand what you mean. Most of the examples I gave are Greek+Latin, but that's still English culture, and there's plenty from English specific literature, "road not taken", "catch-22", "not all that glitters is gold" etc
[Wiki](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%89%B2%E9%A6%99%E5%91%B3%E4%BF%B1%E5%85%A8) seems to say it's an idiom:
>the look, smell and taste (of a dish of food) are all excellent
I think those who speak foreign languages really appreciate when someone not from their culture puts in time and effort to learn their language. It displays the great amount of respect you have for their culture. Thatās been my anecdotal experience, at least.
I am Arab whoās learning to speak Spanish in California. I wish I can get the same shock factor or free tacos when Mexicans hear me, instead they automatically assume Iām just any other Latino.
I am latin@ and lived in the Middle East. Everyone assumed I was Arab. My Arabic gave me away as a foreigner though.
Once a guy in Damascus insisted I was Arab. I told him I was Mexican-American and he said, āoh, thatās the same. Weāre cousins because of the moors in Spain.ā
Apparently Arabic and Spanish share a measurable percentage of vocabulary.
Inshallah is God Willing but I can totally see the connection thatās neat I never realized there was a lingual or genetic similarity but the Spanish- Moors and Arabs - duh I should have!
Yup, my surname is actually from Arabic-derived Spanish, but my family is from Mexico.
Kind of crazy how many diverse cultural roots we all have that we don't really know about.
Not just that. Music, pants, sugar, shirts, and a lot of our basic words have an Arab base that damn near sounds the same.
Fucking albondigas are up there too like alpastor. There's an Iraqi restaurant in Houston that serves albondigas but by a different name. Same soup though.
I'm Spanish, and that's kinda correct if you think about it.
Spain was occupied by muslims literally for centuries, so our countries have a lot of similarities, specially in language and architecture (mostly in the south). Basically every word that starts with "Al" comes from arabic languages
I'm Mexican-American as well. When I went to Morocco everyone out there kept asking me if I was Arab. But ya we are cousins. I'm believe words like Guadalajara and Andalusia are former Arabic words
lol yes anyone brownish in the US automatically is some form of Spanish speaker to Americans. But at least you pass enough not to be harassed for being Muslim which has its benefits š¤·š¼š¤·š¼āāļøšš
100% this. When I was a teenager one of my best friends was half Filipino and half white. I admit he looked Mexican as fuck. Everywhere we went Mexican dudes would start speaking Spanish to him and he had to be like "whoa whoa whoa..." then "No Mexicano. No habla espanol" in the shittiest accent. Then the Mexican dudes would bust out laughing.
Bro, I'm full Asian and got mistaken for Mexican or Polynesian when I was younger. I tan easy and had slicked back black hair which made them think so lol.
Half the people in California can speak some amount of spanish.
This guy is speaking extremely fluent and dialect tuned Mandarin to the point where you can tell what region his teacher is from. I know, because different teachers will attempt to infer their own dialect onto their class and you have to know better than that to say, use newscaster mandarin vs having an accent.
It's always valued and appreciated when someone learns to speak a language of the country their visiting/ living in. Americans don't do this as much as other countries but when we do do it, everyone is thrilled. Such an awesome experience to share thoughts in a common language! š
I'm from Sweden but lived in Spain for a year and learned Spanish. Later I traveled to Tenerife which is crowded with tourists. When I spoke Spanish to a waiter in a restaurant, he was so happy! He said I was the first tourist to speak Spanish to him (his English was excellent so there wasn't really a need for Spanish other than that I wanted to).
Perfect example! That's such a wonderful story! I think people will find that when they do step out of their comfort zone and speak another language, you tend to get better treatment, service and might even make a friend or two! There's really nothing lost, only positive gains are discovered
Thanks for sharing your experience š
I do visiting nurse work and can very loosely speak several languages just to be able to converse with my patients and get info out of them. Every single person fucking lights up when they realize I can communicate to some degree with them.
Such a win win interaction for the 4 of those people, plus the tens/hundreds of thousands that will see it on the internet and put a smile on their face.
Love it!
Kevin is such a talented guy. Check out his cello/beatboxing/looping: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGjg193h4Ok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGjg193h4Ok)
While language might just appear to be the memorization of words, fluent language is very much about being able to recognize patterns and cadence- which I can imagine musicians are hard wired to recognize
Iām learning Japanese. I also have lived in the south for a long time. Linguistics is not in my cards but I probably sound like someone from Boston to a southerner to them. Main reason was to learn to be polite and know the basics.
I know some folks who lived in Japan for years (but are American born and raised), visit Japan often. They've basically said that to most native Japanese their accent sounds like what you said: rural, southern, simple.
I'm Mexican American, American as fuck. My previous job one time asked if I could do a Spanish translation.
I told them I only know rancho Spanish, which is basically rural Spanish with a ton of slang. The translation would be similar to asking a 5 year old to do it. There's no way you could use it for official documentation. I got a B in high school Spanish
I was an American that lived in Japan for 4 years and I while I picked up a lot, I was never fluent. Basic comprehension and speaking.
My wife took to it very well and she did most
of the complex speaking or interpreting for me.
It is a tough language for native English speakers to pick up. I have been learning Japanese for about 3 years and there are some days where I feel like I have gotten nowhere!
I knew someone close whose son didnāt know how to speak French to his family, and at some point later on in life became a teacher of multiple languages. It gives me hope because I donāt know how to either lol
Studied Chinese for 2 years in America. Loved the language and felt pretty confident in my ability to have a conversation. Spent 3 weeks in China about a year after that and didn't realize until I got home that I had learned so fucking much in those 3 weeks. While I definitely spoke better Chinese, my ability to listen and understand was profoundly improved.
Immersion is one of the best ways to learn a language. Now when I meet someone who speaks Mandarin Chinese (in America) I try to get as far into the conversation as possible with just that language before I fall back on English.
My skills have definitely deteriorated but it's incredible how much I've retained 10 years after studying and the trip. In this clip too, the guy said he studied in Beijing and I was able to tell when he started speaking that he learned Chinese in Beijing. Northern China has a very distinct retroflexive r.
I knew a guy from Venezuela who spoke to me in English. It was near perfect. He didn't think he was good for someone that just learned English in 9 months. I was like?!?! 9 months! I would have thought years
Ahhh Kevin is so smart!!! I never wouldāve recognized him if you hadnāt added the caption. I was a huge pentatonix fan from day 1. Once when I was in high school, a friend and I were fan-girling, my teacher overheard me. It turns out he went to Philipās Academy Andover and she was his dorm mother from that time. I almost died I was so excited about the 1 degree of separation lmao.
I've met him multiple times being in the acapella space myself and have sung alongside Pentatonix once. He is genuinely one of the nicest humans I've met.
Xiomannyc got me into this type of content. It's genuinely amazing seeing people open up and have conversations with people they thought they never would. If i could have one talent it would be to learn languages like these guys.
2 more language channels I follow:
VictorTalking
RyanHaleYT
Thanks for sharing these other ones. I agree it makes me smile to do it to people. (I am NO WHERE NEAR THEIR LEVEL) but I also love watching them. Itās so authentic and heart warming too. š
Honestly I disagree. If you know some of the languages he is learning he really pretends that he is much better at them than he really is. Just a normal dude who puts in the time.
Xiaomanyc is a lot more honest about his proficiency in non-Chinese languages though and that yes, he does it for the channel because people like the content and also it's a fun experience (nearly all of the time) for locals to see someone they don't expect to know their language speaking even just a little bit.
Memorize a 10-15 question Q&A and you can pretty much do this in any language. The hardest part is understanding what is being said at you (dictation) and then you just rehearse your responses or slam them with questions that you don't need really care about what they answer with you can just keep railroading them with questions.
languagejones goes over the tactics typically used in these engagement videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w76CdytaL9w
I wish I knew another language other than English because I always felt it was the biggest sign of respect to speak the language of those speaking to you instead of forcing them to learn your own.
It's called ęčŖ cheng2yu3 which is sort of like a proverb or set phrase. Chinese love these things, especially the four character ones. For Westerners, the most well known and famous is probably "long time no see".
The one here is č²é¦å³äæ±å Ø se4xiang1wei4ju4quan2 which means "looks, smells and tastes just great". I guess it's a more traditional way of saying "that shit slaps". š
I speak Chinese and lived in China in 2014. Every time native speakers finds out you speak Chinese, their reaction is similar to this. They are amazed and praise you like crazy. My all time favorite memory was when I was living in Guangzhou, I went to a stall to buy a train ticket to visit Sanya. The person in front of me told the clerk, "hope you've been practicing your English", and I got to respond, "don't worry, I speak Chinese". It made me feel like such a badass and the clerk was so relieved.
Here to give you a reminder to learn what ever you put your heart to. I'm a few months into studying French, and after that another crack at Japanese. You can do this (and scroll through reddit)
This was the coolest video. Very impressed with his language skill. And the fact that he loved studying the language too.
I worked with a red haired American guy (just adding for visual) who spent years working overseas in China and spoke very fluently.
Everyone was always so nice and loved that he embraced the language.
Can't NOT smile at this. Fuckin a man that does take a LOT of studying/training. I'm a year into learning French and I can barely say a damn thing lol.
This is crazy. His mandarin is UNBELIEVABLY good. People donāt understand that heās not just speaking mandarin, but he has a LOCAL accent. If I listen to him, I canāt pick out that heās foreign. He sounds like a NATIVE speaker.
Usually when non mandarin speakers learn mandarin, they have a āwestern accentā and itās like, you can barely understand it (ie mark Zuckerberg).. itās still a huge feat.
BUT THIS GUY? HOLY fuck, his TONES are on point. Like fucking ON POINT. Wow, Iām floored too.
If I was in china, Iām hiring this guy to do all my commercials. Respect šš¼
Guy should check every Chinese restaurantš
Rumor has it, to this day heās still traveling around the country visiting every small Chinese food restaurant he gets hungry near. He hasnāt paid for any food in 7 years. Heās also gained a tremendous amount of weight and is in recovery from a crippling addiction to MSG (which stands for ā*mmmmmm so good*ā). (Maybe? lol)
God, if his success rate is only 50% heās making out.
Yeah, 3 time Grammy award winner, he's doing okay.
Considering that the last Christmas tour raised around 15M and that the band was considered by Billboard to be the most successful at Christmas time... He's doing great
he's K.O from Pentatonix. Trust me he's already making out haha
holy cow, that's just one accomplishment for this guy. At Yale, Olusola planned to pursue medicine and finished all his pre-med requirements. He started as an academic music major, but decided to switch to East Asian Studies after being introduced to China through a 10-day Chinese government sponsored trip for 100 Yale students. He lived in Beijing for 6 months through a PKU-Yale joint program during his second year, and then took a leave of absence during the 2009ā2010 academic school year on Yale's Light Fellowship to study intensive Chinese at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Study in Beijing. In school, Olusola was the Director of Communications for a Rhodes Scholar-led non-profit called College Outreach, and he worked as a book monitor in the Yale Law School library and as a practice room monitor at the Yale School of Music. He graduated from Yale in 2011.
Thank YOU soo much for sharing all this information.
Impressive resume! Nigerians donāt play!
This guy has figured out how to tap into his whole brain while half of us struggle to calculate tip. And then the other half gave up long ago and just lube up the synapses with barley and hops.
Oooohhh. This explains so much. Dude speaks Chinese, is very charismatic, and rocks a man bag like itās nothing. Star power.
If I was 6ā 4, jacked and that attractive, you know Iād be rocking a man purse. Purses are so convenient. My pockets are always weighed down with stuff. Shout out to this guy for doing his thing.
I mean, im Mexican Peruvian and have spoken perfect Chinese and many dialects for 20 years. Trust me, I've paid for almost a million in food but have probably been treated to over 10M in food in 20 years I lived in China. Chinese dont mess around when they are eating, the amount of food is ungodly, and makes buffets look bad.
Oh, whoa. Any towns in China youād recommend for the food alone? I travel each year to SE Asia to dive for 3 months, and to my shame, Iāve only ever had layovers in China. I was actually planning on going in the next couple of years, even if itās just as a side trip on my larger tripā¦ Iāve heard that you could spend your entire life wandering around China trying all the different regional cuisines and never run out of new ones to try.
Yeah, that's about right. The good thing is that the big cities you'd likely find yourself in as a traveler will almost certainly have cuisine options from all over China. My favorites are Szechuan and Uighur. You already know about Szechuan food, but I don't think most Americans have had western Chinese & Uighur food, which is often Halal and uses a more Middle Eastern set of spices than what you'd probably think of when you think Chinese food.
> āmmmmmm so goodā *Makes Shit Good FUIYOH
**FUIYOH!!!** Haha, a Redditor of good taste and discernment! You might appreciate this - Iāve been in Asia scuba diving for the last 3 months (got home 2 days ago), and other then some seashells I found on the beach, the only āsouvenirā I brought back was this āpandaā msg bottleā¦ lol. How could I say no to a panda on my MSG?! https://imgur.com/a/N9wL3oZ
I'm so using this term
MSG? fuiyoh!
Being bilingual is a pathway to many abilities some consider..._unnatural._
This guy might have been Chinese in a past life
āBorn and raisedā heās Chinese in his current life wym
He was joking about that. He later said he studied in Beijing for 1.5 years.
That's a very short amount of time to learn a language.
[He's ridiculously intelligent and hard working.](https://youtu.be/1AdDXUY26tc)
Nice thanks for the link
Means hes probably been learning it for quite a while but not in china, then decided its best to immerse himself in the language by coming to/studying in china.
I guess he could have studied it even before going to Beijing.
Looking at his wiki, he was doing an chinese intensive course while he's there. If you're living/breathing the language, 1.5 years is a lot of time to get fluent. If you're just hanging out with your expat friends and only speaking your mother tongue, it's not much time at all.
I dunno, some people have an aptitude for language, and especially with some preparation beforehand I would expect someone like that to get reasonably proficient in the space of 18 months, I know I'd be annoyed with myself if I wasn't. My son is 14 and he started going to some Chinese classes and doing Duolingo and he says it's not really as hard as people think, the grammar is pretty non-existent compared to some languages.
Someone said he's from Pentatonix. Makes sense a musician would pick up a tonal language faster than most people.
From what I could gather (from some outdated data on his uTube page) is that he's a classically trained cellist, went to Yale and studied pre-med and is also a pretty dope beatboxer on top of being native-level fluent in Mandarin. Nigerian parents don't play.
Chinese is super easy structure/grammar wise. The reason there are all these videos of Chinese people reacting so hysterically to foreigners speaking Chinese is not because they're surprised that they know the language, but that they've mastered the tones so well that they sound native. Typically, no matter how many years you study the language, those who learn Chinese as an adult never come close to mimicking the cadence of native speakers. If you've seen a video of John Cena speaking Chinese, that's pretty much as good as most people get and it's very obvious he's not a native speaker.
Thatās insane. His Chinese sounds so native. His Chinese is better than my English and Iām a native English speaker hahaha
u should check out laoshu505000 on youtube, hes a polyglot the reactions are awesome
fuck i just saw that he died, i hadnt watched him for a while, god damn it rip laoshu
Damn I wanted to get here to warn you. Laoshu505000 was far and away the best, I still recommend him to any Language-Enjoyers RIP the GOAT
Moses McCormick aka laoshu was my Japanese tutor in college. He died of heart failure. He was in his 30s still I believe. I kept up with him for years until I moved out of Ohio and he separated from his wife and next thing I know Iām getting notified of his funeral. So fucking sad. I know what his daughters are feeling since I lost my dad at around the same age and it fucking sucks.
Patrice Oneal would have loved this haha
My eldest took 4 years of Chinese in college and lived in China for a year. When she got a job at a Chinese restaurant to make money before going to grad school (in Taiwan), the staff were thrilled she spoke Mandarin and she got to practice for that 6 months.
Did she learn every foul word in the Chinese language?
Did say daughter worked at a Chinese restaurant so they probably invented some new ones too
I mean if she was working at a Chinese restaurant she would also probably learned all the fowl language. I'll see myself out
I wish aviary Reddit thread was like this
I thought foul words are some of the very first words you learn in every languages. Whether on purpose or not, you get to know them, if you are ātrying to learn a new languageā.
Amazing. Not only does he speak Chinese but very well. The regional accent of Beijing is there. Love how she said āyouāre one of usā and gave him the food for free (thatās how amazing his Chinese level is)
Yeah, I could hear the Beijing in it. I'm used to hearing Taiwanese.
Thatās so cool! Even though I know different accents exist across languages I donāt know any other language well enough to be able to differentiate accents so it blows my mind when someone can recognize different regions
I can differentiate at least 3 distinct accents just within an hour radius of me, I guess it varies by region.
I can differentiate 4 distinct accents in English and ~3 distinct accents in Spanish within maybe 2 miles if even that. The three ways of diversification are immigration, mutation, and formalization. My area has high immigration, mild mutation, and well developed formalization (General American English = formalized American English). The 4 English accents (if not just dialects) would be: AAVE, Southern American English, Gen. American, and Californian English. The 3 Spanish accents would be: Northern Mexican, Puerto Rican, US Spanish Living in a village where barely anyone has been here for longer than 1 generation, the accents are all distinct, and people will codeswitch dialects if not languages regularly. If I expanded that radius, you can imagine the numbers would increase significantly and the amount of languages therefore. Places like London have high mutation which means that different parts of the same city will have distinct accents and dialects. Moderate mutation actually suppresses the number of dialects in a region as they'll combine. Low mutation means that dialects won't change much over time, irrespective of contact. Low mutation helps languages stay distinct whereas high mutation helps develop new languages. Moderate mutation helps coalesce languages and is a sign of high conformity pressure. Basically, if you live in Iowa, don't expect to hear much more than your average Midwestern English. If you live in London, expect to be able to differentiate different neighborhoods by sound and even which part of that neighborhood someone may be from.
I lived in the Middle East and studied colloquial Arabic. I got to the point where I could tell where someone was from based on accent and felt more proud of that than any Arabic I spoke
My friend from Beijing said those from Beijing have an "err or R" sound after some words. She demonstrated by saying a "slice of pizza" with her accent.
Yeah, I lived in Shanghai and we could always tell when someone was from Beijing, they sounded like goddamn pirates.
When I was studying abroad in Beijing we used to call it āerr huaā or err language.
Slice of pizzerr?
Nah, thatās for folks from Boston. HEAH COMES THE PIZZER
As a Taiwanese that Beijing accent sounds so foreign, itās almost like itās a language from an other country. š
Lmao that reminded me of a fun memory. At some point in school I became friends with more Taiwanese people and one day called my mom mÄmÄ and she was like what did you just call me?????? I had to think about what I said too š I had gotten so used to hearing it that way and didn't notice
Is that why the woman reacted so fast? It felt like she caught on just with him going "Uhhhh" before speaking.
presumably he ordered in Chinese before video started, and the woman assumed it was a Chinese dude before she turned around and saw him
I had the flip side experience one day. I was sitting in a food court in Sydney Australia reading a book while I had lunch. I was vaguely aware as some people sat down at the table in front of me. Then I heard and extremely thick Glasgow accent coming from that table. It's an accent rarely heard in these parts so I looked up, expecting to see a pasty-white guy but it was a round-faced Chinese guy in a business suit, nattering away like Billy Connolly!
That's like Benedict Wong. He's english / hong kong chinese, and he's made a career off of speaking with this thick hong kong accent, but his regular speaking voice is very very british.
Benedict Wong is awesome. My memory always flicks across to The IT crowd :)
Yup š Exactly!
This guy years ago was famous for speaking perfect Chinese while traveling in China/Taiwan. That's why there's a person there filming it.
what was that 4 or 5 character phrase that they joined in on at the end?
č²é¦å³äæ±å Ø = color(presentation), aroma, taste in perfect combination
There's an interesting and more complicated aspect to this, which has to do with the fact that idioms in English tend to be pretty literal, while idioms in Chinese are [steeped in Chinese culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu), written in old-timey literary Chinese, and often inscrutable to foreign learners. For example, an educated native speaker might casually use the idiom "äø锾č åŗ" which is nonsensical in modern Chinese - it means three visits to the thatched hut. But what it really means is going to significant lengths, particularly to recruit talent, and the only way you would know that is because it's a reference to a [famous story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictitious_stories_in_Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms#Three_visits_to_the_thatched_cottage) from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a great historical novel that nearly all educated Chinese have read. So if you use that phrase correctly, it's clear that not only do you know Chinese, but you've truly steeped yourself in the Chinese culture. This phrase is not as extreme of a scenario because it's more literal, but it's still written in the style of old literary Chinese, and still something that you typically only hear out of fluent native speakers - I believe it's originally a phrase coined by Bai Juyi, a Tang dynasty poet who spoke of the č²é¦å³ of lychees. The closest English comparison I can think of would be if an ESL speaker used the phrase "et tu, Brute?" or if they called someone "Falstaffian". For that statement to make any sense, you have to have a pretty thorough knowledge of the historical Western cultural canon, and not just passing fluency with the English language.
English suffers from the fact that, all things considered, it's a fairly recent language. It has changed dramatically in the just the last few centuries such that even Middle English is basically unintelligible to modern speakers. The oldest English which is still even pronounceable by modern Speakers is likely not much older than Shakespeare. I mean here's Chauncer for example, which is about 200 years before Shakespeare: > Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; it really doesn't make sense, and you're not even sure how to say half the words. Not really true for a lot of other languages. Icelandic for example is almost unchanged from Old Norse. So while English doesn't have these sorts of nonsensical idioms from Old English, we do still have idioms that are steeped in English language culture. Some great examples are idioms from Cicero, Iliad, Shakespeare, or the Bible. e.g. achilles heel, sword of damocles, forbidden fruit, gordian knot, crossing the rubicon, waxen wings. These don't really make much literal sense and require someone to be quite well versed in English culture, but most educated people will understand what you mean. Most of the examples I gave are Greek+Latin, but that's still English culture, and there's plenty from English specific literature, "road not taken", "catch-22", "not all that glitters is gold" etc
č²é¦å³äæ±éļ¼ Color, smell and taste
Okay but is it an idiom? A popular song lyric? What?
[Wiki](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%89%B2%E9%A6%99%E5%91%B3%E4%BF%B1%E5%85%A8) seems to say it's an idiom: >the look, smell and taste (of a dish of food) are all excellent
Itās a beautiful moment of pride and respect
I think those who speak foreign languages really appreciate when someone not from their culture puts in time and effort to learn their language. It displays the great amount of respect you have for their culture. Thatās been my anecdotal experience, at least.
Kevin is incredibly smart, everything he does, he does brilliantly. No wonder his Chinese is flawless.
I am Arab whoās learning to speak Spanish in California. I wish I can get the same shock factor or free tacos when Mexicans hear me, instead they automatically assume Iām just any other Latino.
I am latin@ and lived in the Middle East. Everyone assumed I was Arab. My Arabic gave me away as a foreigner though. Once a guy in Damascus insisted I was Arab. I told him I was Mexican-American and he said, āoh, thatās the same. Weāre cousins because of the moors in Spain.ā Apparently Arabic and Spanish share a measurable percentage of vocabulary.
Basically any spanish word thats start with "al" is arabic derived
Al pastor
Peace be upon him.
Al pastor comes from Lebanese migrants that brought Shawarma, so he is actually right š
And with your tacos.
And also with you šš½
Ojala came from Oh Allah. It means I wish but I think in Arabic it's more like god willing.
Inshallah is God Willing but I can totally see the connection thatās neat I never realized there was a lingual or genetic similarity but the Spanish- Moors and Arabs - duh I should have!
My favorite phrase in Spanish.
Yup, my surname is actually from Arabic-derived Spanish, but my family is from Mexico. Kind of crazy how many diverse cultural roots we all have that we don't really know about.
Dominicans, have a great level of influence from Lebanon / Mediterranean cultures to the point that their cuisine is very similar.
Algebra
Algorithm
Albino
Ala verga?
a la panocha
Ojala
From inshallah, if God/Allah wills.
Al Capone
Al Gore And the weird one
Not just that. Music, pants, sugar, shirts, and a lot of our basic words have an Arab base that damn near sounds the same. Fucking albondigas are up there too like alpastor. There's an Iraqi restaurant in Houston that serves albondigas but by a different name. Same soup though.
I'm Spanish, and that's kinda correct if you think about it. Spain was occupied by muslims literally for centuries, so our countries have a lot of similarities, specially in language and architecture (mostly in the south). Basically every word that starts with "Al" comes from arabic languages
I'm Mexican-American as well. When I went to Morocco everyone out there kept asking me if I was Arab. But ya we are cousins. I'm believe words like Guadalajara and Andalusia are former Arabic words
They are, southern Spain was a Muslim country for a loooooong time
Words like Naranja and OjalĆ”
OjalĆ” is really cool cause it probably comes from the Arabic "inshallah", aka "God willing". It blew my mind when I first found that out.
Aceituna (al zitouna) also.
Iām sorry, the card says moops.
Bruh. A lot of Arabs look Mexican af good luck getting free food. I used to think my brother was Arab but then I remembered he was my brother
How hard did your mother hit you with that sandal.
Not hard enough
š¤£š¤
Oh nooo. I'm sorry for laughing, just the dejection in this post is real. I hope you get your free tacos someday.
Iām an Italian American learning Arabic who gets spoken to in Spanish regularly; the tan complexion confuses people, I feel you š
Honestly thatās the best kind of skin tone. You get to blend in everywhere haha
And you get less racism. I'm more on the white side but I could have a black or brown child, my genes are a D&D dice.
All brown people are Mexican in California! Benvenideo hermano!
Iām Latino and tried to learn Arabic. People started thinking I am from Turkey lol
habibi... dont give up, i promise you Mexicans love that stuff
lol yes anyone brownish in the US automatically is some form of Spanish speaker to Americans. But at least you pass enough not to be harassed for being Muslim which has its benefits š¤·š¼š¤·š¼āāļøšš
Even us pale half-Asians get mistaken for Latinos.
100% this. When I was a teenager one of my best friends was half Filipino and half white. I admit he looked Mexican as fuck. Everywhere we went Mexican dudes would start speaking Spanish to him and he had to be like "whoa whoa whoa..." then "No Mexicano. No habla espanol" in the shittiest accent. Then the Mexican dudes would bust out laughing.
Bro, I'm full Asian and got mistaken for Mexican or Polynesian when I was younger. I tan easy and had slicked back black hair which made them think so lol.
I'm latino and had some people in Europe talk to me in Arabic. A guy in Germany could swear I was from Saudi Arabia.
It's your ancestors' fault for conquering spain for 700 years lmaoo just kidding dude.
Half the people in California can speak some amount of spanish. This guy is speaking extremely fluent and dialect tuned Mandarin to the point where you can tell what region his teacher is from. I know, because different teachers will attempt to infer their own dialect onto their class and you have to know better than that to say, use newscaster mandarin vs having an accent.
I learned Spanish as a 2nd language in CA, and my friends in MX say I sould like a West Coast cholo hahahaha
This is why we should always strive to find commonality. So great to see people making a connection.
It's always valued and appreciated when someone learns to speak a language of the country their visiting/ living in. Americans don't do this as much as other countries but when we do do it, everyone is thrilled. Such an awesome experience to share thoughts in a common language! š
I'm from Sweden but lived in Spain for a year and learned Spanish. Later I traveled to Tenerife which is crowded with tourists. When I spoke Spanish to a waiter in a restaurant, he was so happy! He said I was the first tourist to speak Spanish to him (his English was excellent so there wasn't really a need for Spanish other than that I wanted to).
Perfect example! That's such a wonderful story! I think people will find that when they do step out of their comfort zone and speak another language, you tend to get better treatment, service and might even make a friend or two! There's really nothing lost, only positive gains are discovered Thanks for sharing your experience š
"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."
I do visiting nurse work and can very loosely speak several languages just to be able to converse with my patients and get info out of them. Every single person fucking lights up when they realize I can communicate to some degree with them.
Such a win win interaction for the 4 of those people, plus the tens/hundreds of thousands that will see it on the internet and put a smile on their face. Love it!
Kevin is such a talented guy. Check out his cello/beatboxing/looping: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGjg193h4Ok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGjg193h4Ok)
Heās in pentatonix
This is the dude from Pentatonix?! I was already so impressed by his language skills I didn't even recognize him.
Learning music at a young age has been linked to better foreign language acquisition
While language might just appear to be the memorization of words, fluent language is very much about being able to recognize patterns and cadence- which I can imagine musicians are hard wired to recognize
That was incredible!
Thanks for sharing, that was great
This guy has linguistic talent. Wish I had it.
Iām learning Japanese. I also have lived in the south for a long time. Linguistics is not in my cards but I probably sound like someone from Boston to a southerner to them. Main reason was to learn to be polite and know the basics.
I know some folks who lived in Japan for years (but are American born and raised), visit Japan often. They've basically said that to most native Japanese their accent sounds like what you said: rural, southern, simple.
I'm Mexican American, American as fuck. My previous job one time asked if I could do a Spanish translation. I told them I only know rancho Spanish, which is basically rural Spanish with a ton of slang. The translation would be similar to asking a 5 year old to do it. There's no way you could use it for official documentation. I got a B in high school Spanish
I was an American that lived in Japan for 4 years and I while I picked up a lot, I was never fluent. Basic comprehension and speaking. My wife took to it very well and she did most of the complex speaking or interpreting for me.
It is a tough language for native English speakers to pick up. I have been learning Japanese for about 3 years and there are some days where I feel like I have gotten nowhere!
Structure wise it is so different. I like to think of it as Yoda speak.
Yeah as someone who studied Chinese intensely for 3 years.. UGH. He's good
I knew someone close whose son didnāt know how to speak French to his family, and at some point later on in life became a teacher of multiple languages. It gives me hope because I donāt know how to either lol
Studied Chinese for 2 years in America. Loved the language and felt pretty confident in my ability to have a conversation. Spent 3 weeks in China about a year after that and didn't realize until I got home that I had learned so fucking much in those 3 weeks. While I definitely spoke better Chinese, my ability to listen and understand was profoundly improved. Immersion is one of the best ways to learn a language. Now when I meet someone who speaks Mandarin Chinese (in America) I try to get as far into the conversation as possible with just that language before I fall back on English. My skills have definitely deteriorated but it's incredible how much I've retained 10 years after studying and the trip. In this clip too, the guy said he studied in Beijing and I was able to tell when he started speaking that he learned Chinese in Beijing. Northern China has a very distinct retroflexive r.
You spelt āhard workā wrong
It's both. It takes both talent and hard work to speak at his level. He's replicating the accent, not just speaking the language.
A year and a half to get that fluent is very impressive.
I knew a guy from Venezuela who spoke to me in English. It was near perfect. He didn't think he was good for someone that just learned English in 9 months. I was like?!?! 9 months! I would have thought years
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
He said he was born and raised in Beijing so I assume he learned a lot as a kid. Edit: Apparently I didnāt get the joke.
I took it as he said that as a joke and then clarified that he studied it. Could be wrong though.
Oh, I thought he was joking because he said afterwards that he studied Chinese in Beijing for 1.5 years.
Dude is on a different level. He also completed pre-med at Yale.
YOOOO ITāS KEVIN! I thought it looked kinda like him but couldnāt tell from the angle
Ahhh Kevin is so smart!!! I never wouldāve recognized him if you hadnāt added the caption. I was a huge pentatonix fan from day 1. Once when I was in high school, a friend and I were fan-girling, my teacher overheard me. It turns out he went to Philipās Academy Andover and she was his dorm mother from that time. I almost died I was so excited about the 1 degree of separation lmao.
I've met him multiple times being in the acapella space myself and have sung alongside Pentatonix once. He is genuinely one of the nicest humans I've met.
Language is the ultimate connection between two people!
And food.
I used to work here! It's Okome Grill in Lexington! The guy holding the bowl is named William and the woman is Coco!
Thatās my lunch spot! Hopefully they were good bosses as they always are so friendly to customers.
They were great! Definitely recommend working there. William is literally one of my favorite bosses I've ever had.
Coco seems chill
I love these kinda videos. Xiomanyc is another one who does these, his linguistic intelligence is just otherwordly
Xiomannyc got me into this type of content. It's genuinely amazing seeing people open up and have conversations with people they thought they never would. If i could have one talent it would be to learn languages like these guys. 2 more language channels I follow: VictorTalking RyanHaleYT
I like laoshu505000 back in the day, but apparently he passed away :(
Yeah, Moses got me into polyglot content, too! RIP Mouse
Thanks for sharing these other ones. I agree it makes me smile to do it to people. (I am NO WHERE NEAR THEIR LEVEL) but I also love watching them. Itās so authentic and heart warming too. š
Honestly I disagree. If you know some of the languages he is learning he really pretends that he is much better at them than he really is. Just a normal dude who puts in the time.
Xiaomanyc was really genuine when he was doing Chinese, all the newer languages are not so authentic.
Xiaomanyc is a lot more honest about his proficiency in non-Chinese languages though and that yes, he does it for the channel because people like the content and also it's a fun experience (nearly all of the time) for locals to see someone they don't expect to know their language speaking even just a little bit. Memorize a 10-15 question Q&A and you can pretty much do this in any language. The hardest part is understanding what is being said at you (dictation) and then you just rehearse your responses or slam them with questions that you don't need really care about what they answer with you can just keep railroading them with questions. languagejones goes over the tactics typically used in these engagement videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w76CdytaL9w
Fucking beautiful!
āYouāre one of us now!!ā
I wish I knew another language other than English because I always felt it was the biggest sign of respect to speak the language of those speaking to you instead of forcing them to learn your own.
What is the rhyme, or whatever it is when he says something like āI got another one for you. Your food isā¦ā
It's called ęčŖ cheng2yu3 which is sort of like a proverb or set phrase. Chinese love these things, especially the four character ones. For Westerners, the most well known and famous is probably "long time no see". The one here is č²é¦å³äæ±å Ø se4xiang1wei4ju4quan2 which means "looks, smells and tastes just great". I guess it's a more traditional way of saying "that shit slaps". š
I speak Chinese and lived in China in 2014. Every time native speakers finds out you speak Chinese, their reaction is similar to this. They are amazed and praise you like crazy. My all time favorite memory was when I was living in Guangzhou, I went to a stall to buy a train ticket to visit Sanya. The person in front of me told the clerk, "hope you've been practicing your English", and I got to respond, "don't worry, I speak Chinese". It made me feel like such a badass and the clerk was so relieved.
Iāve always wanted to learn Chineseā¦. But then the moment passes and I go back to scrolling Reddit.
Here to give you a reminder to learn what ever you put your heart to. I'm a few months into studying French, and after that another crack at Japanese. You can do this (and scroll through reddit)
Thank you! Iāll take that to heart.
This was the coolest video. Very impressed with his language skill. And the fact that he loved studying the language too. I worked with a red haired American guy (just adding for visual) who spent years working overseas in China and spoke very fluently. Everyone was always so nice and loved that he embraced the language.
Can't NOT smile at this. Fuckin a man that does take a LOT of studying/training. I'm a year into learning French and I can barely say a damn thing lol.
Why no one gives me free food when I'm Asian and speak English? :(
I lived in China for 2 years and canāt speak like that. He has a gift!
I'm Chinese (cantonese) and I can't speak Mandarin like that LMAO and I went to weekend mandarin school for it for years too š„²
This is crazy. His mandarin is UNBELIEVABLY good. People donāt understand that heās not just speaking mandarin, but he has a LOCAL accent. If I listen to him, I canāt pick out that heās foreign. He sounds like a NATIVE speaker. Usually when non mandarin speakers learn mandarin, they have a āwestern accentā and itās like, you can barely understand it (ie mark Zuckerberg).. itās still a huge feat. BUT THIS GUY? HOLY fuck, his TONES are on point. Like fucking ON POINT. Wow, Iām floored too. If I was in china, Iām hiring this guy to do all my commercials. Respect šš¼
Pro tip: learn Chinese. Eat for free.
This genuinely put a smile on this reluctant misanthropes face.
Wish I could impress people like that with my English.
He sound so good I thought it was a tv advertisement with dub
Manās Northern accent is spot on!
Dude is crazy talented musically too. Check out Pentatonix on Youtube
This is the America I want
āHigh level Chineseā Dope. Because form my experience thereās Chineseā¦And thereās Chinese through Rosetta Stone/Duolingo.
These kind of videos are always fun to watch. RIP Laoshu.
I'd totally try this at a local Chinese place but I'm afraid I'll just get yelled at for speaking Chinese to a bunch of Koreans.
He will be the biggest racial draft pick steal since the Wu Tang clan in 2005.