Quote:
Originally Posted by de4df1sh
Hi guys!
Sorry I missed the big send-off.
Its around that time of the year and since I have know so many inspiring people in this thread im curious if you fellas would share with me your 2020 new years resolutions.
I'll go first:
1) I hope to be AT LEAST interviewing for some type of position relating to programming/technology before the years end.
2) I've managed to get the boozahol under control and am maintaining a relatively stable weight of 208-210. I think instead of setting a weight loss goal I am going to set a strength goal. Tbh im not sure what type of process-oriented goal I should set. I am open to your guise fawts.
3) Start divorce proceedings || Mrs.Deadfish gets it together.
3a) Marry my girlfriend 3b) Breakup with my girlfriend
4) Learn basic Hokkien.
5) harvest at least one deer. (this season kinda sucked for me)
sounds like good goals, as someone who speaks fluent Chinese though, unless you already speak Mandarin fluently and/or your new girl Haka then that's literaly going to be the biggest waste of time you could possibly do
non-native speakers sound utterly ridiculous and unintelligible and the amount of people who speak Hokkien shrinks by the year so it's utility is ever decreasing
seriously, imagine combining the worst elements of Bruno and Borat's accents... but it's worse than that, because those guys still speak fluently and intelligibly, add in that nobody can understand half of the words you say and it'll become an utter shat show
there are major male/female styles of speech in the Chinese dialects as well as distinctive differences based on your social class. The son of a taxi driver from Beijing will sound nothing like the son of a government official from Beijing even if they lived in the same apartment building. They'll use different accents and very different word choices as well.
So most non native speakers, they pick up off who they interact with more. Which is almost always women and people who deal in customer service. So you'll almost always sound like their equivalent of white trash plus over the top effeminate and have utterly no idea. You'll think it's cool you're communicating in another language and have no idea you're a laughingstock.
Not saying that can't be overcome, but it adds in a difficulty factor and few, if anyone will tell you because they are just impressed you can speak at all.
I am fluent in mandarin, yet I'll speak in English and rely upon translators in anything formal because I'll lose all credibility once I speak their language. It's not at all rational but if you keep it in English you maintain dignity despite that they'll be the ones speaking in a second language, if you learn their language, then suddenly all bets are off.
As for coding stuff... it sounds like you're doing a late career switch. All I can say is that you should build, build, build. If you have something functional to show off, even a website or a script you used to data mine for fantasy football research then it'll go a very long way because then they can see tangible accomplishments.
good luck and feel free to pm me about learning Chinese... which I'll try to help you with if you still refuse to take my advice and give up on trying to learn it
realistically, it'll take you 1 years of constant study and practice before you could handle someone being able to understand 80% of what you say when you tell them about the weather and another year before they understand it more or less - but you could practice daily for years and still sound like a blathering idiot each time you talk - that's the real ceiling to the language and few not born speaking it can "blend in" so to speak, this isn't like an Indian English accent, this is as i described full on worst of borat and bruno combined
then you gotta factor in that the people you are learning from may not even be speaking standard hokkien... for example, most chinese still need to learn Chinese, it's a highly fragmented language - during the civil war in the 40s, when an army crossed a river or mountain pass, the first thing they'd do was find a translator who spoke the same dialect because most of China was unable to communicate with each other verbally until they started teaching a common dialect of mandarin under Mao
Last edited by rickroll; 12-05-2019 at 05:32 AM.