How hard is it to learn Chinese

Not sure why the link doesn't work.

.

Doing a 30 minute podcast in Mandarin is super difficult not because of having to learn how to *speak* Mandarin, that is certainly doable, but because of understanding the Mandarin that is being spoken to him.

Additionally, if Joey's life focus was this prop bet only then maybe it's possible, but with him doing so many other things, a year's study might effectively be like only 3 month's study.

Unless the person he interviews in the pod soft plays him by speaking Mandarin very slowly and using simple phrases excluding any slang and colloquialisms then this challenge seems near impossible.

I wonder if Joey would be allowed to do the Mandarin podcast with Jungleman (who is also learning Mandarin). This bet is significantly more achievable if he's speaking with another american novice.

Unless Joey isn't dumb he'll get someone on the pod who can speak close to "textbook" Mandarin on the pod. So, as always when learning a language, speaking will be by far the harder part.

When you speak you can say what you want, using a limited vocabulary but when someone is speaking to you they can use the full range.

In my experience, if I speak my normal full range of English to a non native speaker who *is* good at English they do not understand a lot of it and even less so if I use any kind of accent.

Joey only needs to speak on a limited subject, poker. So if it was only a presentation with no replies he could memorise everything phonetically and not genuinely have to learn the language.

You do sound like the native English speaker who has never bothered to learn another language and thus has little idea who much more difficult speaking is compared to listening.

I do speak a little of a couple of other languages.

You may be correct for people who've *already* learned a foreign language to a high proficiency so know the language, therefore someone speaking to them using complex language is doing the work for them, and they may not be capable of speaking in such a complex way themselves.

But we're talking about learning a new language in 1 year so it will be 10x easier to learn a few poker related and general conversational phrases than it will be to understand someone using the full scope of the language.

You're right that most people have a higher level at the passive understanding skills (reading, listening) than they have at actively producing the other language (writing, speaking) but in 12 years of running language schools I have come across a few people for whom speaking is easier than listening - maybe SageDonkey is one of those people so the above is probably unnecessary.

@SageDonkey the thing is that when speaking to a foreigner people adapt so even if the other person is capable of using the full range of the language they aren't going to use it all when faced with someone who clearly only knows the basics. I would agree for example that a challenge where he has to listen to e.g. the Mandarin stream of poker commentary and then tell us what was just said might be harder than this one as the commentators are pitching it at the Mandarin speaking audience.

Right, on a normal pod the only topic is poker.

Will talk more about strat with the bet over the next week.

Wil be doing a podcast tomorrow at 2pm EST with John Beauprez. John has been playing live/online HSPLO for number of years and is also co-founder of Chip Leader Coaching.

Aren't the terms of the bet extremely subjective? What exactly counts as "fluent?"

Is that the terms? Yes that's a word I never use. Literally it's the opposite of "halting" - though people often use it to mean "near perfect".

If it's taken with its literal meaning then the secret to speaking a language fluently is not to gaf that you are making multiple mistakes per word (e.g. pronunciation, grammatical case, tone) and per sentence (i.e. how the words combine together) and just keep going even though no one can understand you.

Yeah the terms are I have to have a normal conversation for 30 mins. The guest will tell us how I did and if it is debatable then we will have 5 judges decide.


Will be live w/ John Beauprez in about an hour

https://coincentral.com/

I'll be having current HSNL Pokerstars reg OhHeyCindyyyy on the podcast Monday

Please do a hand history or two with Cindy like you use to do with HSPLO regs. He has so many insane hands to choose from.

Your video, "Is OtB_RedBaron a Texas Holdem POKER GOD" was hilarious; HSNL is such an insanely complex and aggressive game in 2017.

BUMP

havent watched any podcasts in a while, but will absolutely tune in for Cindy, thanks Joey!

"I've never bought out of a bet John, alright, I don't negotiate buyouts, I'm not letting anybody buy out of nothing, I'm not buying out of nothing. So I don't know, I'm not about that buyout life. I dont work that way, I aint built like that man. I'm not doing something to buyout, I want to lose. I want to effing lose. I'm not buying out. No. Nothing, not going to be able to do it."

1h16m45s into the video.

sorry for off topic but can someone remind me the name of the fitness guys lefort recommended
im trying to find out from leforts blog but getting access is strangely difficult
bodybuilder not thai..it was a white dude no2 in world ? i think

Ben Greenfield?

cheers but got it
Ben Pakulski