Honestly I really don’t judge people at all for learning languages because they’re more interested in pop culture than “fine” culture, because God knows that I spend a lot more time listening to Radio Kavkaz Hit for my daily dose of energized dance music than I spend watching documentaries about the like traditional handicrafts of Ivanovo Oblast or whatever. So learning Japanese because you’re a fucking anime weeb is fine, learning Japanese or Chinese because of their long histories and rich cultures is also fine — whatever gets you out the door, right? The important thing is that people are learning languages at all.
No, the thing that frustrates me about this Redditor’s obvious bait is that like… Ne Zha 2? MiHoYo? Anilist’s database of Chinese animation? Is there like any reason at all to say China “doesn’t have anime” aside from that the characters don’t speak Japanese, i.e. simple brand loyalty to a red circle despite no meaningful qualitative differences? I don’t get it.
…Well I guess there is one meaningful qualitative difference between Chinese and Japanese animation, which is that Japan has made 423 animated half-hour TV shows about cute girls doing cute things and China has only made one.
Oh yeah, it’s actually very funny that if you say you’re a Chinese learner, people will assume you’re doing something very sophisticated like reading Maoist literature or classical Chinese poems or something and not just like watching 动画 but if you say you’re a Japanese learner, people will assume it’s definitely for anime
I mean, some Maoists (usually the real cranks, which tend to be ~95% of Maoism in the West) like to insist you absolutely have to learn Chinese to understand Maoism, so it’s probably a self perpetuating assumption in communist spaces specifically. (I’m not a Maoist. I just deal with their nonsense more often than I’d like to.)
I think I heard once that anime weebs comprise actually the majority of Japanese learners, and I will never not feel just a twinge of embarassment knowing that that is me as well.
But hey, at least I can take comfort knowing that my boomer mom also decided to start studying Japanese because of the cartoons, so it’s evidently not just a socially awkward young person thing.
Also an unfortunately not insignificant share of the people in my life can’t distinguish Chinese from Japanese to begin with, so.
You kid, but that was literally something I told myself to justify learning Japanese: “It’ll help me learn Chinese… later on.”
Turns out that having reasons for learning languages is overrated, anyways. I still have “justifications” for learning languages but over time you just grow fond of the languages themselves to the point where learning feels self-sustaining. I think I have a decent theoretical knowledge of Chinese by this point but just haven’t built up enough momentum to say I’m actually learning it yet, and who knows when that will be.
…Well I guess there is one meaningful qualitative difference between Chinese and Japanese animation, which is that Japan has made 423 animated half-hour TV shows about cute girls doing cute things and China has only made one.
Really, I think this difference in volume is true in general as well. Whether it’s because the studios are focusing on the domestic Chinese market, lack of government support, or something else, I could only name maybe a handful of donghua that blew up (relatively speaking), whereas there’s a never-ending flood of anime and many of them are absolutely massive by comparison. No matter how much I like Link Click and dislike Demon Slayer, the latter is objectively way more well-known.
The games side of things is an even more obvious split. There are a decent number of Chinese gacha games that do well, but the only big “gamer’s game” I’m aware of is Black Myth: Wukong.
Japan has like a 60 year lead in pop culture exports and the government is aware of that and has been actively pushing further growth in the sector for some time. China is playing catch-up and it’d take quite some time for them to be on parity (barring something like a collapse of the anime industry, which certainly seems possible).
All this to say that yeah it makes sense that people would learn Japanese over Chinese explicitly because there’s more content in that language and that content is also more talked about.
All this to say that yeah it makes sense that people would learn Japanese over Chinese explicitly because there’s more content in that language and that content is also more talked about.
This is also why I’m big on subbing and dubbing anime into a wide variety of languages: if utilized effectively, anime can be genuinely great language learning material not just for its original language but for any language you can think of.
motherfuckers like me out here just picking up spoken chinese purely because they’ve watched over 700 hours of chinese costume dramas and im not even joking
Honestly I really don’t judge people at all for learning languages because they’re more interested in pop culture than “fine” culture, because God knows that I spend a lot more time listening to Radio Kavkaz Hit for my daily dose of energized dance music than I spend watching documentaries about the like traditional handicrafts of Ivanovo Oblast or whatever. So learning Japanese because you’re a fucking anime weeb is fine, learning Japanese or Chinese because of their long histories and rich cultures is also fine — whatever gets you out the door, right? The important thing is that people are learning languages at all.
No, the thing that frustrates me about this Redditor’s obvious bait is that like… Ne Zha 2? MiHoYo? Anilist’s database of Chinese animation? Is there like any reason at all to say China “doesn’t have anime” aside from that the characters don’t speak Japanese, i.e. simple brand loyalty to a red circle despite no meaningful qualitative differences? I don’t get it.
…Well I guess there is one meaningful qualitative difference between Chinese and Japanese animation, which is that Japan has made 423 animated half-hour TV shows about cute girls doing cute things and China has only made one.
Oh yeah, it’s actually very funny that if you say you’re a Chinese learner, people will assume you’re doing something very sophisticated like reading Maoist literature or classical Chinese poems or something and not just like watching 动画 but if you say you’re a Japanese learner, people will assume it’s definitely for anime
I mean, some Maoists (usually the real cranks, which tend to be ~95% of Maoism in the West) like to insist you absolutely have to learn Chinese to understand Maoism, so it’s probably a self perpetuating assumption in communist spaces specifically. (I’m not a Maoist. I just deal with their nonsense more often than I’d like to.)
I think I heard once that anime weebs comprise actually the majority of Japanese learners, and I will never not feel just a twinge of embarassment knowing that that is me as well.
But hey, at least I can take comfort knowing that my boomer mom also decided to start studying Japanese because of the cartoons, so it’s evidently not just a socially awkward young person thing.
Also an unfortunately not insignificant share of the people in my life can’t distinguish Chinese from Japanese to begin with, so.
Synthesis: Use your mad
感じ漢字 skills to learn 中文 fasterYou kid, but that was literally something I told myself to justify learning Japanese: “It’ll help me learn Chinese… later on.”
Turns out that having reasons for learning languages is overrated, anyways. I still have “justifications” for learning languages but over time you just grow fond of the languages themselves to the point where learning feels self-sustaining. I think I have a decent theoretical knowledge of Chinese by this point but just haven’t built up enough momentum to say I’m actually learning it yet, and who knows when that will be.
Really, I think this difference in volume is true in general as well. Whether it’s because the studios are focusing on the domestic Chinese market, lack of government support, or something else, I could only name maybe a handful of donghua that blew up (relatively speaking), whereas there’s a never-ending flood of anime and many of them are absolutely massive by comparison. No matter how much I like Link Click and dislike Demon Slayer, the latter is objectively way more well-known.
The games side of things is an even more obvious split. There are a decent number of Chinese gacha games that do well, but the only big “gamer’s game” I’m aware of is Black Myth: Wukong.
Japan has like a 60 year lead in pop culture exports and the government is aware of that and has been actively pushing further growth in the sector for some time. China is playing catch-up and it’d take quite some time for them to be on parity (barring something like a collapse of the anime industry, which certainly seems possible).
All this to say that yeah it makes sense that people would learn Japanese over Chinese explicitly because there’s more content in that language and that content is also more talked about.
This is also why I’m big on subbing and dubbing anime into a wide variety of languages: if utilized effectively, anime can be genuinely great language learning material not just for its original language but for any language you can think of.
Edit: Obligatory mention of my /c/worldbuilding post about the Open Sign Language Animation Project
motherfuckers like me out here just picking up spoken chinese purely because they’ve watched over 700 hours of chinese costume dramas and im not even joking
yall seen the double or blossom? absolute cinema
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2: