Why I'm Learning Mandarin Chinese

Intro

I keep getting asked that question, so i figured I could write it down somewhere, and then maybe I'll make a video about it on Youtube later…
First thing first, being a dude living in Europe (France more precisely), my first exposure to anything China related was always hearing China being the factory of the world, and how transporting stuff from there all the way to Europe might not be the greatest idea ecologically speaking. And it shows on the stuff I buy “Made in China”.

How english got me into chinese

Learning english

In 2009, I got exposed to english through Yu-Gi-Oh!, I used to play in local tournaments and wanted to be the best as I could.

And getting better involed learning Yu-Gi-Oh!'s rulings (to simplify these are rules that only applies to a few cards, to clarify things that could be missinterpreted), 
and at that time, these were only available in english.

Using my poor english basics that I learned in school, I built on top of it and got better at reading the rulings.
in 2010 I was able to read fluently every new rulings that came up.

In 2011 I got into Minecraft, and in 2012, I got recommended by a friend of mine some american english minecraft content.
In then snowballed into watching a whole ton of minecraft content from many youtubers from around the world (but mostly from american youtubers, and northern and eastern european youtubers), and into watching english content about many topics.

Every new topic I got educated on since 2012 was in english.
So obviously, through an average of 1 to 2 hours of Youtube a day, my hearing comprehension reached quite a decent level.

Youtube algorithmed into the language learning community

Fast forward to around 2017, I used to watch a lot of videos from Strange Parts, especially his making an Iphone from scratch video was really great, it happens that most of his videos at this time were recorded in 深圳, so even though the content was all in english, I got a sneak peek into what “the factory of the world looks like”, at least its electronic side.

Also we could say that I'm not that interested in electronics to begin with. But it has some links to some others of my interests (especially programming), so watching content about electronics can still sometimes be interesting to my brain.

And while watching Strange Parts, I also got to see a collab video he did with some dude that was for some reason wearing a suit, you'll see why it matters later.

In the last quarter of 2021, I somehow ended up following youtubers in the language learning community. The way it happenned is kinda interesting :

First of all, in the summer of 2021, I got recommended a few videos about North Korea (probably because I was already watching a famous french youtuber that lives in Japan), especially about people who escaped from there, like this one.
This video topic followed me all the way through the 2nd semester of 2021.
And I guess that's how the youtube algorithm slowly shifted me into watching a few more asian related videos like you'll see later.

I've a telegram conversation with some friends that is called “Earth Sandwich” (I'll you look up the meme to figure out where we got that idea from),

In that telegram conversation, almost everyone is from a different country India (2 people), Nepal, South Africa, Norway, Malaysia, and France obviously (if you're somehow reading this article without knowing me, yes I'm french).

So amongs all the things we talk about, the topic of languages is often brought up. So it got me into looking stuff up for my friend from Nepal who was learning some french, and looking a few videos from times to times about my friends' languages as well, and I started getting videos recommendations that fits that, but only in october, here are a few examples :

And doing that got me into the learning language bubble of Youtube.
I discovered quite a few amazing things, like a british stand up comedian who trolls both the french language and people, and the english language and british people as well, and he's also bothering people who are from elsewhere in europe ahah :P

Or another comedian who makes awesome videos to show the most funny stuff english, french and spanish have to offer. Actually I think I discovered him first on TikTok, but whatever, that's not the point.

Before that, I started getting recommended videos about people that try to stunt people by speaking said people's native languages.
The first one that got recommended to me was I think XiaomaNYC (I checked in my data (yes everything I watch on Youtube is saved on my website), and I can confirm it was : https://likes.ggio.fr/?date=2021-09-11)

A few days later https://likes.ggio.fr/?date=2021-09-20, I got recommended a video about some french dude retiring in Tailand, and a news youtuber I follow posted some news about China.

And then another 4 days later https://likes.ggio.fr/?date=2021-09-24, I got recommended again videos from XiaomaNYC, but this time I kept on watching them, and eventually got recommended reactions videos from other channels (RIP laoshu505000).

At the same time, I was still watching videos about North Korea as well, especially from her, which is linked to China on a political level, so I was still hearing stuff about China as well.

About one month later, I got recommended a video “I was a Bodyguard for a Chinese Serial Rapist” from SerpentZA, which happened to be the dude with a suit from which I watched one video from 4 years prior ! But at that time, I didn't know, I only found out about that a few weeks later.
The fun thing about this video, is that at this point, I've already watched a lot of languages stunt videos, and it got me into considering picking up spanish again. I studied spanish as a 2nd foreign language in school, and got exposed to a few videos in spanish in my Yu-Gi-Oh! days, but I wasn't happy about the fact I coudn't understand spanish as well as I do in english. I wanted to improve on that. Long story short, I was interested in picking up a language.

But despite being interested about learning a language, what led me to click on that video wasn't (at least consciously) the “chinese” part of the title. It was more like “what the fuck ? What's that bodyguard rapist story ?”.

And this video started quite an interesting journey.
I liked how the dude told his story, and started watching a few more videos from him, which got me into an epic binge watching streak that lasted for 2 months all the way until the end of december, and it kept going sporadically even in the following months.
I was watching SerpentZA's videos, but also Laowhy86's, and all the channels they have in common, I watched A LOT OF THEIR VIDEOS.

According do my youtube likes bot, at the time of writing this post, I watched 372 videos from SerpentZA alone.

So I got to learn quite a lot of China, and about these 2 dudes as well, and I started getting recommended more and more videos from the language learning community and from other asian vloggers, like Oriental Pearl.

And from all of this, it gave me some reasons that made me want to learn mandarin chinese. But I'll explain them later.
 

The App that triggered me to start learning 

And somewhere in that run, I got to know about the Duolingo app.

I probably got to know about it probably from this video but I'm not entirely sure, but the date matches perfectly so it's likely that it's this one.

And btw, turns out that I've already registered on Duolingo in november 2018 and did a few english lessons there, but I'm not sure how that came about, my Youtube history that I save on my website doesn't go that far back. :'(

That's when I started learning, using Duolingo daily, and being really serious about it.
One month later I've also posted a video to describe what I'm doing to start learning the language :

Okey, so now why am I learning mandaring Chinese ? What are my current reasons ?

Why I'm learning mandarin chinese

I'm sorting the reasons from the ones that matters the most to me to the ones that matters the least to me.

1. For the intellectual challenge it provides. I've heard a few times that “Studying Chinese stimulates more the right brain”, but it might actually be a myth, so do your own research on that. But that sentence stuck to my brain.
2. Because of all I've learned about North Korea, China, and the CCP influence on the chinese society and on North Korea as well. I feel like by learning Chinese I'll prob be a better citizen on this planet or a better “plamate” (planet mate), like we like to say together with my friend Kaustuv (this word got invented from a conversation about the word “roommate” usually describing actually a “flatmate”, but that's another story).
3. I got into Youtube channel automation, more on that here, (and social media automation in general). And because I'm a dev', the fact that China operates using its own platforms instead of using the american ones like most of the world do is quite interesting to me. I plan to research more about these platforms, and probably get into automating content generation on one of them.
4. Communication : There are a lot of chinese people around the world, and a lot of chinese tourists in France, and in fact, on my 2nd day of learning Chinese, it happens that I was visiting Paris to meet a friend here for the new year (hello Büşra if you happen to read this :P), and that's when I got to discover that Orly airport has signs in simplified chinese, because I guess it's needed to deal with the amount of mainland chinese tourists landing here. So yeah, in every country in the world, you're likely to encounter chinese people, and chinese is also used a lingua franca in some parts of the world or in some social situations. I know that in the next few years I want to travel more, and I feel like Chinese and Spanish are probably the 2 next languages I need to focus on. And as you guessed, I started to mostly focus on Chinese (but I'm also slowly but surely getting back into spanish).
5. Family/Children : Despite not wanting kids for the longest time, mostly for personal reasons that I'm fine sharing but are out of context here, I know that I want to be a dad fairly soon. Wanting to be a dad also means finding a partner (which is something I always pushed back as a thing to do later and focused on other things, since I didn't want children anyway). And what I'd like to find in a partner, is someone who has a different native language than I do, because I want to give the chance to my future children to grow up in bilingual / trilingual household (if my future partner happens to be non-french native and non-english native, that would be trilingual). And I found a few parents that already share their experiences and tips to raise children this way, it's quite interesting. So I figured that if I'm learning more languages, I guess I'll have a higher chance of meeting people with similar goals ?
6. Other languages : I know already 2 europeans languages at a native / C2 level (French and English), and I got to notice how much being born as a native French set me up for a fairly easy path into learning English, because of the similarities these 2 languages have. Knowing mandarin chinese would probably be a good set up if I ever want or need to learn another south east asian language that is related to Chinese. I can't predict the future and what I'll want to do, but it opens options.

And… that's it. I can't believe I spent more than 2 hours writting this. But honestly I'm glad I did. It got me to understand myself more about what extactly got me into learning Chinese.
I already knew the reasons before typing this, and already knew about the fact that it was linked to what I got recommended by the Youtube algorithm, but I discovered a few things that made me realize it was even more linked to the Youtube Algorithm that I though it was !

Anyway ! Hope you enjoyed reading all this.
And have fun doing whatever you were planing to do that got you to land here… and go do that… I guess !

PS : Please excuse the typos, and sentences missing a few words. Writing this whole thing, at midnight, with no plan, as a person who has a tendency to changing his mind in the middle of writing a sentence probably isn't the greatest recipe for a well written post.