Rance
Well-known Member
Been back in the U.S. for a few months now. Been rotting at my parents’ place, sending out job apps, doing fuck all with my life. Needless to say I have not been up to anything interesting, especially compared to the degenerate hedonism I had going on in Japan.
But this past weekend, I broke the cycle a bit. Visited my ex (second gen Korean), stayed at her place all weekend. Hit a few nice restaurants, drank at some bars dry, wandered around the city. Taught her how to install qBittorrent and pirate video games.
The real highlight of the weekend though, was ending up at a Chinese KTV bar late Saturday.
We walk in looking for a private karaoke room. Nope they're all booked. But the bar’s open, and it has a karaoke machine, which is unusual. Didn’t know bar-style karaoke was a thing in the U.S. We take a seat, place is pretty active, Chinese music videos looping on big screens, bartenders chatting up a couple Chinese girls. And this is where I see my shot.
I’ve been grinding Mandarin for months but never actually used it in the wild. So I drink a bit, then hit the bartender with some Chinese: just a basic "are you guys Chinese?" The girl next to me freaks "holy shit, he’s speaking chinese!!" and suddenly I’m in. We start talking, Mandarin and English back and forth. Then I find out she’s flying to Japan tomorrow, so now we’re talking in Japanese. Insane. But the whole time, my Mandarin is just not clicking. I’m keeping up, but just barely. I feel slow.
I turn back to the bartender, try to ask him about Chinese rappers. He doesn’t understand, I repeat myself. "Sichuan rappers?" And I'm lucky, he’s from Sichuan. Perfect, this is my moment. I try to tell him my favorite rapper is from there too, but my Mandarin shits itself, and after stumbling over my words twice, I just give up. He turns away and goes back to talking with the girls.
Later, I get up and try to sing a song in Chinese. Try my best. Embarrass myself. Sit back down. Make up for it with some glorious Japanese singing, but still.
And yeah, the whole night was frustrating as hell. But the frustration is exactly why it was valuable.
This is how language learning actually works. You don’t just grind flashcards, watch anime with subtitles off, or sit in a classroom memorizing grammar points. You go out, you try to communicate, and you fail hard. You fumble a sentence, get a confused look, lose the moment, feel like an idiot. You sit there knowing exactly what you wanted to say, but the words didn’t come out. And that failure burns really bad!
That feeling is humiliation and missed opportunity. It's absolute disgust with your own incompetence. That is the single greatest motivator for learning a language.
Nobody learns a language out of casual interest. You learn it because you’ve sat in a bar trying to talk to someone you want to talk to and realized you can’t. Because you had a shot at making a connection. At impressing someone, at making a friend, at pulling a girl, at just being in the moment. You weren’t good enough. Because that feeling haunts you all the way home, and the next day, you wake up and need to fix it.
That’s the process. You get humbled, you stew in it, and you come back hungry. Since the weekend I've been grinding three times as hard. If you're not feeling these feelings, you need to put yourself in situations where you DO feel these feelings.
But this past weekend, I broke the cycle a bit. Visited my ex (second gen Korean), stayed at her place all weekend. Hit a few nice restaurants, drank at some bars dry, wandered around the city. Taught her how to install qBittorrent and pirate video games.
The real highlight of the weekend though, was ending up at a Chinese KTV bar late Saturday.
We walk in looking for a private karaoke room. Nope they're all booked. But the bar’s open, and it has a karaoke machine, which is unusual. Didn’t know bar-style karaoke was a thing in the U.S. We take a seat, place is pretty active, Chinese music videos looping on big screens, bartenders chatting up a couple Chinese girls. And this is where I see my shot.
I’ve been grinding Mandarin for months but never actually used it in the wild. So I drink a bit, then hit the bartender with some Chinese: just a basic "are you guys Chinese?" The girl next to me freaks "holy shit, he’s speaking chinese!!" and suddenly I’m in. We start talking, Mandarin and English back and forth. Then I find out she’s flying to Japan tomorrow, so now we’re talking in Japanese. Insane. But the whole time, my Mandarin is just not clicking. I’m keeping up, but just barely. I feel slow.
I turn back to the bartender, try to ask him about Chinese rappers. He doesn’t understand, I repeat myself. "Sichuan rappers?" And I'm lucky, he’s from Sichuan. Perfect, this is my moment. I try to tell him my favorite rapper is from there too, but my Mandarin shits itself, and after stumbling over my words twice, I just give up. He turns away and goes back to talking with the girls.
Later, I get up and try to sing a song in Chinese. Try my best. Embarrass myself. Sit back down. Make up for it with some glorious Japanese singing, but still.
And yeah, the whole night was frustrating as hell. But the frustration is exactly why it was valuable.
This is how language learning actually works. You don’t just grind flashcards, watch anime with subtitles off, or sit in a classroom memorizing grammar points. You go out, you try to communicate, and you fail hard. You fumble a sentence, get a confused look, lose the moment, feel like an idiot. You sit there knowing exactly what you wanted to say, but the words didn’t come out. And that failure burns really bad!
That feeling is humiliation and missed opportunity. It's absolute disgust with your own incompetence. That is the single greatest motivator for learning a language.
Nobody learns a language out of casual interest. You learn it because you’ve sat in a bar trying to talk to someone you want to talk to and realized you can’t. Because you had a shot at making a connection. At impressing someone, at making a friend, at pulling a girl, at just being in the moment. You weren’t good enough. Because that feeling haunts you all the way home, and the next day, you wake up and need to fix it.
That’s the process. You get humbled, you stew in it, and you come back hungry. Since the weekend I've been grinding three times as hard. If you're not feeling these feelings, you need to put yourself in situations where you DO feel these feelings.
