Should I learn Thai or Mandarin

[myeyes]

Something I've been struggling with recently:

Chinese Pros
- more interesting culture / media so more motivation
- prettier girls / less competition
- much more useful overall, Chinese women are everywhere in the world
- already have good Japanese so learning Hanzi would be easy

Chinese Cons:
- Realistically can't live in China long term because of the firewall hindering my work
- Visa is much more difficult
- Chinese culture has a lot of negatives


Thai pros
- DTV visa, can stay there for 5 years
- good internet and no firewall
- can realistically see me staying there longer

Thai cons
- boring culture, probably will be hard to keep up motivation
- less pretty girls, though learning the language could offset that by a fair bit?
- If you find a pretty girl there's a decent chance she could have done sex work
- higher competition, but again learning the language should offset that?

This has sort of become a pros and cons for the countries themselves. It seems like lots of people have gone to China for short term but not for long term, I wonder if my brain is exaggerating the long term negatives (I've never been there)

 

[Rance]

I am biased but Chinese is the easy choice. You laid out the pros and cons pretty well.

Chinese Pros
- more interesting culture / media so more motivation
- prettier girls / less competition
- much more useful overall, Chinese women are everywhere in the world

The Chinese diaspora is monstrous. Not only do you have several countries to choose from, you also have large communities of immigrants all over the place. Check out Flushing, NY. It's basically a Chinese colony. Anywhere you go you can use your Chinese skill. It will stick with you over time and space. Can't say the same of Thai.

- already have good Japanese so learning Hanzi would be easy

As a fellow Japanese refugee I can say that the advantage is huge.

Chinese Cons:
- Realistically can't live in China long term because of the firewall hindering my work
- Visa is much more difficult

Let me introduce you to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Sure, neither are as great as China but they exist as backups where internet access is unfettered. Taiwan famously has some of the most lax visa laws in the world and you can pretty much hang out there as long as you want with only a few requirements.

Another minor pro is that Mandarin learning resources are extremely abundant, like with Japanese. There are a number of great books, apps, tools, forums, etc. that will make your learning journey smoother. Thai has like, ThaiPod101, and some other shoddy shit.

Above all else, if you have to ask the question, you probably don't have an endless fount of motivation to learn either language. I would predict that you will burn out learning Thai. When your only motivation to learn is you want to move to the sole place that the language is used and chat up some girls, you might plateau at the early intermediate level. Imagine you've spent months learning Thai and are ready to yap some sa wat dee krap at a cute girl and she starts speaking English at you far better than your Thai. (I have seen this process several times with people learning Korean, which like Thai is also a mostly useless language to be honest)

 

[predeterminism]

Thai cos chinks are ugly

 

[myeyes]

I am biased but Chinese is the easy choice. You laid out the pros and cons pretty well.


The Chinese diaspora is monstrous. Not only do you have several countries to choose from, you also have large communities of immigrants all over the place. Check out Flushing, NY. It's basically a Chinese colony. Anywhere you go you can use your Chinese skill. It will stick with you over time and space. Can't say the same of Thai.


As a fellow Japanese refugee I can say that the advantage is huge.


Let me introduce you to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Sure, neither are as great as China but they exist as backups where internet access is unfettered. Taiwan famously has some of the most lax visa laws in the world and you can pretty much hang out there as long as you want with only a few requirements.

Another minor pro is that Mandarin learning resources are extremely abundant, like with Japanese. There are a number of great books, apps, tools, forums, etc. that will make your learning journey smoother. Thai has like, ThaiPod101, and some other shoddy shit.

Above all else, if you have to ask the question, you probably don't have an endless fount of motivation to learn either language. I would predict that you will burn out learning Thai. When your only motivation to learn is you want to move to the sole place that the language is used and chat up some girls, you might plateau at the early intermediate level. Imagine you've spent months learning Thai and are ready to yap some sa wat dee krap at a cute girl and she starts speaking English at you far better than your Thai. (I have seen this process several times with people learning Korean, which like Thai is also a mostly useless language to be honest)

Some great points I hadn't considered. There's also lots of Chinese girls in Thailand too and there's Chinese Malaysia now that I think about it. I'll go with Chinese then