In this episode, we welcome back Wesley (from our last episode) to share some of the more fascinating aspects of the Chinese language including:

- How abbreviations work in Chinese (and how they differ from English)

– Why Chinese can’t be the next global language

– Why understanding Chinese culture is so important to understanding Chinese

– The actual meaning of “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon”

– How chengyus are formed, used and developed

– Sarcasm in Chinese culture and how it’s used

– How he learns and uses chengyus, and how this differs from how native speakers learn them

– Why accents in Chinese don’t matter

– Why Chinese TV has Chinese subtitles

– How the writing system of dialects like Taiwanese has evolved

– The multiple ways that dialects can be subtitled

– “False friends” in Chinese

– How colors in Chinese are used differently than they are in English

– Why language learning is a series of plateaus with no distinct peak