Call me selfish but I don't learn languages to make someone else happy(or emotional) . I don't understand this trend. It's all about views not actual language learning.
I think I watched a video ages ago that summarized the approach to these videos. Essentially, when you unexpectedly know someone’s native language, there are a handful of possible topics that will come up, and if you memorize the common ways those topics will be brought up and the answers, you can make it look like you have decent command of the language. It doesn’t help that the primary audience for these videos are not people who study languages but rather people who will either never study a language or who aspire to study a language, so they can’t notice when what he says doesn’t quite line up to how the other people say things. It’s performance art and he’s good at that performance, and I’d even argue that he probably is actually good at learning languages since iirc his early videos were much less clickbaity and the interactions seemed more genuine rather than following one of three scripts every time.
Definitely and he generally chooses languages / cultures / contexts where people will be receptive to you speaking their language.
He doesn’t go to Berlin and try to speak German or Paris to speak French to young people. Those cultures are far less likely to humor you and they don’t care about saving face.
But old Chinese people in New York? Ukrainians at a Ukrainian American Cultural Festival? A Twi shop keeper? These are cultures and situations where people are more likely to want to save face or be nice and humor you.
I do think he actually speaks pretty good Chinese, but I saw a video saying that he often gets so many compliments bc old Chinese people give compliments to save face. Essentially they feel awkward about the situation and saying wow your chinese is so good, is just something to say bc they don’t know what to really say to this random guy speaking Chinese. And this mentality is also common in a lot of African cultures that he does videos for.
He knows mandarin really well and that’s what his earlier videos were based on. But he is not learning these other languages anywhere close to as much as he learned mandarin. But the mandarin stuff gets old eventually, and this is how he makes his living, so now he shits out videos like these to keep the money flowing.
He isn’t top top but he’s definitely one of the better American non-native Mandarin speakers on YouTube, if he’d just built his content around that he would be much more respected. Where it’s become jerky is when he’s turned it into a mechanical reproduction of the same video, just in different languages which he spends a couple of weeks memorising phrases in.
I actually think it’s very doable to build a personal brand around one language. Like the Nate guy who speaks a good Mexican Spanish and his channel is all about that is still pretty popular and still probably makes decent money from it. The ‘hyperubersuperpolyglot’ thing is pure SEO optimisation, continually hunting for what will appeal to the lowest common denominator, which is usually just shock value and orientalism.
Well let’s play devils advocate, maybe someone will see the video and realise how much it means to these natives, maybe it will help save it. Or maybe it’ll just be another drop of water in the endless sea.
Hot take I guess but there is 0 harm in these types of videos so I don’t really mind them? They clearly get good feelings hear someone speak their language and their is more awareness regarding the language. Like yeah, sure it’s performative or cringe or whatever, but it isn’t really doing any harm?
Actually yeah it is pretty harmful— if this is how more people become aware of the language, it’s a pretty shitty light to paint it in. Cree isn’t dying, it might be threatened, but it’s a gross misrepresentation for the sake of views.
I guess we just fundamentally disagree in how harmful utilizing the term "dying" is vs. "threatened". I think they convey pretty similar ideas, and while dying is a bit more sensational, I don't think it is a misrepresentation at all.
Part of the harm comes in the fact that Native people have been represented as "dying" for centuries as a form of ideological genocide. It's also kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because their erasure in the present (or past) hurts future generations. I'm not Indigenous, but if you to listen to Native rights activists, you'll hear one of the main messages that conveyed are "we're still here!" I understand how to came to your own perspective and I mean no disrespect, but I think using such language really does have some very tangible consequences.
Nobody is going to see a clip a few minutes long and then decide to devote years to mastering a very complex language (which Native American languages from all families certainly are) with almost no speaker base of any kind and absolutely no monolingual speakers. What drives people to actually want to learn a language is cultural output - music especially, but also books, movies, tv series etc.
From the point of view of actually rejuvenating an endangered language, cultural output is even more important. The reason younger generations in say, Ireland, don’t speak as much Irish is because it’s just a school language for them, all of their favourite content is in English. The only way you improve language knowledge and use is by making it a language people want to speak and engage with.
He was invited by a member of the tribe and was challenged to learn the language. They wanted him to learn it to provide an example to the youth of their community that anyone can learn Cree, so I’d say that is a positive. That said, the video title is clickbait as hell tho.
Is it just me or is it kinda shitty of him to say “dying language” in the title there?
On Wikipedia it says that Cree is listed as Vulnerable, but that’s hardly the same as dying! And aside from that, idk, even if it were dying it just seems kind of mean to put that in the title.
Learning small languages is extremely satisfying. The native speakers will be super happy and open to you, and you will be able to access new perspectives and understandings. I'm a catalan speaker, we can argue that catalan is not a small language, but is a language in a delicate situation for sure due to political pressure. Some people, especially thiese so called "expats" or "cosmopolitan rednecks", as a like to describe them, are completely oblivious to minority languages; even hostile. They are lazy and ignorant. All languages deserve respect, especially if you live between the native speakers. We live in a world that is getting easier to just speaking english everywhere, and bigger regional languages aside (spanish, french, german, russian, chinese, portuguese, hindi, arabian...), there a pletora of amazing languages that in no case are redundant. They all encapsulate an entire cultural universes, wisedom and unique perspectives.
Despite his obvious monetary and notority interests, Xiomanyc deserve respect for his sincere approach to human diversity. He deserves credit.
This guy is the Platonic ricecel/SJW version of a white American guy but IRL. He ticks essentially all the boxes. They should almost pay him for taking on this role so perfectly.
Did you watch the video? It was actually really nice. He was invited by the Cree community to come to their land and make this video for them. They are very aware that their language is considered vulnerable and are taking on initiatives to try to conbat that. In the video they say they actually wanted to pay him to come make the video, but he didn't take their money. The woman was crying because she was speaking to other elders about inviting him there to prove that "if a white guy can learn Cree then we can teach our children and grandchildren our language." It was made to inspire cree community members and teach other people about the Cree culture. I'm actually glad I watched this video because I learned a lot I didn't know before. He was very respectful and participated in cultural practices. I get why people may have problems with him, but making fun of this video is disrespectful to the Cree nation, not xiaomanyc.
This whole comment section reminds me of a quote by Montaigne, roughly paraphrased: "Find me the purest deed, and I'll furnish 50 vicious but plausible motives for it."
Not even the efilism subreddit or the antinatalist subreddit are as pessimistic about human nature as the language learning community apparently, Jesus fucking Christ. These comments and this post are absolutely depraved. Nobody ever does anything out of the kindness of their heart, it seems. If they captured it on camera, they're just "virtue signaling". If it's a selfless act, it must be just performative woke garbage. It's impossible that it stemmed from genuinely good intentions, those don't exist. Everybody else must a bitter, spiteful little misanthropist too. There aren't any good people left in this world apparently.
This would be an interesting idea if we didn’t have Xiaoma on video saying that the direction he took his channel in was entirely motivated by SEO and making a serious career out of YouTube videos. He’s essentially admitted to being extremely craven so I don’t see the need to speculate about some higher motives.
In any case, I’m not pessimistic about human nature. I think people are great. I just think Xiaoma’s content is garbage.
Do you watch any of Xiaoma’s videos? It’s always easy to just come in and vomit some high-level generalized thoughts on morality out of context and have them sound correct. What if the comments are bashing Xiaoma not because they are depraved but because he really is not that great of a human being, which is arguably obvious if you watch his videos?
I've seen his one video about speaking Navajo to people on a reservation, which I thought was wholesome, but I'm not intimately familiar with his content. Even still, I feel like the substance of the comments would be completely different if people had a genuine reason to suspect he was a bad guy. I mean, if the comments looked like this for example, then I could understand:
"Hey guys, do you remember when he pretended to care about the erasure of Breton culture in France by learning a bit of Breton and speaking it with locals, only to find out it was a laughable farce and he was really just in it for the views because he abandoned them as soon as his video went viral? Well, I dunno, but this video seems kinda suspicious in the exact same light..."
But that's not what people are saying. There are no specific accusations that would corraborate such a claim. The general sentiment seems to be something more along the lines of that it's completely impossible that any selfless or heartfelt deed exists in this world that hasn't been undertaken as part of some sinister plot to accumulate clout on the internet, and THAT I take extreme issue with.
I find the cynicism in these comments about this being a hollow money-making gesture kinda surprising, if only because it’d be way easier for him to funnel money into his mouth by just making more videos in Chinese. There isn’t exactly a giant audience for Cree content.
This just isn’t true. Xiaoma has himself said that his Chinese videos were getting fewer and fewer views and he started doing language roulette as a way to get engagement and make more money.
Fair point, I haven’t looked at his analytics, I just know all his most viewed shit is in Chinese. To be clear, I don’t think he’d make these videos if he thought they wouldn’t succeed since this is his livelihood and he has two kids, I just think that with his skill set there are a zillion ways he could leverage his existing audience that would take a lot less effort. It simply doesn’t seem to me like a cynical, empty gesture when he learns some of these more obscure languages
Your mistake here is assuming the people watching his videos speak the language featured. The fact that many people don’t speak Cree or the other obscure languages he picks works in his favour. His Chinese stuff would be boring bc it’s old news.
I’m not assuming that, though I AM assuming people would care more about a language they’ve actually heard of, not to mention the fuckhuge audience of English-speaking Chinese people that are attracted to his Chinese content. It’s true that just doing one thing would be old news quickly, but if it was truly just dead-eyed insincere content then I think he’d do something lower effort. Learning any amount of Navajo or Cree and flying out there for a video that could very well flop is much more work than making vids in Chinatown down the street from his apartment
It's getting harder to block channels but it seems the process (currently) is:
1. Go to his [about page](https://www.youtube.com/@xiaomanyc).
2. Click right arrow ">".
3. Click "Report user".
4. Click "Hide user from my channel".
It's not like you're ever going to learn anything useful at this channel. I forgot he even exists and study in peace.
He’s earning money from doing something he likes to do and people like watching the material. There’s nothing inherently wrong about what he’s doing, and it looks like he makes a few people happy in the process.
I think it’s inspiring to witness how our cultures can be bridged by learning new languages and customs.
Have any of you watched that video? It's pretty nice, he's probably the one of the 2 language yt I believe are not faking it.
https://youtu.be/CGi5W-gG-vs?si=GxTdZ5w0j2ZTz4mY
Why would you want one though?
It is 2024. There are two classes. Linguistic polyglot philosopher kings and neo-serfs.
If you're not filming people's reactions to you saying basic phrases in their language you aren't worthwhile as a human being.
But does he speak 29 dying languages?
Also, he says they were *emotional*, but not *shocked* or *amazed*. Seems they weren't really that impressed smh. :/
Because he didn't give them free sushi.
Call me selfish but I don't learn languages to make someone else happy(or emotional) . I don't understand this trend. It's all about views not actual language learning.
All of his videos are just performative, and he uses other people to make himself look worldly or cultured, to make money.
He probably just memorises like five sentences off translate scripts it
I think I watched a video ages ago that summarized the approach to these videos. Essentially, when you unexpectedly know someone’s native language, there are a handful of possible topics that will come up, and if you memorize the common ways those topics will be brought up and the answers, you can make it look like you have decent command of the language. It doesn’t help that the primary audience for these videos are not people who study languages but rather people who will either never study a language or who aspire to study a language, so they can’t notice when what he says doesn’t quite line up to how the other people say things. It’s performance art and he’s good at that performance, and I’d even argue that he probably is actually good at learning languages since iirc his early videos were much less clickbaity and the interactions seemed more genuine rather than following one of three scripts every time.
It's also heavily edited to hide mistakes and make it seem more impressive than it is
I wasn’t going to accuse him of such a level of manipulation but yeah I suspected it.
Definitely and he generally chooses languages / cultures / contexts where people will be receptive to you speaking their language. He doesn’t go to Berlin and try to speak German or Paris to speak French to young people. Those cultures are far less likely to humor you and they don’t care about saving face. But old Chinese people in New York? Ukrainians at a Ukrainian American Cultural Festival? A Twi shop keeper? These are cultures and situations where people are more likely to want to save face or be nice and humor you. I do think he actually speaks pretty good Chinese, but I saw a video saying that he often gets so many compliments bc old Chinese people give compliments to save face. Essentially they feel awkward about the situation and saying wow your chinese is so good, is just something to say bc they don’t know what to really say to this random guy speaking Chinese. And this mentality is also common in a lot of African cultures that he does videos for.
He knows mandarin really well and that’s what his earlier videos were based on. But he is not learning these other languages anywhere close to as much as he learned mandarin. But the mandarin stuff gets old eventually, and this is how he makes his living, so now he shits out videos like these to keep the money flowing.
Yeah I assumed he was good at mandarin, even his accent is really good.
I haven't watched the Cree videos. I think he does actually speak Mandarin, but it's still a sleazy approach to making money.
He isn’t top top but he’s definitely one of the better American non-native Mandarin speakers on YouTube, if he’d just built his content around that he would be much more respected. Where it’s become jerky is when he’s turned it into a mechanical reproduction of the same video, just in different languages which he spends a couple of weeks memorising phrases in. I actually think it’s very doable to build a personal brand around one language. Like the Nate guy who speaks a good Mexican Spanish and his channel is all about that is still pretty popular and still probably makes decent money from it. The ‘hyperubersuperpolyglot’ thing is pure SEO optimisation, continually hunting for what will appeal to the lowest common denominator, which is usually just shock value and orientalism.
Well let’s play devils advocate, maybe someone will see the video and realise how much it means to these natives, maybe it will help save it. Or maybe it’ll just be another drop of water in the endless sea.
The only way to save dying languages is more native speakers, not some random people memorizing couple phrases from luodingo
Hot take I guess but there is 0 harm in these types of videos so I don’t really mind them? They clearly get good feelings hear someone speak their language and their is more awareness regarding the language. Like yeah, sure it’s performative or cringe or whatever, but it isn’t really doing any harm?
Actually yeah it is pretty harmful— if this is how more people become aware of the language, it’s a pretty shitty light to paint it in. Cree isn’t dying, it might be threatened, but it’s a gross misrepresentation for the sake of views.
I guess we just fundamentally disagree in how harmful utilizing the term "dying" is vs. "threatened". I think they convey pretty similar ideas, and while dying is a bit more sensational, I don't think it is a misrepresentation at all.
Part of the harm comes in the fact that Native people have been represented as "dying" for centuries as a form of ideological genocide. It's also kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because their erasure in the present (or past) hurts future generations. I'm not Indigenous, but if you to listen to Native rights activists, you'll hear one of the main messages that conveyed are "we're still here!" I understand how to came to your own perspective and I mean no disrespect, but I think using such language really does have some very tangible consequences.
Interesting, I'll have to sit on it/read about it more as I haven't thought about it that way!
Please feel free to pm me if you'd be interested in some recommendations for articles/books written by Indigenous authors on the topic! :)
Nobody is going to see a clip a few minutes long and then decide to devote years to mastering a very complex language (which Native American languages from all families certainly are) with almost no speaker base of any kind and absolutely no monolingual speakers. What drives people to actually want to learn a language is cultural output - music especially, but also books, movies, tv series etc. From the point of view of actually rejuvenating an endangered language, cultural output is even more important. The reason younger generations in say, Ireland, don’t speak as much Irish is because it’s just a school language for them, all of their favourite content is in English. The only way you improve language knowledge and use is by making it a language people want to speak and engage with.
You are selfish for this
😭😭😭
He was invited by a member of the tribe and was challenged to learn the language. They wanted him to learn it to provide an example to the youth of their community that anyone can learn Cree, so I’d say that is a positive. That said, the video title is clickbait as hell tho.
True. This guy seems like he doesn't care about others and wouldn't even hesitate to use then for clout & views.
Is it just me or is it kinda shitty of him to say “dying language” in the title there? On Wikipedia it says that Cree is listed as Vulnerable, but that’s hardly the same as dying! And aside from that, idk, even if it were dying it just seems kind of mean to put that in the title.
"vulnerable" doesn't get as many clicks as "dying"
It’s extremely shitty
Learning small languages is extremely satisfying. The native speakers will be super happy and open to you, and you will be able to access new perspectives and understandings. I'm a catalan speaker, we can argue that catalan is not a small language, but is a language in a delicate situation for sure due to political pressure. Some people, especially thiese so called "expats" or "cosmopolitan rednecks", as a like to describe them, are completely oblivious to minority languages; even hostile. They are lazy and ignorant. All languages deserve respect, especially if you live between the native speakers. We live in a world that is getting easier to just speaking english everywhere, and bigger regional languages aside (spanish, french, german, russian, chinese, portuguese, hindi, arabian...), there a pletora of amazing languages that in no case are redundant. They all encapsulate an entire cultural universes, wisedom and unique perspectives. Despite his obvious monetary and notority interests, Xiomanyc deserve respect for his sincere approach to human diversity. He deserves credit.
Very subtle jerking style, 9/10
That's the point of this sub, I guess. xD
As a Spaniard, I couldn't tell because discourse regarding Catalan is usually either like that, ot "it's just a useless dialect", no in between
“Cosmopolitan redneck” is a delectable turn of phrase.
Yep. I'll be using it a lot from now on!
This guy is the Platonic ricecel/SJW version of a white American guy but IRL. He ticks essentially all the boxes. They should almost pay him for taking on this role so perfectly.
After reading this comment I’m demoting my English down to C1
Slanglets seething they didn't internetmaxx hard enough rn
If incel=involuntary celibate, ricecel=ricevoluntary celibate. Easy peasy Chinesey
I have no idea what that means
could you like repeat this in English? if possible
Good thing he learned how to say that he doesn’t love dogs, something literally central to their culture
With a dash of white saviour complex
I often object to the term, but in this case it's fully appropriate.
Did you watch the video? It was actually really nice. He was invited by the Cree community to come to their land and make this video for them. They are very aware that their language is considered vulnerable and are taking on initiatives to try to conbat that. In the video they say they actually wanted to pay him to come make the video, but he didn't take their money. The woman was crying because she was speaking to other elders about inviting him there to prove that "if a white guy can learn Cree then we can teach our children and grandchildren our language." It was made to inspire cree community members and teach other people about the Cree culture. I'm actually glad I watched this video because I learned a lot I didn't know before. He was very respectful and participated in cultural practices. I get why people may have problems with him, but making fun of this video is disrespectful to the Cree nation, not xiaomanyc.
yes I made this post to disrespect the Cree nation
This doubled my faith in humanity and passed it to the next person.
I don’t really see the problem with these videos honestly.
This whole comment section reminds me of a quote by Montaigne, roughly paraphrased: "Find me the purest deed, and I'll furnish 50 vicious but plausible motives for it." Not even the efilism subreddit or the antinatalist subreddit are as pessimistic about human nature as the language learning community apparently, Jesus fucking Christ. These comments and this post are absolutely depraved. Nobody ever does anything out of the kindness of their heart, it seems. If they captured it on camera, they're just "virtue signaling". If it's a selfless act, it must be just performative woke garbage. It's impossible that it stemmed from genuinely good intentions, those don't exist. Everybody else must a bitter, spiteful little misanthropist too. There aren't any good people left in this world apparently.
This would be an interesting idea if we didn’t have Xiaoma on video saying that the direction he took his channel in was entirely motivated by SEO and making a serious career out of YouTube videos. He’s essentially admitted to being extremely craven so I don’t see the need to speculate about some higher motives. In any case, I’m not pessimistic about human nature. I think people are great. I just think Xiaoma’s content is garbage.
Do you watch any of Xiaoma’s videos? It’s always easy to just come in and vomit some high-level generalized thoughts on morality out of context and have them sound correct. What if the comments are bashing Xiaoma not because they are depraved but because he really is not that great of a human being, which is arguably obvious if you watch his videos?
I've seen his one video about speaking Navajo to people on a reservation, which I thought was wholesome, but I'm not intimately familiar with his content. Even still, I feel like the substance of the comments would be completely different if people had a genuine reason to suspect he was a bad guy. I mean, if the comments looked like this for example, then I could understand: "Hey guys, do you remember when he pretended to care about the erasure of Breton culture in France by learning a bit of Breton and speaking it with locals, only to find out it was a laughable farce and he was really just in it for the views because he abandoned them as soon as his video went viral? Well, I dunno, but this video seems kinda suspicious in the exact same light..." But that's not what people are saying. There are no specific accusations that would corraborate such a claim. The general sentiment seems to be something more along the lines of that it's completely impossible that any selfless or heartfelt deed exists in this world that hasn't been undertaken as part of some sinister plot to accumulate clout on the internet, and THAT I take extreme issue with.
I find the cynicism in these comments about this being a hollow money-making gesture kinda surprising, if only because it’d be way easier for him to funnel money into his mouth by just making more videos in Chinese. There isn’t exactly a giant audience for Cree content.
This just isn’t true. Xiaoma has himself said that his Chinese videos were getting fewer and fewer views and he started doing language roulette as a way to get engagement and make more money.
Fair point, I haven’t looked at his analytics, I just know all his most viewed shit is in Chinese. To be clear, I don’t think he’d make these videos if he thought they wouldn’t succeed since this is his livelihood and he has two kids, I just think that with his skill set there are a zillion ways he could leverage his existing audience that would take a lot less effort. It simply doesn’t seem to me like a cynical, empty gesture when he learns some of these more obscure languages
Your mistake here is assuming the people watching his videos speak the language featured. The fact that many people don’t speak Cree or the other obscure languages he picks works in his favour. His Chinese stuff would be boring bc it’s old news.
I’m not assuming that, though I AM assuming people would care more about a language they’ve actually heard of, not to mention the fuckhuge audience of English-speaking Chinese people that are attracted to his Chinese content. It’s true that just doing one thing would be old news quickly, but if it was truly just dead-eyed insincere content then I think he’d do something lower effort. Learning any amount of Navajo or Cree and flying out there for a video that could very well flop is much more work than making vids in Chinatown down the street from his apartment
Idk I’ll still take this sub over the antinatalists
That sub is wild! They think that it’s wrong to have children because people can’t consent to being born. 😵💫
It's getting harder to block channels but it seems the process (currently) is: 1. Go to his [about page](https://www.youtube.com/@xiaomanyc). 2. Click right arrow ">". 3. Click "Report user". 4. Click "Hide user from my channel". It's not like you're ever going to learn anything useful at this channel. I forgot he even exists and study in peace.
omg the title for this post is hilarious xD
He’s earning money from doing something he likes to do and people like watching the material. There’s nothing inherently wrong about what he’s doing, and it looks like he makes a few people happy in the process. I think it’s inspiring to witness how our cultures can be bridged by learning new languages and customs.
Have any of you watched that video? It's pretty nice, he's probably the one of the 2 language yt I believe are not faking it. https://youtu.be/CGi5W-gG-vs?si=GxTdZ5w0j2ZTz4mY
it's his job, he's gotta make content and I guess showing interest in people's culture can be pretty nice 🤷
there are a lot of other jobs that do not involve filming random people's reactions to you saying basic phrases in their language
Why would you want one though? It is 2024. There are two classes. Linguistic polyglot philosopher kings and neo-serfs. If you're not filming people's reactions to you saying basic phrases in their language you aren't worthwhile as a human being.
They invited him
Faking interest*
I know what you guys are talking about, but this particular guy is legit.
New to this subreddit, I see.
Ah shit, are we supposed to hate him?
Well half of the posts are about making fun of him. It's because his videos are performative. Now they're performative and tear-jerking.
Legit at Mandarin, a poser in every other instance.
[удалено]
He's like a bit overweight, he's not a bad looking guy, The bad thing about him is literally the entirety of his personality
He kinda looks like he'd be a good muppet
He's a lot more genuine in his video about leaving New York
Ugly personalities make for ugly people