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Comment by djtango | Hacker News Reader

As someone who wants to learn Chinese, I think about it all the time. Watching Chinese shows just isn't as fun for whatever reason. I was telling my wife the other day I have met so many people who credit Friends for why they can speak English.

That's soft power right there.

I've had to resort to watching anime on Netflix with Chinese dubs - anime is good because people actually talk slower and usually use simple language. When I watched Three Body (Chinese version) the dialogue was impenetrable lol

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Taiwanese shows are better if you want to learn Chinese. They speak clearly and don’t speak fast like China shows.

Thanks I'll take a look. It will be funny if I end up with a Taiwanese accent around my Dongbei in laws but I've spent enough time in china to remember the mainland accent tbh

Three Body is a science fiction television series and I think sci-fi often involves complex vocabulary and abstract concepts, making it a tough choice for language learners

Sure the vocab was hard but also characters like Shi Qiang spoke in a very difficult way to pick up for a non native speaker

Friends is great, but still pretty advanced as English learning goes, with fast speech, and lots of slang and US/90s specific references.

I guess so but it also has slower lines too especially for comedic delivery. The cultural references are good (now dated because Friends is 20-30 years old) because after learning a language, cultural references are next when it comes to fully being able to converse

But it's also highly visual. I forget where I saw it, but someone showed people an episode of Friends without any audio, and they could still understand the plot based on the overly dramatized physical communication.

I'm not surprised. It's extremely accessible in ways I wouldn't necessarily find engaging anymore given my very scarce time for watching media but that kind of accessibility is perfect for a show in a desired second language

Also the humor is very...basic. My theory is a show like Seinfeld with it's double and triple meanings didn't get popular abroad, but Friends and How I met Your Mother did.

I think the simplicity of the humor is the reason.

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