How I got here

(aka, for all of you who ask, how I learned Mandarin)

Hi! I’m Xiaoma, real name Arieh Smith. I speak near-native level Mandarin Chinese and a smattering of some other Chinese dialects (enough to be dangerous). As you can see on my YouTube channel, I speak good enough Chinese to regularly confuse the heck out of native speakers (including my own in-laws).

Oh, and did I mention I got fluent in Spanish from my apartment during the coronavirus quarantine in NYC?

The thing is, it didn’t start this way. I was a total language idiot in high school. Not that I was failing my classes — I did just fine, mind you! — but it was in one ear, out the other. I took Latin, Hebrew, and Greek classes but every year I felt like I was learning the same thing over and over again, and I kept thinking to myself, I wonder when any of this stuff is going to stick.

To this day I don’t remember a thing from any of these classes.

Growing up in NYC I only spoke English. But my dad would take me to Chinatown when I was little and man, it was the coolest thing! The lights, smells, tastes — it was just wild. I dreamed about someday being able to speak this amazing, intricate, seemingly exotic language, but I never actually thought it was possible to really get fluent.

And the first Chinese courses I took in college did little to dispel this idea. I found the Chinese language so beautiful but so frustrating — why did 了 work like that? What the heck was the little square next to 吗? And how do you just say “bring me that pencil” already?! Teachers’ explanations were often insufficient and left me even more confused than I was before asking.

And then, in my sophomore year of college, I got the opportunity to live in China, and I started actually using the language as opposed to just studying it. I got Chinese friends (and a girlfriend!). I started going to Chinese bars and Chinese parties. I met lots of foreigners who didn’t speak English and we could only speak in Chinese. I started living my life using the language, and it stopped being an exotic object of studying and started just being normal life.

I no longer live in China but I took the language with me, and it’s still a core part of my life, a second soul I couldn’t ever imagine parting with. Every time I speak with a stranger in Chinese I feel like I’m being reacquainted with this soul, with this experience.

And I hope I can pass this experience onto you!