internet's a good place for language learnings

duolingo has a course on mandarin iirc

Taiwan isn't that expensive, I suggest you take a look at forumosa for living costs, there are people who report that they get along and have fun on 25 000 NT$ / month

@turnerturing are you a westerner?

it's very cheap by western standards

around 750usd a month?

around 800

slightly more expensive than polan now

anyway, taiwan is good if you want to learn mandarin

Western gook but that is rather cheap. Don't really care about fun more than learning it to help out my dad

But I'd really consider that the bare minimum, also you won't be able to live in the capital with that

it's spoken pretty much everywhere in taipei

keep in mind that the writing differs from the mainland

other areas, i heard they like to use min nan language colloquially more; can you confirm? @porco

Oh, that is going to not be very useful then.

yes the more you go south, the less mandarin

my girlfriend's parents don't speak mandarin at all for instance

@turnerturing traditional and simplified difference isnt too big

you can easily learn both

yes but if the goal is to learn business-chinese, I'd rather go to Shenzhen

Isn't that place super expensive?

really depends on how you live

I don't think it would cost more than Taiwan

@kaetaa

By business chinese you mean manderin and simplified chinese or is there some branch from chinese now.

what are you learning it for?

I think Turner would like to get your expertise on learning chinese

Also Inb4 steel pasta

Business, I guess. Mainly to communicate with people across US chinatowns to sell them gook shit

actually steel pasta is in order

Chinatowns in US are still mostly Cantonese, I think

should be in pinned imo

in which case, traditional would be more useful

from my experience, ppl from mainland dont really struggle with trad either

at least ones who manage to get out of the country

dont learn chinese wtf r u thinking

you cant go wrong with either simp. or trad. but I'd learn trad, just for the sake of it

It seems most are here on questionable visa status, I'll do more research on the makeup of the demographics

educated native chinese speakers should be able to do both

older ppl might not necessarily be able to speak mandarin neither

but written language should be okay