Want to learn languages with games? Matthew Boyle of Language Card Games knows how it’s done.

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How to Learn Languages with Games with Matthew Boyle

Links from this Conversation

Language Card Games website: Language Care Games

Transcript

Lindsay:

Hello, welcome back to How to Learn a Language.
And we are here with another interview.
This one is with Matthew Boyle of Language Card Games.
And I’ve known Matthew for a while, but mostly online.
We’ve never had the chance to sit down before and chat it out.
And he’s really interesting because he has combined two of his passions in life.
That’s Languages and language learning and games.

So we talk a bit about that.
We also talk about Chinese and what it’s like learning a language that is so often.
Kind of projected to us as something we should be fearful of because it’s huge and intimidating and scary and difficult.
So we talk a lot about that.
He has some wonderful insights on that.
So if you’ve ever felt that a language that you’re learning is hard, then definitely listen into this.
You’re going to love this one.

And we also talk about what language learning looks like after 12 years of living in a country, how it is something that is never over.
And what you still do, like it’s very different from at the beginning.
So loads of wonderful things here at various levels of language and whatever you’re interested in, you’re going to really find something in this episode.
So I’ll leave you to it.
Enjoy.
Matthew, welcome to How to Learn Language.

Matthew:

Hey everybody.

Lindsay:

It’s so great to meet you we’ve just had a little intro to each other like we’ve spoken so much via email over years now at this point.
I have in fact two of two boxes of language guardians here that I have played and enjoyed and tomorrow at the time of recording this I’m going to be coming to one of the Live online sessions for Spanish as well, which I’m really looking forward to.
So just, yeah, thank you for taking the time to be here, but I’m rambling on about your games and I haven’t even given you a chance yet to introduce yourself.
So for those people listening who are like Language Guardians, Spanish online game thing, what are you talking about Lindsay?
Matthew, would you like to introduce yourself?

Matthew:

Sure.
Yeah, no problem.
Thank you for having me on.
I just love how our paths have collided again and we’re finally doing something like this because like you said, we originally connected about four years ago or maybe more.
So this is really exciting.
I’m excited to be a part of this.
And if you don’t know me, my name is Matthew Boyle.

And I moved to China after graduation.
So when I was about 25 years old back in 2011, you can do the math later, figure out how old I am, but I came to China in 2011. I’ve been here ever since.
I developed a fascination with Asia in high school, never expecting that I would actually move abroad one day.
That was never really a thought that ever entered my mind, but When it was coming up upon time for graduation, I decided to go abroad and teach in China and I absolutely loved it.
So I’ve been here ever since.
And another one of my passions that I had when I was younger, like a young teenager was gaming.
I loved all kinds of games.

So after being in China for a while and trying to learn Mandarin, I was trying to think of some other ways to make it fun and enrich my process and play games with other people, especially in the evenings, like after work.
So I decided to make some little card games for myself and my friends and, and I just really enjoyed it.
So I never gave it up and the games have just been multiplying on my shelves.
So I try to share those with other people.
And most recently in this year, as Lindsay just mentioned, I’ve been doing online gaming meetups for the first time.
So I finally have an online version of one of my games, a couple of my games.
So we play online every Saturday, but that’s my main thing is to Make language learning fun.

That’s what I’m all about.
That’s what keeps me in the game, so to speak, literally and metaphorically.

Lindsay:

I like that.
Yeah.
That’s really interesting.
And so I’m so intrigued.
I want to go back a little bit there from, from what you’ve said.
So you said you got interested in Asia in high school, high school in the US.
What was it that drew you to those cultures? Are we talking like East Asia, like China, Japan, Korea, or is it something very specific?

Matthew:

Yeah, yeah, that would be right.
Well, I stumbled into some books about Eastern philosophy and religions which really piqued my curiosity and I found that they really sort of balanced me out.
The area I grew up in the suburbs outside of DC, it’s pretty competitive.
There’s a lot of ambitious people.
People are pretty individualistic.
It can be pretty stressful going through school and getting into a career path and all of that.
And when I discovered those philosophies, I was like, man, this is calming me, centering me, focusing my mind.

It’s giving me a way to manage my emotions, live a better life, a more holistic life.
I feel more balanced when I pursue these philosophies.
So I got really into Buddhism and Zen and Taoism.
I was reading all the books I could find.
I probably read 100 books about that stuff before university.
And then when I went to university, I took more and more classes about that stuff.
I did take a class about Mandarin, again, not knowing I would ever go to China, but that was my gateway drug into Greater language learning and moving abroad was the religion, the philosophy, the culture.

And I think that helped me transplant to China as well because I already felt at peace with a lot of the underlying currents of philosophy and worldview.
So coming here and living here, it just felt really good to me.
It really fit.

Lindsay:

That’s really interesting.
So at that point, when you were beginning to discover all of that, what was your language learning like?
So there was no Mandarin for a start, right?
Was there something in school?

Matthew:

Yeah.
That’s an interesting point because for me, language learning was always something that I just had to survive.
I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to do it.
It was just a requirement at school and I saw no reason for it.

Lindsay:

And really, Are we talking what languages?

Matthew:

So I probably had a little bit of Spanish experience in middle school, like a class here or two, but it really didn’t start till high school.
In high school, I had two years of Spanish.
I almost failed the second year.
So I had to take it for a third year.
And then I scurried away and ran over to American Sign Language, which I did much better in and actually enjoyed.
But the thing is I always saw it as a requirement and looking back I kind of wish my teachers had told me what I tell students now which is The reasons why language learning can really improve your life.
And it’s not just a requirement.

It’s not just a class.
It’s not just about homework and tests.
It can really open your worldview.
It’s going to expose you to different cultures, philosophies, ways of life.
You’re going to be able to connect on a deeper level with other people and make really great friends.
So when I look back on that, that’s really was the divide of it for me was Is it an academic thing?
Is it a requirement for credits, grades, and scores?

Or is it sort of a lifelong journey adventure that’s very fun, natural, organic?
It’s going to bring you into contact with other people.
You’re going to be able to have better friendships.
My wife now, she’s a native Chinese person, so our lives together is crazy because we’re just blending English and Mandarin all the time and we have a little daughter too, so just the languages are flying.
I’m much more culturally aware now and culturally excited, if that’s even a term, to get to know other people better and thereby learn myself better.

Lindsay:

Okay, so when you started that Mandarin class, after learning more about the philosophies and the religion and all of that, what was your expectation going into that?
You had this thing that was interesting you about this culture.
Now you’re starting the language.
Was it different to previously with Spanish and ASL where it felt more of an obligation?

Matthew:

Yes, very different, very different for a lot of reasons.
My classes in university were smaller.
I felt like the teachers, maybe they loved their jobs a bit more.
I mean, it’s tougher to teach high schoolers, right?
mean, in the diversity level, the teachers are a bit different.
They’re more relaxed, you get more personal attention, the classes are smaller.
I had several teachers from China and some of them were amazing language learners too.

But Going into that class, I was excited because I had already had many classes now about Asian history, religion, culture, some different, you know, classes here and there.
And I was like, you know, now is a great time for me to have a crack at this language.
I still had a requirement by the way, this was still required.
So that’s part of the reason why I was doing it was because I had to.
Was it required as a language credit or was it required as… I forget how they had it classified, but I had to have a certain number of credits in a foreign language to get my degree.
And so I said, well, let’s get into some language then, maybe that will help me.
I actually think some of the classes it was required to have passed The language class to get into them.

And I was starting to piece this all together and see, wow, I would need this language to do this poetry class.
It’s a requirement.
So I had all that background going on.
So I was excited.
I was interested and the class did not disappoint.
The teacher was great.
The students were great.

And it was sort of an integrated class.
So we practiced writing the characters, pronouncing the tones.
It was a great sort of foundational course, but again, never expected to go abroad.
So I finished that class and didn’t study Mandarin again for probably about three years and then came to China and really had to restart.
So by that point, I was what I think people call like a false beginner where I had already had some knowledge, but I basically had to start again.

Lindsay:

Yeah, that makes sense.
Did you specifically, this is a question for Chinese, did you ever feel afraid or overwhelmed or just completely unsure of if this was ever going to happen?
Because it’s such a Like, and I use this word very reluctantly, but I’m going to use quote marks for the visuals and for the podcast, I’m going to tell you there’s quote marks.
Difficult, hard language, right?
That’s the expectation that we have.
Did you ever feel any sort of overwhelm or fear about getting started or going deeper with it?

Matthew:

No, I honestly did not.
You know, to tie it back to a Zen Koan, which got me interested, I mean, Koans from Zen got me interested in Asia in the first place.
And there’s a famous Koan that talks about, don’t say easy or hard.
Some family members discussing, I don’t remember the whole parable, but when you say easy or hard, you immediately start to limit yourself.
I find it’s much better to keep your curiosity on fire and just go with that feeling, feed that feeling.
For me, I was really intrigued by the characters.
They seem so mystical and so fantastical, and I felt like they held secrets for a greater understanding of the philosophy and the culture.

I just said about learning those characters, practicing the writing.
Anyone who gets into languages who have beautiful scripts is going to tell you it’s like a meditation.
It really pulls you in to trace and learn how to draw those characters beautifully.
I saw those Chinese, I guess they called them Lexigrams as pictures and images.
I’m a very visual person, a very creative person.
So for me to understand that this represents something helped me a lot, especially in the beginning.
I know now most Chinese characters don’t represent actual things, but in the beginning that was a really attractive concept.

I was like, okay, this is an image that represents a word.
I can learn, I can connect to that.
That’s going to be like a mnemonic for my mind.
And I just started collecting them like you would collect any hobby, anything that you love.
I was making flashcards and trying to learn how to write and read all these characters.
So now I never thought of it as easy or hard.
I still don’t.

A lot of people say, oh, Chinese is so hard or it’s impossible.
And to me, it’s a really actually logical and fun language that Doesn’t have a lot of the trappings of English, which I still don’t even understand being a native speaker.

Lindsay:

Yeah.

Matthew:

It’s funny because, you know, Chinese culture is often so like sort of circuitous.
I don’t circuitous.
Is that the word?
And very indirect and very colorful.
And, but the language, well, It’s impossible to summarize anything.
I don’t want to make a blanket statement, but in terms of maybe the grammar of the language or the syntax, it’s very straightforward.
I love that part about Mandarin.

I don’t have to worry about that stuff as much.
Now, I should qualify this by saying I’m not an amazing, fluent Mandarin speaker, but I feel like it’s not as bad as people say, and if you give it a chance, you will love it.

Lindsay:

I’m so glad that you’ve said that because as you could probably tell from the way I was approaching the question.
I’m so reluctant and I get that question a lot myself.
It’s like what’s the most difficult language you’ve ever learned?
What’s the easiest?
And I can answer it for me in my situation, what the easiest or what the hardest has been for me.
But I always have to add this like asterisk of like, this is my experience based on not just the linguistic features of the language or the expectations that we have, because there’s a different writing system or a completely different grammar.
It’s to do with everything else, like what is going on for you at the time that you’re learning?

How much time do you actually have to devote to it?
How interested are you?
And in your case, very interested, I think is the fair answer there.

Matthew:

Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay:

You know, it’s a big drive to actually want to delve in.
I’m curious as well, you mentioned about, you really enjoyed sort of almost every Character, every word kind of being like a loads of secrets to unlock and the language that you’re using around that as you’re thinking about making flashcards and stuff was making me think about your card games.
At this point, when you were first early into Mandarin, what was your, what was the other side looking like in terms of gaming?
Was it card games?
Was it video games?
How did that kind of evolve?

Matthew:

No, to be honest, and this is a good question that’s going to help us open some insights because throughout university I had really put aside my gaming hobby and passions to do my class as well and I was really into also music, but I was basically preparing for my future career and I was getting
more and more anxious about that.
So I had put aside a lot of the A list of keywords that may occur during the meeting.
Passion for gaming and unite it with language learning.
I’ll have a new way to keep myself interested.
I think I was feeling a little bit less motivated, maybe a little tired in the evenings after work.
In fact, that was something that gave me an epiphany was one evening after work, I was tired and I was feeling tired, bored, didn’t know what to do, and I just wanted to play a game with my girlfriend who later became my wife.

When I took out the game, I realized, oh, just a minute ago, I was saying I was tired and bored and I didn’t want to do anything and I just wanted to veg and watch TV, but now suddenly I have this game out, my energy has come out and I’m really happy and I’m in a good mood.
So then I thought, if this was united with language learning, maybe I’d be more willing to learn languages in the evening, even if I supposedly feel tired.
So there wasn’t much gaming going on in university.
I brought that back.
Many years later to try to create something that I could share with students and possibly sell to customers and use myself.

Lindsay:

Interesting.
So sort of this underlying love and passion and interest that gradually found its way back.
That’s really cool.
Yeah.
So what came first?
So there was sort of one evening you’re thinking, I want to play a game.
Was that the start of language card games?

Matthew:

Yeah, there was a few different influences.
And before I share those, I want to talk about the logo.
The logo is a Phoenix because I did feel like in a way I rescued myself.
I had a chance to be reborn here because I’m bringing back a passion that really lit my fire when I was young and how many people Their childhood passions die out never to return.
So I felt like this is going to come back with a vengeance.
I’m really excited now.
This is something I love to do.

So that’s why I chose the Phoenix logo.
It was a few different things colliding, which actually made it real and made it start to happen.
One was I had business major students who I was teaching, and I knew nothing about business.
So I thought, well, why don’t we both make business plans and try to create a product together?
And then I started thinking, what could I do?
What realistically could I do?
Oh, it’d be that.

So I thought of that, my ability to do game design, It was also my desire to enrich my own Chinese process.
I was feeling a little bored with my Mandarin learning.
And then the third thing was there had been an explosion in terms of the online tools that are free and available for us to be using.
In-demand printing exploded.
Your ability to have your own website and your own shop exploded.
Have your own vlog on YouTube, have your own blog.
You know, on WordPress, these new tools had to come out.

When I started to think about designing games again and sharing it with my students and learning a language, I went online to see how I could actually make them.
And I must have been out of it for years because I didn’t realize that changing technologies now could let me make something that truly looked professional, like worlds apart from what I used to make when I was a young teenager.
So those things all collided and then the phoenix rose from the ashes.

Lindsay:

I love that.
I love that.
And I love that you have this opportunity now to bring that sort of childhood passion into, into a work and, you know, an element of work and, and for languages too, it’s really great.
Cause one thing that I, I find really cool, I’m going to get a couple of the cards to Sort of demonstrate is how the cards, and I don’t know if you’re on YouTube, relatively well.
But it’s, am I right in saying, and I could be wrong, like maybe there’s one game that is different.
Are they all suitable for any language?

Matthew:

Yeah.
So the first game that I made was specifically for Mandarin and people said, well, this is pretty cool, but could you make it for French?
Could you make it for Spanish?
And I thought, I could spend a lifetime translating one game a million times or making a million different games for different languages or I could focus on making games that are going to work for everybody.
So after the Mandarin game, all of my games are pretty much designed for anybody to be able to use for whatever target language they want.
They’re printed in English, but they basically give prompts and topics to speak about.

That said, I do have some games printed in different languages.
I do have some translations if people really want that.
I have a French translation.
I have an Italian translation.
I have the Mandarin game, but most of them are printed in English, but we use them for any language we want.
Some of the latest ones that I have, we’ve made study guides for as well.
The more popular the language is for our gaming groups, the more likely we’re going to create a study guide to support that language.

But yeah, the games are, I try to make them very utilitarian, very open-ended and to support creativity so that they have a very high replay value.

Lindsay:

It’s such a skill in that because I kind of went through what sounds like a similar process to you, where it was like, Hmm, what do I do next?
How do I best help people?
And the obvious route was make a French course, make a Spanish course, copy and paste that to a German.
And it was like.
A, that sounds like exhausting.
Where do the languages end?
B, do you start with the popular languages that are already saturated markets?

Or do you start with lesser studied languages where there’s less resources, but it’s the more difficult to create and, you know, and there was just all these, like, it was like, that’s not what I want to do.
And so that’s why I went down the line of like, you know, teaching people how to learn languages.
So it’s any language, it’s sort of the universe totality, if that’s a word.
I call it like language agnostic, you know, because what I do, the work I do and like these card games are the same, like it works across the board and there’s There’s some real skill in being able to create this and have a game that, you know, I could pick this up and think, what do I feel like
practicing today?
What do I feel like doing?
Even just, you know, if I’m on my own and I’m looking for like a bit of a prompt to do some speaking or to do some writing, some kind of production, I’ve just picked up one card, right?

It says weather, describe a type of weather and place this card on a card with the same element, a name, blah, like.
I don’t need the rest of it.
Just describe a type of weather.
That’s enough of a prompt for me to think, okay, let’s go Spanish brain.
Let’s, let’s do that in Spanish.
Or I wanted to practice German today.
Let’s do, you know, which is really quite an impressive, impressive thing to have.

Matthew:

I enjoy that.
I enjoy thinking of the topics and the categories and many people said this.
This helps to show me the holes in my knowledge.
This shows me what I should learn next.
You take away a lot of the guesswork.
I know if I play through these games, I’m going to cover a hundred topics.
I love thinking of the topics and I’ve learned so much through designing the games because I don’t want to repeat the topics too much.

I’m always looking for new subjects.
So I’m learning a lot myself in English too.

Lindsay:

So I’ve got Language Guardians, which is just one of how many are there now?
One, two, three?

Matthew:

I have six different games and each of the six might have subsequent editions or translations, but there’s basically six different games.
Some are very simple, like Language Guardians is played similarly to Uno, There are some that are designed to be used together with physical flashcards, if you like physical flashcards.
And some are more complex.
There’s some that are really for people who are hardcore gamers who want more strategy and complexity.
There’s something for everybody.
This is my newest game.
It’s called Heading into Language Land.

I hope the glare is not too strong.
But this I think is my latest and greatest and somewhere in the middle.
It’s not very easy.
It’s not very hard.
Actually, I built this with a special purpose in mind.
It can be played in a very simple way or a complex way.
There’s a complex rule on each card and you can ignore it and just play the game very simply or you can look at that, follow it, and it’s going to make the game very complex.

So if you’re a casual gamer who really just wants to focus on language learning, you can do that.
It’s very simple.
But if you want something more in terms of strategy and complexity, it’s there.
So there’s basically two ways to play.
And this is the game that has a printable version, an online version, and this real deck.
So we play it online every Saturday.

Yeah, that’s a tough question to answer for me because I never exactly recorded my work hours.
It’s really hard to record the work hours, I think, on a creative project like that because I’m so often ruminating on it.
And that’s part of the hard work of creativity is like working it out in your head.
So there’s a lot of hours that just go into thinking up the ideas.
A more simple game like Language Guardians.
What are some of
Maybe like an hour a day for three years or something like that.

This one has original artwork that I had 12 artists working with me and I was corresponding to them to create all the artwork for this game.
This is the first game that has original artwork.
So I learned to work with a team and get the artwork looking good and stuff like that.
That was all new for me.
A really simple game might not take you too long, especially if you want to have a lot of duplicate cards or maybe use AI or hire a designer.
You could make one in just a few months, but if you want something that’s really going to go deep, that really Like I think this is a heavy duty educational resource right here.
There’s a study guide for it.

There’s a storybook behind it.
There’s a YouTube playlist.
There’s like dozens and dozens of videos I’ve made to support it and to teach every card.
I mean, that took me, like I said, three years of my spare time.
And I’ve started on the second edition of it and the second one’s probably going to take me even longer.
Why?
Because life’s gotten even more complex.

Life’s gotten even more busy.
I’ve got even more responsibilities now.
So it might take me three or four or five years of working in my spare time to do it again, because I don’t want to just do it again.
I want to do it better.
Each game must be better.
So it’s probably going to take me more time, but if anyone’s interested in game design, who’s listening, like let’s get in touch because I’m passionate about that topic.

Lindsay:

I can tell.
I can tell.
I mean, what an incredible thing to have as, you know, you’ve, you’ve finished with, okay.
I’m into my zone now to get on this.
I’m wondering as well, with a project like that, that like you say, you’re ruminating on, you’re thinking about this over a relatively long period of time, how has that impacted your own language learning?
How has that influenced things for you?

Matthew:

Well, it’s impacted my language learning and my whole life in a very significant way, in a very useful way, which has made me capable of just being determined and to have that grit day in and day out and day in and day out and day in and day out too.
I use a metaphor of like, let’s imagine that you see a beautiful mountain in the distance.
It’s far away in the distance.
But you know that’s where you want to go.
You want to climb that mountain.
You want to get to that summit.
That’s your plan.

But it’s so far away.
So all you can do then is look down at your feet and take this one step today.
And it’s painful.
It’s torturous because you’re like, I can see it there.
I know what this is going to be like when I finish.
I really want to get there.
And you have to know that to some extent.

That’s really important to know your long-term goal.
But then to look back today and know that you have to be satisfied with taking this one little step today and knowing that’s all you can do today.
That’s got to be enough for today, but you’re going to take that step no matter what.
You know you’re going to get there.
That’s the balance of the long term and the short term.
It’s made me much better with my language learning of just being consistent and disciplined to do a little bit today no matter what and not make excuses about it.
It’s just made me more able to pull off long term projects or long term goals of any kind.

I do advocate to people.
I do recommend to people If you have a passion project or an idea for a business or a company or a site, you should definitely do it.
Even if you have a busy day job that maybe you don’t really like and you don’t have much time after work or you do feel really tired after work, Pursuing your passion project in the off hours when you don’t have your day job or whatever, that’s going to teach you a heck of a lot about discipline and
about grit and determination to realize your personal dream.
And with that, you can take that then back to apply to other areas.
I take that back now to my family or to my day job and I know that a professional was going to show up today and give their best they can today with these few tasks.
And I’ll check back three years later or five years later, you’re going to see something fantastic from me.

You’re going to see something fantastic from Lindsay.
You’re going to see something fantastic from you, the viewer, if you can do that, if you can understand that concept, that metaphor.
And I hope that you can.
I hope you’ll remember this mountaintop in the distance and the step today.

Lindsay:

It’s so true.
And I love the way that you explained that with the mountain sort of metaphor and the image of that.
It’s often the end goal is the thing that feels most exciting and the thing that we really want.
And we think that we want it just quick and easy, you know, like, oh, I want to go on holiday tomorrow.
I want to have a million dollars in my bank tomorrow.
I wish I could speak French today.
Like, but actually what that misses is Every one of those steps and how much more determined and everything that you learn from each of those steps as well like there’s just so much that comes from it sounds really cheesy but so much that comes from the journey you know yes along the way to get towards these things and that’s why we have big goals it’s To learn more about ourselves and about the world in the process of reaching them.
Because once we reach it, it will feel amazing that there’ll be something else.
We’ll get to the top of that mountain and see another one over there that we want.

Matthew:

Exactly.

Lindsay:

Which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s about, you know, recognizing all of that.
So I love the way that you, you shape that.
And it does also definitely, there is this almost sort of loop of kind of impact as we learn something in one area of our life, it transfers across, we’re able to apply that knowledge and those skills.
It’s a wonderful thing if we’ve got multiple things that we can draw from.
So, yeah, that’s cool.
Yeah.
What does your language learning look like now? Living in China since 2011, I, off the top of my head, can’t even, what’s that, like 12 years?

Matthew:

Yeah.

Lindsay:
Wow.

Matthew:
Yeah.
I came in the year, I am, I am a rabbit.
That’s my zodiac animal.
And I, I came to China in 2011, which was the year of the rabbit.
And now it’s the year of the rabbit again.

Lindsay:

Oh.

Matthew:
So I know I’ve been here for 12 years because the whole zodiac cycles every 12. So I’m like, okay, it’s 12. This is going to be my year.
Well, my process has changed a lot.
What I do has changed a lot.
I always wanted to regard it as a hobby.
This is something that I sometimes recommend to people that they’ll say, you know, why don’t you join a class?
Why don’t you do the test?

Why don’t you get this certification?
Why don’t you do this I’ll say, it always was my hobby and I want to keep it that way.
I want to be careful and I want to defend it against becoming something that I hate.
I always try to make it fun and enjoy it and always reconnect to why I’m here and why I love China and why I love this culture.
I’m very free form and as long as I’m studying or learning in some way, that’s fine.
I try to learn a little bit every day.
I do flashcards every day.

I have a Lightner box.
I often watch videos on YouTube from my favorite YouTube.
That’s like the grandfather of Anki.
It’s the physical version of Anki.
So you just have flashcards in a box and they have levels and you follow a calendar so you know when to test which level.
And as the cards move up the levels, There’s going to be more and more time before you see them again.
Just like the apps nowadays, they all operate off that philosophy.

But I use a physical one because often when I study, I like to unplug.
I like to go without screens because I get plenty of screen time from my working life anyway.
So I like to go old school with notebooks and flashcards and normal books.
And so I do those things.
I do those typical practices.
I learn a lot with my daughter now.
That’s becoming very central and very big to my life.

She’s almost three years old and I just posted about this today on Twitter which was we went to the library the other day and she insisted to carry away like 30 books.
She just kept putting more and more books in the bag and she demanded to take all these Mandarin books home and when she gets new books, she will sit and look at every page For like an hour, no problem.
So her mind is just soaking up language.
She’s quickly becoming the best teacher in my life because she’s just absorbing everything and asking questions about everything.
So reading books with her, teaching her and also letting her teach me, maybe watching some TV shows, that’s becoming big.
So family life is teaching me a lot and educating me a lot and just socializing with people.
Whenever I go out, I try to ask good questions, try to keep my ears open, my mind open, and learn.

I like to have Cantonese dim sum breakfasts.
I live in the Cantonese home world right now, so I like to have the dim sum breakfast with tea and get to know people.
There’s a lot of tea shops around where people socialize.
That’s part of the culture in China, especially South China, is you can go into a tea shop, sit in, fraternize with whoever’s there, enjoy the tea.
You don’t even really have to pay, but if you’re a regular customer of the place and that’s where you buy your tea, then that’s sort of your ticket to come in and drink and chat whenever you want.
And I know you recently went to Turkey.
I heard Turkey tea is really big in Turkey.

Lindsay:

And I’m someone who doesn’t drink black tea.
And so it was the most frustrating thing, sorry, slight sideline that like Turkish tea was everywhere for less than a pound, right?
20 lira, even 750 lira, which is just pennies, which is ridiculous.
But if I wanted any other drink, it would be like Turkish tea, 20 lira, green tea, mint tea, or, you know, even like fruit juice or something.
85 lira.
So I had to, like, adapt and try and drink this type of tea that I didn’t really like.
Just for the experience.

But is it green tea?
Are we talking in these tea houses?

Matthew:

So, you know, what’s popular is different all over China, depending on where you go.
Here, people drink pu’er tea a lot.
They do drink black tea a lot.
Those are probably the most popular.
But yeah, that’s basically it.
Flashcards, YouTube videos, socializing with people, doing the games, whatever is natural, whatever is fun, that’s going to be my way.
Now, before we chatted tonight, I was thinking a little bit more about something I wanted to share with you, which was As a young boy and a young student, I didn’t really like the academic style of schoolwork.

That really wasn’t for me, the traditional academic book learning and being in the classroom.
And I think what happened to me was going through high school and university, I developed an acquired taste for that, if I could put it that way.
I learned to love those traditional methods.
I do find them stimulating somewhat.
So I will sometimes clear off the desk and I have a book and I have a notebook and I Study in a traditional way and I like that now.
I have the mind for it now.
But I think if you don’t have to study that way or if you don’t really like to study that way, there’s other ways.

That’s basically what I want people to know.
Humans are so great at learning socially about anything.
And I like learning in mixed groups, mixed age, mixed ability level, mixed country, mixed background.
For me, that is just like, wow, it’s such a great opportunity for learning.

Lindsay:

Yeah, that’s very true.
I’m similar in that respect.
If I’m looking for like a tutor online or something like my Russian tutor, for example, lives in Brazil, because then I know that we can talk about South America a little bit more.
So that’s really interesting to me, you know, like the Turkish tutor I had before Before I had to drink lots of Turkish tea, unwillingly, was from Azerbaijan and lived in Istanbul.
So it was like, I like getting these different perspectives of things.
I find that really interesting.
I want to take us back a little bit.

There was the Mandarin course in university, after university you moved to China, you said you sort of started again essentially, this kind of false sense of a false beginner.
Now, I imagine from everything that you’ve just described, your language learning is looking a little bit different to how it did all those years ago.
Take us back to what it was like to arrive in a new country as a relatively young person and have this new language.
And you’re thinking, I thought I knew at least, hello, where’s it all gone?

Matthew:

Yeah.
Oh gosh.
That’s a great question.
And it’s something I often think about as That’s a big, big turning point in my life, so I often reflect on it.
But when I came to China, everything was pell-mell.
I mean, China is a very chaotic place.
The public transportation is awesome, but it’s also very busy.

There’s a heck of a lot of people and everything’s allowed on the roads.
So when I came to China, it’s very different from the suburbs outside DC.
It’s like everything’s happening everywhere all the time.
Also, people are staying out really late.
There’s all kinds of great street food late at night.
So I was like, this is really wild.
This is exciting.

People are living this way?
This is totally alien to me.
I grew up in a quiet, clean suburb, very typical suburban American life.
And I had to immediately start to set about learning key phrases that would help me get around in daily life.
So this is where the rubber meets the road.
This is where things got real.
It’s funny because looking back, when you go through a typical class or a course book, you go through the topics.

There is a degree of practicality to them and usefulness to them, but it’s sort of divorced from how we actually go about in daily life and learn it in daily life.
What you need to know depends really on where you are and what you’re trying to do.
I had to learn, for example, a couple of the first things I learned.
First of all, I’m a vegan, so I came to China and I had to be able to order the right food I wanted or find the right food I wanted and keep meat out of my dishes, so I learned how to order effectively in restaurants.
That was one of the first things that I was Getting after was my foods and ordering foods and also finding water and getting… You could just go to some places and point, but then you’d look like a caveman for the rest of your life.
So I wasn’t about to do that.
So I was learning how to say what I wanted.

And another thing was funny was people were trying to sell me stuff in a lot of places.
The city I went was a kind of a tourist hotspot.
So people could tell I was so green and they were trying to sell me everything all the time and also maybe try to cheat me sometimes.
So I was trying to learn how to politely tell people I didn’t want this, I didn’t want that.
Negotiate a price, purchase things, stuff like that, explain who I was, where I came from.
When I arrived and I didn’t have a phone, I didn’t have a phone until a few years ago.
Because I’m someone who likes to emphasize conversation and careful listening.

So I didn’t have a phone.
I came to China without a smartphone.
I’d never had one.
So I had a small notebook with me.
I carried a small notebook.
I didn’t have a phone.
Like now people would just use the phone.

But yeah, so when I was out and mixing and mingling with people and trying to learn the phrases I needed, I would quickly note them down in my little pocket notebook and then later go home, review them, make a flashcard.
So that’s how I was getting around on the streets.
And my mind and my ears were tremendously open in those days.
I had an experience of, for the first few weeks that I was in China, my mind was spinning.
My mind was like, I don’t know, it’s kind of like the doors of your mind.
You have so many mental pathways that are so solidified.
And when you move into a foreign country and you have to start living there and navigating there, The doors of your senses are exploded open.

It made it so difficult to fall asleep at night and I was having the craziest dreams and just trying to orient myself in this new environment.
But I always kept my mind open and my ears open and I was learning a lot even from locals and the local language.
It seems like just about every city in China has its own local language, but I kept my ears open to everything and I was noting down all these cool little words and phrases So that’s the backdrop, but I’m proud to say I still have that feeling.
China is still very much a mystery to me.
I feel like the next mystery is just around the corner.
And every time a friend tells me they went to this city or this place, they didn’t go, I’m like, oh, I’m so envious because it’s just like there’s an adventure around every corner.
There’s so, so much I haven’t seen.

So many cultures here, so many languages that I don’t know.
And I do feel lucky to be living in Guangdong because in Guangdong province, Cantonese Homeworld, I have the opportunity to learn some Cantonese too.
And I have had Cantonese lessons taught to me using Mandarin, so two birds with one stone.
Cantonese is a very fun language as well.

Lindsay:

Yeah.

Matthew:
And quite different.

Lindsay:
I’m glad you mentioned that because I was going to ask when you said about the Cantonese, I was going to say, Ooh, have you been learning or expanding your Chinese languages?
So it’s quite different, right?

Matthew:

Yeah, so I spent maybe like six years in other parts of China only learning Mandarin basically.
Moved to Guangdong and I said, whoa, did I just move to another country?
All the natives here, all the local people here were speaking Cantonese.
Now they use Mandarin to conduct business and in schools, so Mandarin is obviously around.
But suddenly for the first time after like six years of living in China, I wasn’t communicating with the people in their mother tongue anymore.
And I was like, that kind of stinks.
I miss that feeling.

People would say to me, oh, you can speak Mandarin.
And I say, yes.
And they would be so excited.
And then they would say, but can you speak Cantonese?
And I would say, no.

And I would say they’re a little crestfallen.

Lindsay:

Yeah.

Matthew:

Well, now they were crestfallen.
And now like if I’d used just a little bit of Cantonese, they light up like a Christmas tree.
So I was like, this is exciting.
And it reminds me of that Nelson Mandela quote.
You probably knew it, but for the visitors who don’t know it, If you speak to someone in a language they know, you speak to their head.
If you speak to someone in their language, their mother tongue, you speak to their heart.

And I found that to be so true with the Cantonese people.
So I have learned some basics of Cantonese and I’m tickled when I go to marketplaces and stuff and people just start trying to chat me up in Cantonese.
That’s really fun.
I’ve fallen off the bandwagon a little bit, but I still am very curious and interested in Cantonese.
I think it’s really an exciting language.
Some people say it has six tones.
Some people say it has nine.

There’s different systems for how they rate the tones or judge the tones, but Mandarin has four.
Some people say five if you count the neutral tone.
Cantonese may have six, maybe nine.
So Cantonese is a lot more sing-songy.
It’s got more tones involved.
But Cantonese language is so fun and it’s so funny.
The idioms, the expressions, the slangs, the jokes, I feel like it’s much better for that than Mandarin.

I don’t know why.
I can’t objectively prove that, but that’s just my feeling.
Cantonese people are really funny and they love slang and they’ll even use Cantonese to evade Mandarin sensors on the internet.
So that’s a little fun fact.
You can edit that out later if you like.

Lindsay:
Oh, it’s in.

Matthew:
I’m joking.

Lindsay:

Yeah, I want to keep that.
That is interesting.
That is really interesting.
Yeah, because like, it’s funny, isn’t it?
When you think, okay, I’ve learned this language, here we go.
And then there’s something else.

And like you say, it is the head and the heart thing that …

Matthew:

That’s what ultimately motivated me because I did struggle with a long time of thinking, should I even try because I knew how much effort I had put into Mandarin over the years.
And there’s that old saying, a hunter who chases two rabbits catches neither.
I think that’s a Chinese saying.
And I thought, if I divide myself, my Mandarin is going to get worse.
I should just focus on Mandarin.
But eventually curiosity won out.
The desire to chat with the natives won out.

And that goes back to my saying, don’t think about easy or hard.
Don’t think about results and goals all the time.
Sometimes, yeah, you just need to feed your curiosity and be human.
We’re multidimensional.
You’re not just like a language learning robot.

Lindsay:

Yeah.
I have very many rabbits, way more than two.

Matthew:

I feel better now.
I knew you were going to say that.
I was hoping you were going to say that.
Your rabbits are, yeah, they’re breeding in the cage back there.

Lindsay:

My rabbits are at it like rabbits and every language leads to another seven.

And then, oh, that language has like four dialects and different accents and different regional.

You just said Cantonese has six or nine tones.
I’m like, huh, is that the most tones of any language?
Now I need to go and find that out.

And then how are we interested to know that?

I don’t know.

Matthew:

And Cantonese has different dialects and accents too.
I mean, that’s a large family, so people from different cities in this province speak it differently and the standard quote unquote supposed to be Guangzhou or Hong Kong dialect.
Yeah, I guess I found it really difficult to study Cantonese actually because there’s not really any resources for it.

Lindsay:

I was going to ask because so much, and I always find it curious.
I mean, I know why, like, but you know, in this part of the world, if I were to go into a bookshop into the language section, it might say Mandarin Chinese, but it’s going to say Chinese.
More on like, you know, eight out of the 10 books or whatever, maybe Mandarin Chinese, but it kind of then means that if you’re wanting to learn something like Cantonese, there’s less available.
Right.
And that’s not, again, not to say that it’s more difficult or impossible, but how has that been in terms of having less to work with?

Matthew:

Yeah.
So it’s wild.
So a lot of my friends around here who want to learn Cantonese and, and find a tutor.
They end up making their own materials, literally.
And in some cases, they end up romanizing or spelling it out in their own ways.
There are some systems out there online, like systems.
I don’t know if I should use that word, systems.

There’s dictionaries out there where if you put in the word, you’re going to get a spelling.
So you can look up the romanized version.
But these things are not collected into a system or a book or a course.
There are actually different ones and I don’t think there is a clear standard or a clear number one.
There’s a few different systems out there.
There’s nothing very obvious.
There’s nothing to go on like that’s the one.

And when you watch different videos or go to different websites, everyone’s using a different one.
It seems like it’s a mess.
So that makes it really tricky.
So we end up just focusing on speaking more Listening and speaking and foregoing like having a book or we create our own resources with our tutors.
So that’s kind of like what we’ve done.
That is tricky.
But once you If I found the system that was working for me, I tried to just stick with that one system because you start mixing in the other ways to romanize the thing and it gets messy really quick.

But luckily, I mostly just want to socialize with people anyway.
I’m not really trying to read Cantonese.
I just want to talk to local people.
But yeah, I feel people’s pain when I see them post online about, where’s the resources for this language?
Yep, the struggle is real.

Lindsay:

What do you think is next for you, Matthew, both in terms of language card games and your own languages?

Matthew:

Well, the next thing for me in terms of the game is I’m working on the second version of this, heading into Language Land 2. No idea when it will be ready, perhaps two or three years later would be a rough estimate.
I hope I’ll get better at designing online games.
I found that’s really valuable to people because it allows anybody to connect no matter where they are and practice the same target language.
A lot of people can’t find people in their immediate vicinity who are learning their same target language, so the ability to connect online and play.
I wish I worked on that a lot earlier.
I have thought about maybe one day I could do an app I mean the cost of app design is coming down and more and more people are capable of designing apps for you or working with you to do so.
That’s kind of a very far-flung future goal, but I think my own dedicated app to play would be cool one day.

And besides that, just to stay the course, keep doing what I told you, I mean if you have something that’s working for you.
Keep following the blueprint.
It’s a lot of repetition.
It’s a lot of practice hours day in and day out.
Now you can make that practice fun, but just to stay the course, never turn back, never give up.
You’ll be so proud of where you’ve arrived to when you look back.
You don’t want to Wake up at 30 or 40 or 50 and look back and say, all those years I wasted and I didn’t learn my wife or my husband’s native language or I didn’t pass that class or I didn’t get that certification or I didn’t go to that country.

So if you want to do that thing, Stick on, stay the course, get after it, don’t give up.
That’s my plan just to keep Mandarin in the picture until they lower me into the ground.
It’s really important for me.
I have a lot of reasons to be learning it.
So however that looks every day may change, but to keep studying, keep learning, keep growing.
And the last thing I’ll say is I want to get better at helping other people.
So a lot of people, the first stage is self-actualization.

Making you a better person, getting better at your own habits and your own learning.
But I want to move beyond that and I want to get better at helping other people.
And this is something I could stand to learn a lot from you about.
You’ve been at this much longer than I have, but I want to make sure I’m translating things into results for other people.
I want to make sure change is really happening and I want to create something that’s valuable, something they would appreciate.
So I’ll be focusing very intently on being A better teacher, leader, mentor, coach.
And I found that’s very hard.

It’s not something easily done, but I’m having a lot of fun to try.

Lindsay:

Excellent.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk and share more about your story and language card games today.
If people are listening, I’ll put everything in the show notes, but where is the best one place to find you online?

Matthew:

That would be at languagecardgames.com, languagecardgames.com.
You can see the upcoming game event schedule.
You can sign up there to play.
Links to my social is there.
I’m on Twitter.
I’m on YouTube and Facebook.
We have a Facebook group, but yeah, languagecardgames.com.

Hope to connect with more of your friends and your followers, Lindsay and Thank you so much for having me on.
I’m so excited as you can see.
I mean, it’s the end of the week, Friday night.
I had a very busy week, but starting in the afternoon, like this energy was welling up inside of me.
I was getting very excited for this and I really appreciate you giving me the chance to come on your channel and chat with your people.

Lindsay:

Oh, you are more than welcome.
Thank you ever so much for your time and I’m sure we’ll speak to you again very soon.

Matthew:

You bet.
See you guys later.
Thanks for joining us.