after living in Asia for over 10 years, I've noticed that Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people all have a different way of reacting to foreigners that speak their language, but one thing that doesn't seem to change is no matter how much of the language you know, if you speak it, you'll always be complimented, kind of like this.

Though it's customary in all three countries to give compliments to people when they come as a foreigner and speak the local language, the level of the reaction, the level of the compliment, it's all going to depend on who you meet, how old they are, the situation, and which country it is, because I've definitely noticed that it's much more toned down here in Japan.

versus going over to Chinatown, where regardless of your level, the reactions and compliments are a lot more exaggerated.

It's not so often that you can compare different countries' reactions in one single conversation, but I think the next clip is a really good example.

I wasn't speaking English, but I guess I look like somebody that was speaking English, but that was Chinese. Anyway, one thing I've noticed around China, Japan, and South Korea is that people tend to put foreigners in kind of a box based on how you look.

It turns out not everybody thinks that all tall blondes are Russians, but they're probably not going to guess America.

I mean, how can you tell anyway? But whether you're in China, Japan, or in South Korea and you speak the local language, how much are people going to react to you?

Well, having done these videos in all three countries, I can tell you nine out of 10 people don't react at all. It's pretty normal, especially when you're in that country even speaking Chinese and Korea or Japan, I don't get a lot of reactions at all, just every once in a while.

Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any videos like this. I have a lot more languages to learn and a lot more places to go, so hit the like button and press subscribe and you won't miss a single thing because there's a lot of adventures coming up.

So are you surprised that people aren't really that surprised.

Well, if you watch a lot of reaction videos on YouTube, you might be, because you're only being shown the craziest reactions possible, the ones that make the final cut, the one out of 10 people that just freaks out.

I actually made a video about this topic, you can check out here. But I'm out walking around most of the day looking for those kind of characters that are just really funny and you have those crazy conversations with, like this.

I got stuck to the chair, I like melted to the chair. That was truly one of those 1 in 10 really interesting people, really great conversations that I have.

Most of the time when you speak a foreign language, you go up, you order food, you get the food, it's over. There's no reaction, it's just business as usual. I will take seven days to go out and film one of these videos and only about 10 percent of the footage actually makes it onto YouTube.

The rest of it can be found on my Patreon, where you can unlock dozens of exclusive videos, private, not found on YouTube, chat with me.

It's been my little secret because I've kept this community very small, but now I'm opening it up to you if you want to support the channel and talk to me about your language learning.

There's one group though that I can't leave out of this video that literally is surprised when you speak a foreign language pretty much a hundred percent of the time.

Oh, I didn't want to leave, he's so cute. So if you, if you speak Chinese or Japanese, Korean and talk to kids, oh my gosh, they'll just love you. It's so cute, they'll go right up to you.

He came up to me three times in the restaurant, it was adorable. He didn't go to the other customers. Oh wait, he did, he went to the Chinese students in there because they spoke Chinese, so if you speak the language that the kid knows, they'll go right up to you, it's adorable, foreign.

Social Experiment: Who's MOST SHOCKED When You Speak Their Language?

When I gave up my job in corporate America to move to Asia and study languages my family said “Why waste your time?” 10 years later, language learning has changed my life in so many positive ways.

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Social Experiment: Who's MOST SHOCKED When You Speak Their Language?

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