Intro by Max

Hello everyone, I'm Max. I'm 26 years old and from Australia, Sydney to be precise. I'm excited to be the newest member of Talk With The World.

My experience with foreign languages began about 24 years ago, when, my parents tell me, I looked up into the sky at a big metal thing flying along, and shouted excitedly ［飞机！飞机！］

You see, I grew up in a bilingual family. My Dad is from Australia, but Mum is from Taiwan. She's from a mandarin speaking family, so she ended up speaking to me with her first language, 普通话 or 国语 as it is known in 台湾.

After graduating from university, I came to China. It seemed the right thing to do. I studied music for so long, but it didn't seem to be getting me very far, and I felt that I needed a new start. In China I developed my Chinese literacy (I can read almost anything you throw at me now) and after a short trip to Japan, started learning Japanese.

Eventually I got to the point with my Chinese that I felt that I needed some formal lessons. I enrolled at 上海外国语大学, and since I knew how many 한곡사람 are in 中国 learning 中文, decided that it would be the ideal opportunity to learn 한곡아.

So the languages that I speak, in order of proficiency are English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and French. If I met a Korean or French person, I wouldn't feel confident enough to have a conversation without going "뭐?" or “comment?" so I'm not sure if they count! But hopefully with some help from everyone at this site, and some 努力 on my part, I'll get there soon!