The hardest thing about moving to China hasn't been the culture shock, or the teaching (although neither of these have been total walks in the park); the hardest part has been learning the language. Learning to communicate is an essential part of integrating in any culture, first to get by and be able to do the regular day to day things that make life possible, and then next to get to know the people of a country and experience it on another level past tourism.
Most people decide to pursue the first option, and most of the people I know who have lived in China for years can speak fairly well but show them Chinese characters and they might as well be looking at a scribble. I chose to go down the second route and bring characters into the mix and then my brain had some kind of epiphany. I may have a terrible memory but it seems like, even when I can't remember words, I can remember pictures. And to me that's basically what characters are, fancy pictoral representations of words. Once you start to look at characters Mandarin is a beautiful and logical language, of course mountain (shan 山) looks like a little abstract mountain, and of course fire (huo 火）looks a bit like a flame, and then of course when you put the two characters together you get fire mountain - or volcano - (huo'shan 火山)! It sometimes just makes sense! Learning a language like this is kind of fun, reading characters is like deciphering hieroglyphics and the eureka moment when you figure something out is amazing. But characters also have their downsides, I may know all the characters in a sentence but it doesn't mean I will understand what it means. Combining characters can radically change their meaning and render them undecipherable. This is the nature of learning Chinese, moments of joy and understanding alternated with moments of confusion.
Living in a country it's impossible not to pick up some of the language, and the longer you live there the more you can learn. After over a year in China my Chinese isn't as good as I would like but it's getting there. Most of the time I can understand what's being said to me and with a bit of effort and guess work I can reply. Dating a Chinese boy and spending time with a Chinese family also helps a lot, and a lot of the time my boyfriends mum is teaching me more than I have learnt in class. But that's the thing I'm learning about languages; you can study them in a static classroom environment, but there is nothing like an authentic conversation to get your brain working. I'm going to continue to try to learn as much as I can while I'm living here, and keep muddling through when it gets frustrating and difficult but for now I'll leave this with my essential Chinese phrases 101.
For me languages have never come easy, no matter how much they might interest me. I spent a lot of my school career struggling with French, Spanish, Latin and Ancient Greek, and I spent many a lunch time making up vocabulary tests that hadn't gone so well first time round. At school this never particularly bothered me, I managed to get through by exams and I can go to France or Spain and get by as a tourist. My Spanish is even a little better than that and I can start to communicate. But none the less languages prove time and time again not to be my forte. I have a terrible memory, poor concentration and mental block when it comes to grammar; but then came Mandarin.
Mandarin isn't easy by anyone's standards. It's tonal - which means the way you say something completely changes the meaning, mixing up ma3 马 (horse) and ma1 妈 (mother) could be bad. It's pictoral - which means the Roman alphabet is essentially useless for reading. And generally it is so unlike English on every level.
When learning Mandarin there are two paths to go down. The first is purely communicative, learning to speak and listen, being able to talk to people and hold a conversation. The second is more of a comprehensive approach, which not only includes the communicative elements but also reading and writing.
When learning Mandarin there are two paths to go down. The first is purely communicative, learning to speak and listen, being able to talk to people and hold a conversation. The second is more of a comprehensive approach, which not only includes the communicative elements but also reading and writing.
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| Taken from the Chineasy website |
Living in a country it's impossible not to pick up some of the language, and the longer you live there the more you can learn. After over a year in China my Chinese isn't as good as I would like but it's getting there. Most of the time I can understand what's being said to me and with a bit of effort and guess work I can reply. Dating a Chinese boy and spending time with a Chinese family also helps a lot, and a lot of the time my boyfriends mum is teaching me more than I have learnt in class. But that's the thing I'm learning about languages; you can study them in a static classroom environment, but there is nothing like an authentic conversation to get your brain working. I'm going to continue to try to learn as much as I can while I'm living here, and keep muddling through when it gets frustrating and difficult but for now I'll leave this with my essential Chinese phrases 101.
- Hello - ni3hao3 - 你好
- Thank you - xie4xie5 - 谢谢
- I'm British - wo3 shi4 ying1guo2ren2 - 我是英国人
- I don't understand - wo3 ting1bu5dong3 - 我听不懂
- Goodbye - zai4jian4 - 再见
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