Taking on the language

Before arriving in China I thought it was important that I start learning Chinese. I hoped that this would give me a head start and allow me to become more independent and get to know the real China by talking with the locals. It has been many (many!) years since my last stint overseas as an AFS student. I was young at the time and was sent to a small town in Czechoslovakia for a year. Back then we had no internet, no smart phones and language books, particularly Czech ones were non-existent. That meant learning the language had to be done by talking with the locals.

Learning Chinese has been a much different experience this time round. Access to a number of great sites like Yoyo Chinese has been fantastic. I had watched some of Yangyang’s YouTube videos before I arrived and then two weeks ago I decided to get serious and sign up for the course. It provides a daily study schedule including, video lessons, audio reviews and study notes. Sometimes there are also flashcard practice and additional lessons to solidify the learning. 

While I am out and about I am never without my iPhone as the Pleco App in particular has been invaluable. I am able to quickly look up words, and then listen to the way it is pronounced before I test it out (normally on unsuspecting shopkeepers). Sometimes I get it right but other times I don’t, so in those situations I show them the Chinese character on my phone and they understand.  Yesterday I was looking for nail polish remover and band-aids, so I had to pulled out my phone and look those up.

I would have to say that the Chinese has to be one of the most logical languages to learn. Their verbs do not conjugate, there are no genders like European languages and there doesn’t appear to be any plural forms of the nouns. Wow! There are many other bonuses too, the English word he/she/it all use the same word – Tā.  Also the verb ‘to be’ can change a number of times in English depending on the subject. For example ‘I am’, ‘He/She is’, ‘They/We are’  but in Chinese this is all represented by the same word – Shì.   

So what makes Chinese a little difficult to learn? I would have to say (in my case) it’s the tones. Chinese has four main tones, rising, falling, high flat and low 'bouncing'. So saying a word with the wrong tone can result in a lot of confused stares. For instance the word for panda is

Xióngmāo, but saying it with the wrong tone may have you saying chest hair instead. Not ideal if you are wanting to see the pandas and not someones chest! This certainly makes learning the language a lot of fun especially if you can look back at it and laugh.