An Attempt to Learn Chinese
By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com
"The world is my country and science is my religion."- Christiaan Huygens, 17th century Dutch astronomer and physicist.
This one isn't about science, although China has plenty of that. Huygens, a forward-thinking man of his era, is telling us that each part of the world has something to teach mankind. My trip to China gives me the opportunity to read and hear Chinese and to learn about one of the world's most populous nations. Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, and is more popular than the next two (English and Spanish) combined, according to the CIA World Facebook. My native language is English, and I have a few years of experience with Spanish. In anticipation of my upcoming trip, though, I thought it would be a good idea to learn as much Chinese as possible.
I had no interest in spending hundreds of dollars on Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur. I wanted to learn from a real person - somebody with ties to China who, like nearly all immigrants, balances the dual demands of one language inside the home and another outside. After all, my goal is to be like my teacher: multi-lingual. In May 2010, I found a tutor, Ren - an NYU undergrad who arrived in America with her parents 10 years ago. Her roots are in Changchun, a city in the northern Chinese province of Jilin, and here in the US, she calls Flushing, NY her home. Ren came to me through her friend Amy, and Ren's positive attitude and interest in teaching instantly had an affect on me. I knew I needed someone that could challenge me. Although Ren had a full time job, she was up to the task of meeting a couple of times a week.
For the first few weeks, I was trying to learn sounds and symbols; only when they were mastered, could I move on to words, phrases, and then sentences. Early on, I had to watch videos like this one:
I made flash cards and, most of all, practiced. When Ren and I would meet, I would sit there dumbfounded as she asked me questions, speaking more rapidly than my brain could process. I shot back confident glances, though, when I would tell her that "zai na li?" means "where are you?" or that "gou" means "dog".
At first, she would ask me what topic I wanted to cover and would bring the related vocabulary the following session. I wanted to cover subjects like time, transportation, restaurants and hotels - memorizing how to say waiter ("fuwuyuan") or single room ("dan ren fang jian") came to me through drilling. There was a catch, however.
What I was doing was reading from flash cards with english characters on them, which is not how Chinese is understood by the vast majority of people. Over the last few centuries, there have been attempts in China at "romanization" where Chinese words are assigned roman characters. The latest attempt took root just after the People's Republic of China was formed in 1949 and the words are called "pinyin". This video above, for example, contains only pinyin.
I wanted more of a challenge, though, and decided to adjust my trip-related curriculum. I wanted to see how good I could get at reading and writing characters. Ren would show me how to write some simple things like "Hong Kong" or "five", and then we started working on sentences like, "I am riding in an airplane from New York to Beijing" or "I want to see five cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Xi'an and Hong Kong." Practice makes perfect so I followed her lead - she would show me how to write the characters step-by-step and I would spend hours copying - doing my best to memorize the correct sequence of dots and dashes. I briefly attempted to read the Chinese newspaper ("Sing Tao"), but it took entirely too long to look up the characters in the Chinese dictionary.
A Chinese Karaoke Game with Pinyin
Ren and I reverted, however, to children's books - we went to the Flushing Library, and took out "The Ugly Duckling ("Chou Xiao Ya"). The book had pinyin and Chinese characters, which was perfect because although I could read pinyin, at least I could get a sense of what the corresponding Chinese characters looked like. We worked from this as our curriculum for the last few weeks leading up to my trip.
My Chinese needs a lot of work - I need to continue to put time into it if it's going to be of any use. I know that being in China is going to greatly improve my Chinese skills - hearing the pronunciations, different dialects and, most importantly, getting it all within the context of Chinese culture and society is the easiest way to get better. Ren and I have been through many iterations in my learning, and the progress we've made is evident. Because it's so widely spoken around the world and because I want to learn how to communicate effectively while I'm over there, I know it's going to take a lot more work. I also cannot wait to use it; I'm sure that the little bit I know will be a great help to me during my trip.
