Now that I've been here awhile, life really isn't all that different form back home. I go to work, get dinner with friends, go shopping, normal stuff. The one major difference is it all happens in Chinese. While things look very familiar, every once in a while I am reminded that I am illiterate in this country. I can now fill out my bank deposit form, but it is a bit humiliating to walk into a bank or any office and realize someone has to help you fill out the form. Sometimes large official notices, stamped with red ink, go up in my apartment building. I look and think, "Huh, I wonder if that is important, meh oh well." The vocabulary needed to live in a country is not included at the beginning of a language course. I could say "I want a bank transfer" before I could say "My name is Beth."
I have now been learning Chinese seriously for about three months. For many months I just sort of got buy with an awkward system of pointing and saying that, not that, no don’t want that, yes that! Not knowing Chinese is most difficult when it comes to ordering food, as there are few English menus in Xin Zhuang. (Although, god bless whoever thought picture menus were a good idea!) I also tend to favor brands that put pictures on their products. Hmmm, there is a picture of a window, so this must be glass cleaner. There is a picture of clothes, I wonder if this is detergent or bleach…let’s find out!
So now I take Chinese from a friend of mine at a nearby Subway. My greatest accomplishment is that I can now adequately order at Subway. At first, you walk in thinking great western food this will be easy. But do you know all the words for Italian bread, honey wheat, turkey, ham, tuna, lettuce, tomatoes, olives etc… No you don’t. That’s when the panic sets in. Subway is supposed to be easy! (IKEA was supposed to be easy to, but everything was in Swedish or Chinese.)
So for those of you who don’t know Chinese has four tones—one is high pitched and flat, the next goes from low to high, the third high to low to high, and the last from high to low. One word can be said four different ways and therefore have for different meanings. When first starting out, I heard simply, ma, ma, ma, ma. No difference. I’m getting a little better, but it’s still really confusing.
Of course then there are the characters. Now, we already have one sound “ma” four tones and four characters. Depending on the tone it could be horse, mother, or the question particle. Well then add the fact that one sound can have two characters with different meanings. This is when I usually cry “No fair!”
Learning Chinese however, has made me much more understanding of why my students make the mistakes that they do. There is no be verb before adjectives, so in Chinese I simply say “I hungry.” There is only one word to refer to the notion of “I.” However, in English, we have I, me, my, mine. There are no articles such as a, an, and the. The syntax is also every different. In Chinese, you would say “ni qu na li?” – “you go where?” However we say, ‘Where are you going?’ (Well an the present continuous tense is really quite silly but that’s a whole different discussion.) The same is true for ‘this is what’ instead of “what is this.” Unfortunately, I now speak more like the kids, which I think is in fact the opposite of what should be happening.
Me: “Karen?”
Kids: “Karen no here.”
Me: “Why Karen no here?” Oops… “Why is Karen not present?”
Trying to string a sentence together is Chinese is still difficult because as soon as I’m not looking at a book I forget every tone. However I do really like the puzzle aspect of Chinese. It seems quite logical (minus the characters with 10+ strokes.) Each character is like a syllable while some function as words.
Fragrant + water = perfume
Safety + hat = helmet
Hit + fire + machine = lighter
Mouth + water = spit
Early + food = breakfast
Outside + country + person = foreigner
Fire + chicken = turkey (Okay, so not all of them make sense.)
So I'll keep working at it. I'm at the point where I can ask lots of questions, but won't have a clue what someone says when the respond.
6 months ago
