Learning Chinese

I must have been crazy to sign up for 5 Chinese language lessons prior to leaving for China. What was I thinking? For a Westerner, literacy in Chinese means about five years of intense scholarship. Five weeks -- probably not. 

What is so complicated about Chinese? Well, several hundred thousand things. For example, Chinese is one of the rare non-alphabetic languages. Think about that: no alphabet, hence, no alphabetizing of things like telephone books. The Chinese language has many thousands of individual characters that represent thousands of sounds. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. To organize all these sounds, Chinese has a concept called "radicals" which are fixed components of characters and the number of strokes added to give them meaning. 

Add to this, the concept of tones. There are four tones in Chinese speech. A tone has to do with whether the sound is spoken "flat," or goes up or down or both up and down. The same word spoken in a different "tone" often has a completely different meaning, so it is possible for a foreigner to say some very amusing things inadvertently.

The upside of Chinese is that it lacks the complications of grammar that afflict English. In addition, Chinese is not troubled by:

•  Verb tense or number (Chinese has neither) Verb variations like I run, I ran, I have run, for example, are not used in Chinese.
• Word endings like plurals (book, books) 
• Pronouns that indicate gender (you'd be surprised how often sex matters in conversation). Chinese has only one syllable ("ta") for all gender pronouns. You determine whether it's "he" or "she" from the context.
  

I took the first Chinese lesson last week in the back room of the Old Peking restaurant. Peking is the former name of the city of Beijing. Beijing is one of the few words I learned to pronounce that evening. The next time you see me, I'll say Beijing for you. It is not "bay-zhing." As for the rest of the Chinese lesson, it was a real eye-opener for me. 

The teacher, Jennifer Johnston, is excellent. She lived in Taiwan for 12 years and is happily married to a Chinese American. She took him to China for the first time. The problem isn't Jennifer, it's me. Unless she is looking right at me and I can see how she is forming the words with her tongue and lips, I'm hopeless at imitating what she is saying. And the tones that characterize Chinese are hard to replicate.

Nonetheless, I'm enjoying Jennifer's very practical commentary on life in China and how it compares (very favorably) to life in America. The most useful part of this class was the reminder it gave me of how Chinese students will feel when I do vocal drills with them in July. You feel like a simpleton when you can't make even basic remarks like, "Good morning. How are you?" And, you hope the teacher won't call on you to recite individually. This brief Chinese lesson was primarily successful in the humility department. I am told that my Chinese students will be very reluctant to speak individually initially, and I'm going to be very careful to keep it simple and non-threatening.

The only Chinese that I'm dead set on learning is, "Where is the ladies' room?" (which by the way is likely to have only a Chinese character on the door).