Learning Mandarin Chinese

So, Vicki and I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for three months now.  During this time we have learned our numbers, time and dates, and most simple conversation items related to purchasing and talking about LiLi.

We started a month before we left and could functionally say very little when we hit the ground.  With self-study, 1 to 2 lessons a week, and everyday interactions we have been piecing more and more useful stuff together.  For instance, even though we knew our numbers when we arrived, we couldn’t really understand people when they said them, and we couldn’t string them together fast enough for people to understand us.  The first day in Shanghai we were able to tell someone LiLi’s age, but that was about it – and we definitely didn’t understand the words they were saying – only charades.

At this point we’re able to have some conversations about LiLi:

• Ta shi nuhai (he/she is a girl)  the spoken sound “ta” can be either he or she.  However, there are actually two different characters – so when it’s written, it’s not ambiguous.  The sound “shi” is pronounced “sure” and means “is, was, am, were, to be, AND yes”. 
• Women shi Meiguo (We are American)  Here the “guo” means country and Mei was selected because it means “beautiful” and because the sound “May” is phonetically related to America”
• Ta shi shi-qi ge yue (She is 17 “measure word” months)  Measure words are those that offer size.  For instance the difference between a LOAF of bread and a SLICE of bread.  In Chinese they use measure words in many places we don’t.  So here it is required to say “16 ‘units’ of months”.  It becomes an issue at 12 months and less because December is “shi-er yue” literally “12 month”.

We can also throw out some ‘fun’ phrases, usually directed at LiLi:

Knowing some Mandarin is useful
when buying vegetables!

• LiLi, shuo ni hao (Say Hello – literally “you good”)
• LiLi, lai zhe-li (come here)
• Zuo-de hao (Well done – literally “done good”)

We’re also fairly competent shoppers.

• Duo shao kuai yi jin? (How much money for a ½ kg?)

• We can also easily hear prices now after we ask and also rattle off long strings of number (i.e. a telephone number) without much hesitation.

And of course, when they think we know Chinese and start talking to us, we always reply “Wo zhi hui yi-dian-dian Zhong-wen” (I only know very little Chinese).  I think we’re getting close to dropping the second “dian” which in this case acts as the “very”.

My total word count is about 400 words now and most people can understand me when I say them (with some context and maybe charades).  I can also recognize 40 or 50 characters – which is still in the ‘not very useful’ category – but fun.  Our weak spot is definitely our ability to listen to others speak the language.  We can’t hear the words we’ve already learned – and they often use a synonym that we don’t know.

These friends of ours (LiLi's ayi's family) speak
little to no English, so Mandarin is
essential when hanging out with them.

One nice thing about learning Chinese is that because the Pinyin Romanization (using these letters instead of characters) was only completed in the 50’s there are no exceptions.  When it’s spelled out – that’s exactly how you say it.  So, it’s very easy to make progress on our own because it’s not like every word needs to have its own phonetic description.  However, with the characters it’s then like we have to learn an entire second language since it’s almost completely unrelated (though many characters have one half that gives the general meaning (animal) and one half that gives how you say it “ma” and the two make the exact meaning).

There are four tones in Chinese plus the less common ‘no tone’.  Coming from a language that doesn’t use them, the tones are interesting.  They are slightly different ways of saying the same general sound.  Think about how you normally say “Hello”, how you say it as a question, and how you might say it abruptly to someone who was late arriving.  In Chinese those would be three completely different words.  The sound “I” (spelled ai in Pinyin), depending on the tone, means Dust, Cancer, Short, and Love.

So far, I haven’t put much emphasis on the tones in Chinese – I could hardly hear them as different when I started – but they’re starting to make more sense now.  I’m now working on going through the 400 words that I’ve already memorized and add in the tone so that I can say them more accurately.

Knowing Mandarin allows us to make
quick purchases with ease.

So, here’s the craziest part of their language: there are only 1200 different sounds in the language, which includes the four different tones, which makes for a total unique spelling of syllables at only 350.  In English there are over 8000.  That means when in English we have the same sound for to, two, and too – in Chinese there are eight times as many similar sounds. The sound “shi” (sure) is applied to about 100 different characters – however, most of these characters are not terribly comprehensible on their own – they’re always tied to others.  For instance, “to” is its own word but also shows up in “tonight” “tomorrow” and so on.  There is a poem in Chinese that only uses the sound “shi”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den.

In Sanmen, the older locals don’t always speak Mandarin, which makes things difficult.  We call their dialect “Sanmenese” but it is technically called the “Wu” dialect.  We’re still having some trouble determining exactly how different it is from Mandarin.  They use the same written characters – and therefore the exact same grammar.  It appears to be further away than just a heavy accent (think Scottish) but certainly not as bad as English to German.  So it would probably qualify as a Creole.  Although confusing at times, we can still usually negotiate these situations using charades if nothing else.

We love living in China, and the fact the every little bit of language acquisition makes our experience even better is good motivation to keep studying.  We’re confident that by the time Vicki’s family visits in December we’ll make mostly competent tour guides!

**NOTE: We didn't include tones in any of our written Pinyin because we haven't yet found a program that allows us to type them.