"Learning Chinese not so hard"

[imron]

Finally, when faced with the painfully typical questions, routine questions warrant routine responses,

Haha, I've taken the opposite approach. Routine questions warrant non-standard responses, it's the only way to keep things interesting. Never lying of course, just providing interesting answers or replying with unexpected questions

[gato]

Routine questions warrant non-standard responses, it's the only way to keep things interesting. Never lying of course, just providing interesting answers or replying with unexpected questions

Jim: How's it going?

Bob: I'm going to kill myself. And you?

[imron]

Well maybe not that drastic, but next time someone asks you what country you're from, stick a 你呢？ on the end of your repsonse and watch what happens

[Luobot]

I appreciate the writers good intentions, which counter balances others who say Mandarin is unattainable to any foreigner over the age of 6, but I think he’s exaggerating just a tad in the opposite direction. You can make Mandarin initially much easier to learn by ignoring the tones but then regret it thereafter every time you have to repeat and repeat yourself until you gradually abandon all attempts at Mandarin and resort to Chinglish, then to English, and finally to the one thing that always works for me, a non-verbal form of charades sign language.

... when I was completely bundled up and wearing my hood and scarf …

On the other hand, Heifeng may be right, and all you really have to do is cover up your foreign face when you speak. Then the person you’re bantering with will make a real effort to understand you because they’re afraid that you may think there’s something wrong with their Mandarin!

[Pravit]

How often do you have people asking you to repeat on the phone?

Not very often, but it does happen that sometimes people just "won't get" what I'm saying, even though to me it makes perfect sense and sounds fine. Recently I called a travel agency and said "麻烦你找说英语的那个“ and got the reply "huh?!?!" I had to repeat myself a couple times.

That could be the case for pravit, too.

Of course, I can't really judge on how different my behavior is from Mainlanders, but if it helps, in China I wore only clothes I had bought in China. Anyhow, what I was trying to say is that as a Chinese-looking and (somewhat) Chinese-sounding person, people still occasionally get stumped when I try to speak. We're all still learning here. Maybe we should ask Dashan/one of the foreign presenters on CCTV how often they have to repeat themselves due to their appearance.

Then the person you’re bantering with will make a real effort to understand you because they’re afraid that you may think there’s something wrong with their Mandarin!

I think we don't give people enough credit for trying to understand us. In this situation I think the best thing is a healthy dose of 自我批评 and a resolution to good good study, day day up.

I think QQ is a nice tool for improvement, although I have had too many people accuse me of being a Mainlander who has nothing better to do with his time than impersonate foreigners. Sigh...

[Luobot]

I think we don't give people enough credit for trying to understand us. In this situation I think the best thing is a healthy dose of ziwopiping and a resolution to good good study, day day up.

Agreed. I think the point of Heifeng’s interesting little story is that pronunciation may be better recognized when the speaker is not recognized. Behavioral science long ago proved the effect that preconceptions can have on communication or the lack thereof. However, I have to say that all the Chinese people with whom I’ve tried out my poor Mandarin have been infinitely kind and patient with me and my charades. But if I had been wearing a hood …

Speaking for myself, 自我批评 is the word of the day.

Question: What is “QQ” and where can I find it?

[Songyi]

QQ is the Chinese IM. You can go to www.qq.com. It's in Chinese naturally, but I remember there being a link at the top to download the program. You can find both a Chinese version and an English one.

[gato]

How often do you have people asking you to repeat on the phone?

Not very often, but it does happen that sometimes people just "won't get" what I'm saying, even though to me it makes perfect sense and sounds fine.

I think we all listen better when we are not distracted by the visuals. I'm sure everyone has had the experience of closing your eyes in order to focus on listening to someone's words, even though the person's speaking your native language.

Recently I called a travel agency and said "麻烦你找说英语的那个“ and got the reply "huh?!?!" I had to repeat myself a couple times.

For this, "请问你们那有会说英文的吗？“would be better.

[Long Pan]

Whatever your Chinese level, being a foreigner in China will always be the first thing and maybe the most important thing that will lead most people attention. I am always surprised by this constant separation they make between 中国人 and 外国人, 华侨 / 华裔 being the border. There may be an assimilation concept in the Chinese culture, but it is quite limited to close territories. 连大山外国人就是外国人. We should accept it.

[Pravit]

I think we all listen better when we are not distracted by the visuals. I'm sure everyone has had the experience of closing your eyes in order to focus on listening to someone's words, even though the person's speaking your native language.

Ten parts agreed.

For this, "请问你们那有会说英文的吗？“would be better.

In this case, I knew there was a person who spoke English there, and had spoken with him before, but I did not know his Chinese name and did not expect the secretary to know his English name, so I wanted to say something like "Hey, could you get that English-speaking guy to come to the phone..."

[gougou]

Maybe we should ask Dashan/one of the foreign presenters on CCTV how often they have to repeat themselves due to their appearance.

That would be interesting indeed. Dashan possibly would be the other extreme, immediately being recognized as somebody who can speak Chinese, but one of the other presenters, who speak close to perfect Chinese but are less well-known should be a good indicator. Any of them on here, by any chance?

[anonymoose]

I don't think the 'western appearance' factor can be used to explain away all communication difficulties with Chinese people, but I am sure that appearance does have some influence. There is a cafeteria at the place I work, and I had tried on a number of occasions to speak in Chinese to the woman who always works there, each time receiving a blank stare in response. Then one time I went with a Chinese colleague who told that woman that I was speaking to her in Chinese, and ever since then, now that she knows I speak Chinese, I have had no problem communicating with her.

[gato]

I wanted to say something like "Hey, could you get that English-speaking guy to come to the phone..."

Maybe “请帮我叫一下你们那位会说英语的过来接一下电话，好吗？”

[cintiaghimel]

Chinese is not hard it's just scary for the westerns because most of us freaks out with all those complex symbols together and stuff such as the lack of an alphabet. But when you love what you do nothing is hard. I'm learning by myself, and the more I learn the more I love it even though I don't have too much contact with native speakers and when I do all they do is to smile and nod their heads (which technically means that my chinese is bad) but I don't care, this is my goal in life and I'm gonna make it...I know I can...if they can speak my language (portuguese) why can't I speak theirs?

[renegadedog]

I think the simplicity of Chinese is one thing that throws us, being used to complex European languages.

[tamarind]

My 4 year old girl is learning both English and Chinese at the same time. We are native Cantonese, mostly speaking english and cantonese at home.

She has only gone for 2 months of Chinese lessons, once a week, and she can already read many Chinese characters. Before that we have never exposed her to Chinese.

We started teaching her ABCs since she was 15 months old. She has been to phonics class since Jan this year. But now she can only read 3 letter words.

Personally I feel that English is much more difficult to learn than Chinese. I started learning English since I was 5 years old, and have been reading and writing in English for more than 30 years. Sometimes I still cannot get the grammar correct.

[lazyboy]

Just to throw in my two cents comparing chinese to other languages, I have found I have made progress much more quickly in chinese than I did in korean. I originally learned korean at DLI, which is the military's immersion school. it was an intensive 15 mo course with small classes 7 hrs a day plus homework. I am now living in korea teaching english and i would rank myself as an advanced student, although I dont put a whole lot of effort into anymore as I have decided to move onto chinese.

as i said, if i make a comparison to the amount of time studied to have ive learned, i can communicate much better in chinese compared to where i was at in korean at this stage. of course, im not talking about no of months studied, but the amount of hours put in.

my significant caveats would be that 1. i am focusing on listening (and speaking) and that is the easiest skill (of the four skills) to learn in chinese, and i think i learn better this way than focusing on reading. 2. the independent learning in me enjoys choosing the material and pace. 3. experience in learning an asian language makes me smarter about how to go about it

however, i learned the korean alphabet in a couple days, and it took a long time before i could understand and produce the types of grammatical constructions that i have gotten through very quickly in chinese. the simplicity of the grammar and its similiarity to english

make chinese a lot easier for me than korean, where the word order is backwards, there is heavy inflection of almost all parts of speech and a complex honorific system.

all that being said, its definately not easy.

quickly, i will throw in that at dli, languages are classified in terms of relative difficulty with the top four being chinese, korean, japanese and arabic. they share a category 4 rating.

anecdotally, it seemed like the arabic school has the most success in terms of graduation rates and high achievers out of the four. korean has the highest attrition and the lowest number of very high scorers ( when you throw out the natives who pretend they forgot everything). i would argue that this does not necessarily mean that korean is that much harder, because in retrospect i think the korean curriculum and teacher quality, and student commitment are weak. most of my classmates did not want to learn korean. also, the chinese and japanese schools were much smaller, and i think that helps the quality.

[lazyboy]

i want to agree with the guy who says that often people dont listen to him because they dont think he speaks chinese. some people seem like they dont buy it and think he is just making excuses. i have had plenty of similar experiences and have often had koreans with me to confirm that it wasnt my pronunciation that was the problem.

[djwebb2004]

I am going to commit the cardinal sin of sinology by saying that if I knew my progress in Chinese would be this slow, I would never have taken it up. But as I am part of the way there, I don't like to give up. I am worried I can read more than I can say. i think it is because most Chinese I meet don't like discussing politics/economics etc, and so I end up restricted in the type of humdrum things I can talk about, although I can read much more complicated stuff. Maybe I shoudl have gone to Taiwan...

[赫杰]

I am worried I can read more than I can say.

I can guarantee it. Hermann Hesse is one of my favorite novelists, but there ain't no way in hell I will be able to write and express myself like him.

My suggestion to you would be, think in Chinese on these issues and practice justifying your side and general thoughts (maybe even practice delivering speeches), then, find a good Chinese companion to debate with (or at least engage in some introspective conversationing). In the midst of debate you will find yourself slowly imitating what it is that you are reading, via absorbing the train of thought, reasonings, and expression methods. This has been my experience, but as always 一家之言

Now, I want to use this as a spring board and touch back on an earlier topic I mentioned in this thread——strangers coming up and talking to you. I have been through many stages with this while living here, in the beginning it was trying my best to practice my Chinese with them, then it was I'm sorry I came here to study Chinese not English excuse me good bye phase, thirdly I entered the phase of farcical responses (Where are you from? Not sure, but I like cats), from here I slipped into a kind of phase of 若无其事 and just utterly ignored the person, pretend I did not understand, or just politely tell them I was busy at the moment. I know that is what I suggested earlier.

However, recently I have had some things on mind, and often like to resolve these problems using Chinese thoughts. Overall, I find this to be helpful for my studies, but more importantly I feel these problems need to be dealt with and thought about, any progression is merely the byproduct. So…I think I have found a way to derive some worth out of this situation, by perhaps giving me a little 启发. Now I am responding to where I am from, and then the next line is…what? That’s right. 我觉得你的中文讲得蛮好！That is my cue to say thanks, and then ask them if I can ask a question, and then ask something like 你对孩子教育有什么看法？Stuff like this….I don’t see anything wrong with this. Sometimes they will say, ummm why do you ask? And I will usually respond: because of the same reason you asked me where I was from.

Perhaps just another phase…perhaps not…just some thoughts.

HJ