what do you use Chinese for?

[baining tang]

I have an unusually big group of non native speaker friends and native Chinese speaker friends. But you know what, across the board it seems like for one reason or another non native speakers don't seem to talk much together in Chinese. With our native speaking friends we do all the time. So I guess what I am saying is I don't think you are missing out on much! Just find native speakers and talk to them!!! Most will be happy to take out a few minutes to talk!

[KatXiaomao]

I want to learn a new language. Brain bubblegum, I guess.

And compared to the Romantic languages where it is easy to connect root words to meanings, Chinese is quite challenging.

I'm also hoping that my sons will see it is okay to study another language. I can't force them to study with me, but I really want them to it is but natural to study new skills, regardless the age.

I started off with Pimsleur. I seriously and slowly studied it over some months... and now I am convinced I would also want to learn to read and write, not just speak Chinese.

PS. I like this forum. I think it will inspire me to study daily, even though little by little.

[Herbert]

Brain bubblegum on a more challenging level is a good way to put it.

It is great mental exercise. I've never learned a second language and I want to. What better way than to study something so completely different, language and culture, in all respects than where my life has brought me thus far?

I used to say that my goal is to become fluent in speaking, reading and writing Mandarin. But, people have told me that I can't do it. So, rather than a stated goal, I now simply say that I will become fluent in speaking, reading and writing Mandarin. It has become that important to me for reasons stated above and below.

My new found love for learning Mandarin began with my job. We buy tools from China and I regularly interact with the manufacturers in China. Often daily. The more I understand the culture and the language the more successful I can be at this interaction where most of the information passed between us is technical.

The sales/interpreters at our Chinese suppliers think it is great and they help me learn.

I have Rosetta Stone and the Berlitz Mandarin - English dictionary. I am close to adding a pop up translator to the mix. So far MDBG.is at the top of that list but I have others to check out first. At any rate, the MDBG website seems priceless.

I have the language bar installed at work on my Windows station and at home on my Ubuntu notebook so I can type Pinyin and have simplified appear on the screen. very cool!

Also, I think it is important to hear Chinese every day. So whether it is Rosetta Stone, or some music video or newscast at youku.com, I listen daily.

After I embarked on this adventure I remembered that my dad had always been interested in Chinese culture. So maybe this path was laid before me long before my work responsibilities brought me to it.

[Caidanbi]

I am by no means an expert on this, but I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

So what do you use Chinese for? Right now I mostly use it to speak to my Chinese friends, watch/read things from Chinese-speaking areas (I like a lot of movies and music from China, Hong Kong, etc), things like that. I also worked as a Chinese-English translator for a couple of years, so at that time I could also say I use it for my job. Also, for some odd reason, my dog responds better to commands in Chinese than he does to English Probably because I speak to him in Chinese a lot. He seems to like it.

And what has motivated you to study and continue studying Chinese? I've always been interested in Chinese culture and history, which is why I decided to start learning the language. I continue studying for those reasons, and also so that I can keep in touch with my Chinese friends, because they don't speak much English. Really, I just like learning it, and I do use it a lot.

What's your view of the future of Chinese learning and teaching in the U.S. and other parts of the world? I really couldn't tell you much about this. If China keeps doing a lot of business with the US, then I think more people here will probably learn it.

[SOOHK]

I am currently using my Chinese to try and find a nice Chinese girlfriend.

[tooironic]

Learnt Chinese most my life. Work as a Chinese-English translator - perhaps one of two or three on this forum I think? People often ask me why I "learn" Chinese, but it doesn't feel much like learning anymore so much as osmosis. It's always been a part of my life so nowadays I don't tend to think about why so much as what I'm using it for.

[ABCinChina]

To 泡妞 of course!

[crazillo]

Hadn't I started learning Chinese I wouldn't be able to be in regular contact with this country anymore. Right now I am a 留学生, and in contrast to some of my classmates I really try to go for the Chinese contacts and become friends with them. It's turning out to be a little hard, because I study at Beida, and those students seems too busy to be establishing regular contacts apart from 语伴 once a week... I would like to be working in a university's Chinese department some day, but I'm not sure if my Chinese will ever be sufficient for this. Also, finding a Chinese girlfriend wouldn't be the worst thing to do.

Considering work: there will always be tons of Chinese people with better English than my Chinese. Although I think it can be benefical, it is not really as big of an advantage as you might think at first glance.

[Neil_H]

I learn it because my Wife is Chinese and we are bringing our 1 year old daughter up bilingual. When my Chinese parents in law were over for the birth a year ago it was up to me to translate and speak to them as they can't speak English and my wife was recovering in hospital.

[rmpalpha]

A friend of mine three years ago took intensive first-year Mandarin Chinese for one summer (but stopped his Chinese studies after the class was complete). A neat feature of that program was that he spent five weeks in the US, and then went to Beida for the second five weeks of the course. Over the last three years, he's occasionally made comments about the language and his travels in Bejing.

Last summer, I started becoming more interested in what he had to say about his studies and travels and ultimately decided to give the language a try. I have no need to learn Chinese, really - I know no native Chinese speakers, have no Chinese family members, and do not intend to pursue any relationships (professional or personal) with any Chinese language users apart from friendship.

I have found the language to be a real challenge (but the good kind of challenge), and, at the same time, fascinating for me to learn. I am also a sort of a language geek - I've studied French and Spanish for several years each, and I wanted to dive into a completely different language family to see what it was like. I have to admit that it has been quite frustrating trying to think of things to say in Chinese because I'm used to gaining the ability to say meaningful and useful things within a year of studying a language, but this is definitely not the case with Chinese

I'm a chemistry graduate student, and I am, deep inside, secretly hoping that a lab that I will be a part of in the future will have a Chinese lab worker (who can speak Mandarin) that I can practice my fledgling Chinese language skills with

I know nothing about the prospects of Chinese language education in the United States. At my university, the number of courses offered has been pretty constant over the past ten years, from what I've seen in the course schedule for previous years. The class size has definitely shrunk over this year - starting with 80 students at the beginning of the year, we now have 50 students starting the third quarter of this course sequence. This is probably due to the unexpected difficulty of the Chinese language compared to other languages, though.

[huaxia]

To rmpalpha: I'm pretty sure that there are quite a lot of Chinese who work (or study as graduate students) in the chemistry and other "hard science" fields in the U.S. So chances are, you will have some Chinese speakers in your lab in the near future so that you can practice your Chinese.

[GaoLao888]

Since I only speak a little bit, what I have picked up on several business trips to China, I just try to have fun, and make people laugh. I can order some food and joke with the waitresses. That's about all. I have caught people talking about me when they think I don't understand. That's always good for a laugh.

[Meng Lelan]

I'm a chemistry graduate student, and I am, deep inside, secretly hoping that a lab that I will be a part of in the future will have a Chinese lab worker (who can speak Mandarin) that I can practice my fledgling Chinese language skills with

I agree with huaxia. Chemistry grad school does attract a number of Chinese students.

When I started studying Chinese, I had a friend in the graduate chemistry department who introduced me to his Chinese labmate, also a graduate student in chemistry. I asked her what city she was from, and it turned out to be the very city I was going to study abroad that summer. So she arranged for her family in Tianjin to show me around the city that whole summer and even had dinners at her house.

[trisha2766]

When I was in graduate school in Biochemistry something like half the students in the department were Chinese. I had only started to learn then and was way too shy to try to say anything. Looking back I wish I had anyway though.

[crazillo]

I wrote this on my renrenwang account the other day. Hope you like it.

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"Are you crazy?" "Whaaat? You are joking!" - Many of my friends reacted in this or similair fashion when I told them about my plan to study Chinese. "You will give up very soon, all those characters..."

At times, I was tempted to stop. Last October, I was pretty close to quitting my major. Why is that? I felt I couldn't fulfill my own expectations, I felt I would fail despite having put in quite a lot in order to improve my Chinese already.Thanks to some people including my professor I decided to continue, and I think I was right doing so.

If I do something, I will do it 100%. "No pain no gain" is a phrase many bodybuilders like to use. It quite fits my situation as well. There's things I've started and stopped quickly again, e.g. playing trumpet or the guitar, working out in fitness centers. Studying is totally different cup of tea though and I had made up my mind well when I enrolled in October 2008. I probably would have preferred to combine it with History, but in an economy-driven world you got to make up your mind twice before enrolling in a subject like History if you don't want to become a teacher. Teacher, a good keyword! The reason why I came to China in the first place WAS to teach. It was not because China has always been fascinating me. Given my background, I've always been open-minded and interested in foreign cultures. And yes, I've always liked travelling.

When I decided to go abroad before enrolling in uni, I had to make a tough decision. I had already lost a year due to military/alternative service. I could have enrolled straight away, but I didn't. It's been the best decision of my life. When I chose the Teach-and-Travel-China-Programme, I would never have expected to be back here studying Chinese! What has given me this deep impression? Why am I always driven between two worlds that have so little in common?

To answer this, I got to analyze myself. I believe two of my characters traits are neither very western nor very Chinese, they are somewhere in between: I have no trouble to sit down on a Saturday evening if I have an important exam coming up next Monday. While I am writing this article, most of my classmates are clubbing. I went out last night and it's been a good change. I like it every once in a while, but I don't need it on an almost daily base. I do feel that a lot of people back home have grown up in stable circumstances, being used to a high standard of living. Some people have never learned to work hard. Or they're not willing to give that extra bit which makes them better than the rest. However, we Europeans would need anyone (!) to work very hard given our demographic situation. Yet they will prefer short amusement over long-term goals.

However, I am certainly no 书呆子 at the same time. I can sit down three hours to study characters, and I will even listen to extra podcasts and meet up with language partners to spice my Chinese up (hopefully :-) ). Simultaneously, I will not give up my whole life to be able to recite Mengzi. I will never allow myself not go to the tennis courts, because I need to play tennis to feel well (I was about to write to feel 'complete'). If my best friend calls me at 3AM because she has been dumped by her boyfriend, I will talk to her despite my exam the next day.

You might be wondering how all of this is related to the topic of this diary. Well, it very much does have relevance! Some people study Chinese, will never use it after graduation and forget it within a year. They will never have durable friendships with Chinese people because they don't even meet their language partner a single time. If you just study for the sake of to study, then Chinese ain't your major, and China ain't your country. I couldn't be like this. - Although I haven't come to the point that I can compare my Beijing experience with my Shenyang experience two years ago, I do feel a lot of improvement the last few weeks. In 2008, I wasn't able to speak any Chinese at all, now I can at least survive and hold simply conversations. Still, I did have the best friends of my life in Shenyang, teaching there for xin months was much fun; and maybe this all contributed to my decision for this major. In Beijing, I have met a couple of nice people. Obviously there is mutual benefit as we want to improve our foreign language, but I strongly believe there is friendship, too. Hopefully this wiill extend in the coming months.

Coming back to the title of this entry, learning Chinese fits my very well:

- I have mixed blood and will never feel 100% German. I don't share their coldness and I don't like the 'artificial mountain of ice' they build around themselves. Thanks to my long trips to my father's home in Canada, I have been able to experience different lifesytles early on. This finally led to the decision I want to go abroad before entering uni. And this paved the way to study a cultural science like Chinese.

- I have always tried to do stuff because I can benefit from it as a person, and not because I can pass the next exam. Marks are important and I prepare exams thoroughly, but my main purpose is to be fulfilled with my own life. If I do something, I do it a 100%. I have decided to study Chinese and Political Science, so I will give a 100% for it. Not for the exams, but for myself. It's the same kind of quality that makes you repeat characters over and over again, but you also know what it is for.

- Last but not least, I value friendship, even more than money. Close friends of my grandfather died because their house caught fire. They were billionaires. What does all your money help in a situation like that? Nothing. My grandfather was the only one attending their funeral as they were so lonely despite all their money. I found a nice compromise between dream (Chinese-History) and rationalism (Chinese-Economics), and I haven't regretted my choice so far. Thanks to my national scholarship, I do feel well prepared for my future. I am still on parallel studies and might end up as a teacher - which would not be a shame at all. Even if I don't, I will find something. As long as I can have a good life, it will be fine enough.

To sum it up, I do have the background, I do have the persistence/will and I do have an idea about my future plans that fits learning this language. It's still a long way, as I wouldn't be able to write all of this in Chinese, but I hope you guys can accompany and support me, not laugh too much about stupid mistakes and be good friends with me! Hopefully, we can get to the point where we don't call each other 'my German / my Chinese friend' but just 'my friend'!

[i intended to make this very personal, there's the obvious reasons like "better Chinese-European relations", of course! This is to illustrate why I personally study Chinese!]

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It's aimed at my friends as well as anyone who would like to know.

[LiScing]

I learn it to explore and create alternative ways of writing Chinese. Results are better than I ever could have imagined. That's all I use it for at this time. It's like a hobby now and sure has been a fascinating experience.

[zhuan li]

Why Chinese? I want to travel, and possibly live for a while, in China.  More importantly, I want my newborn son to learn Chinese, as well as English. My wife is Chinese.  (She speaks perfect English.)  

[AcuDoc]

I study Chinese because it seems like I've been around things Chinese most of my life. From age 9 through undergrad college, I studied and practiced Chinese martial arts. Since then, I've studied and practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine. I visited China twice in the early 1980's (with a group) and both trips I had to communicate entirely through translators. It was frustrating.

It would be nice to say that since then I've diligently studied Chinese, but I haven't. I know a lot of the characters for frequently used Chinese herbs, acupuncture points, and terminology from TCM. All in all, I probably have about 250 words in Chinese - each and every one of them absolutely useless should I want to order a meal or find the right train.

So, I'm back at it again, starting from the beginning, and hoping to make another trip to China in the next year or two. Most of the Chinese people in my immediate area of the U.S. speak Cantonese, not Mandarin, but I have colleagues and friends in other parts of the country that speak Mandarin and I'd love to be able to move at least some of our conversations from English to Chinese one day.

[GreenArrow45]

I initially learned Chinese because my uni didn't have Japanese as an option. But, as I majored in Economics, I found that learning Chinese would be beneficial to my future. Likewise, I think it is fun to be able to speak other languages and definitely helps with understanding the culture that language comes from.

Otherwise, I just want to be able to speak Chinese, Japanese, Russian/Polish, and Spanish at a near fluent to fluent level 5 years from now. (Ultimate goal is to have 8 - 10 languages by the time I am 40)

[putonghua73]

I am learning Chinese as a hobby and for brain stimulation.

I have always been fascinated by Chinese characters. I can remember getting a book from the library while in primary school, and still retain the image of 人superimposed on a man walking. As a stamp collector the Chinese characters were puzzling. In a Chinese restaurant, what was really being offered on the menu?

I started off with similar goals with GeoffC, except regular readers (and friends) will chuckle and know that my real motivation stems from dating Asian (predominantly Chinese) women. It was only in my 30s, when I took a long, hard look at my life and started to actually think about what I really wished to do in terms of my career goals, my interests, my motivations, etc that I began to seriously think about goal formation and actualisation. I was dissatisfied with the direction of my life just before I hit 30, and finally decided to do something about it.

I wanted to learn a language as I was fascinated by languages, grammatical syntax, but especially the feeling of empowerment of being able to converse and understand a different language. Of course, it also helps when wishing to date women who speak that language. Never forget the power of the underlying motivation, folks ;)

First and foremost, I study Chinese because I have an interest in East Asia, predominantly China. I also wanted the challenge of learning a tonal language, and being able to converse with people [Chinese women] using the language and putting it [language] to use. Once the basic motivation forms, over time additional goals / motivating factors begin to coalesce e.g. developing an interest in the writing system, the eytomology of characters, and not forgetting being able to eavesdrop on people's private conversations without their knowledge!

My Chinese has only really taken off and moved through the regular learning plateaus - those speed bumps that really hinder learning, without sufficient study and motivation - and firmly into Intro-Elementary level (finished Chinese in Steps Vol 3 and have started BOYA 准高级 － and am really hitting the 语法to properly understand 结果补语) since I quit my job after 7 years doing a number of different Supply Chain Management roles within my former company, and studying Chinese in Kunming.

The decision to quit my job and take a career break to study and live in a different country was one of the best decisions of my life. I was so completely burned out by work and London life, that my professional studies, Chinese studies and personal interests had pretty much ground to a halt. My Chinese had not improved one iota since leaving SOAS classes (2 hours every Saturday) back at the start of 2008. Also, I found it really demoralising being surrounded by people who were dissatisfied by their situation but their only course of action was to moan and whinge about it, without doing anything substantially to change their situation (the British disease).

Most importantly, I enjoy my lifestyle here in Kunming, I like hanging out with my Chinese friends (as well as my school friends here at Keats), and of course, I enjoy my relationship with my girlfriend.

My interest in Chinese has invigorated my life, allowed me to develop an interest in travelling and spending time in other places and countries, and afforded me the opportunity to re-evaluate my life to make positive life-changing decisions. Not to mention, it has improved my dating life substantially ;)

I also find Laurence Matthews’s “Chinese Character Fast Finder” extremely useful for looking up Chinese characters.

An older Spanish guy here at Keats kindly introduced and gave me his copy of the Laurence Matthews' book after he left. I can honestly say that much of the pain and frustration of trying to learn and retain hanzi has disappeared since Isi (Spanish guy) introduced this book to me. If there were 3 important rules that I think any beginner should know before starting they are:

1. practice, practice and practice tones

2. learn words in chunks of language (lexicon) - thanks to ChinesePod for this valuable tip

3. buy Laurence Matthews' 'Chinese Character Fast Finder'

It hurts to think of the pain and suffering before I hit upon the above (with the exception of point 1. because SOAS stressed the primacy of tone drills, as well as reading hanzi, from the get-go).

Cheers!