A small barrier has fallen

[Flickserve]

This weekend I had two encounters in Hong Kong that have encouraged me.

- was out walking and a mainland Chinese tourist asked me the directions to a hotel. I am pretty bad with names in Cantonese let alone Mandarin. Her smartphone map was showing her position incorrectly getting her a bit lost. I somehow managed to explain the directions to her in an understandable form. I hope she did arrive at the right place in the end. She thanked me and I even had the presence of mid to blurt out "沒事儿"

- had a short conversation about education and exams using Mandarin at a social gathering. The lady came from Dongbei. The Mandarin actually worked. There was a little misunderstanding when she heard 喜欢 when I meant 习惯。With my incomplete mastery of tones and the background noise, it's an understandable thing that could happen in any language. I am not upset about that. I have revised the pinyin for both words to help me next time and 习愦 will be pronounced better.

But still, it's not even a month when I came back from Beijing/Harbin where I was having difficulty. There seems to be a real difference. Perhaps in Beijing, I absorbed something by trying really hard to follow conversations although I couldn't understand nor speak too much.

[roddy]

Excellent stuff!

[Bigdumogre]

Great stuff