Landmarks in learning Chinese
April 25th, 2010 | Published in China - Language
I realized today when I got a phone call from a Chinese person and took it without really any major communication problems that my Chinese has gotten a lot better in the past two months.
The thing that made me realize it was that the first successful phone conversation I had with a non-English-speaking Chinese person was only two months ago, and at the time, I was totally thrilled.
Obviously, the first conversation was sub-preschool level language use. The converstaion went something like this:
Me: Hello. Is XiaoLu there?
Other person: No. This is his mother.
Me: Oh, his mother. Hello.
Other person: XiaoLu will come back in something something. He went to something something.
Me: Where?
Other person: Something something. Are you that foreigner?
Me: Oh, yeah. I am.
Other person: Something something phone call.
Me: Oh. Can you have him call me later please?
Other person: Yes. Something.
Me: Thank you. Goodbye.
Other person: Bye-bye.
So maybe the word “sucessful” is too strong. But at the time, I thought it was cool that the basic function of a phone call had taken place. I didn’t just have to say “sorry, I don’t understand” and then hang up.
But the conversation today was much better. A guy from the online store where I buy clothes called because I hadn’t put my name on my order. So I gave him my name, and everything was fine. And I realized that I had basically understood everything he had said.
Maybe the reason this stuff is so interesting to me is because even though I studied French for five years before and during high school, I never really got good at it or had the chance to practice it in real-life situations. If you just memorize vocabulary and grammar when you’re learning a language, as a lot of students in the U.S. do (at least in New Hampshire when I was growing up — in cities and in places with more Spanish speakers I guess you could put the language to use) you never get the chance to stand on your feet in the language. You never know that with the sliver of vocabulary you have learned, it is possible to convey meaning.
Also, if you live in an single-language environment like I always did, even if you’re studying another language you’re probably not very likely to be able to speak it easily in the real language environment. For instance, when I studied French in high school we did go to Quebec on a field trip once. But the minute people opened their mouths, the language spilled out so fast and was pronounced so differently from how I pronounced it (meaning badly) that I didn’t really understand anything. Except hello.
Also, there is a lot of work to be done in between saying hello in a language and then actually speaking it. When I went to France in college for a week my pronounciation of “bonjour” was good enough at times to make people on the street think I actually spoke French. Which I didn’t really.
My point is basically that learning another language is totally interesting in itself, especially when you can walk out the door and talk to people who couldn’t speak English even if you wanted them to. And also that semi-off-the-beaten-path China has got to be the best place anywhere for learning another language, because even if you don’t feel like talking to strangers, strangers definitely want to talk to you.
Talking to cab drivers is another great way for me to measure my progress in learning the language. It’s about a 35-minute cab ride from downtown to my door, and cab drivers love to ask questions and talk (last week, one cab driver who I had apparently ridden with before actually offered me a cigarette and we both smoked as we headed back to the college). Of course, when I first got here, small talk with cab drivers was impossible. I felt lucky just to be able to make my destination clear to them verbally. But that has slowly changed. First I was able to chat with them for 30 seconds, then a few minutes, then more like 10 minutes, and now, if I am reasonably creative, I can go almost 20 minutes without the conversation breaking down and the driver just chatting away with me no longer understanding. Basically, as long as I don’t get lost in the skein as words, they will keep conversing with me (it’s kind of like a mini-Chinese lesson that I get as a free bonus for riding in a taxi).
The other good thing about talking to taxi drivers is the repetition. The conversation basically always starts the same way. Here’s what the driver almost always says/asks, in order:
Where are you from?
Are you a student or a teacher?
Oh, you’re Chinese is great. Very standard. (This after me saying the words “America” and “teacher”; people here are very nice.)
Why did you come to China — for work or to learn Chinese?
I have a cousin/brother/friend who lives in Canada/the U.S./Hong Kong. He speaks English very well.
How much money do you make?
Oh, that’s pretty good. But it’s not much in America, right?
How much money does a cab driver make in America?
From here the conversation could go anywhere, and as the time grows longer it becomes less and less likely that I will understand what he is saying. But it’s becoming easier as I get better at knowing and recognizing the structure of words and sentences, the basic vocabulary, which then allows me to recognize and isolate the words I don’t know from everything else. Which in turn lets me think about the words I don’t know and either try to put together their meaning or infer their meaning from the context. That’s a big shift from where I was at a couple of months ago — basically grasping for straws and recognizing a word or phrase here or there, but everything else being a big mush pit where I didn’t know what was going on.
This all tells me that the initial hump of learning Chinese might be receding a bit. There’s a good post by John Pasden at Sinosplice.com that looks at the difficulty level of learning Chinese versus other languages (namely Japanese), and basically he points out that people tend to think Chinese is super hard to learn…but it’s actually just hard to learn how to learn – meaning that there’s a huge hump of stuff you’ve got to learn in the beginning, and then it gets easier from there. Basically, to first start learning Chinese, you’ve got to bend your brain around this concept that the meaning of words is totally dependant on the tone of their prononciation — which for an English speaker is really pretty damn far out — and then you’ve got to actually learn what those tones are, how to say them and then how to parse them in rapid-fire speech.
Those things are now becoming less difficult for me (I don’t want to jinx myself by saying anything more pronounced than that. It’s still all pretty damn difficult.) I think that basically started to happen (the decrease in difficulty) when I started obsessively listening to Chinesepod.com lessons and practicing pronouncing sentences in bed and in the shower (I think now my listening has gotten better than my speaking…because my vocabulary still sucks but listening to Chinesepod has made me more comfortable hearing normal-speed speech and exposed me to the sounds of lots of words). I still have a long way to go…and I am hoping and praying that things will continue to go smoothly (enough) here so that I can stay and learn more.
Especially now that forming the sentence “Can you please bring me a glass of water” is no longer a small miracle.
Other language landmarks…
Learning how to say the names of all the delicious stuff at my favorite restaurant
Teaching someone how to play poker in Chinese
Actually understanding what my Chinese teacher is saying some of the time
Translating an English word for some confused students into Chinese during class (note: extreme aberration)
Traveling to another city (for snacks…yeah, weird) with someone who speaks no English and then back again and having fun
Learning how to lift weights in Chinese (fairly extensive use of pantomime)
Understanding an Upper-Intermediate lesson on Chinesepod.com
That’s all for today.
: )