Polytonic Dreams

First, I must confess, the credit for the title of this post must go to PM. He finds it very cleaver and witty. I am just too tired to think of anything else and he is clearly pretty proud of it, so why not!

I have been studying Chinese for almost two weeks now. The school I go to is a great little school right near the Consulate. I go four hours a day, five days a week. I have learned a lot already, but it hasn't been without its challenges. Today, I wrote about what I did yesterday using the words I knew. My paragraph went like this:

At 6:30, I got out of bed. At 7:00, I ate breakfast. At 10:00, I went to class. At 3:00, I finished class. At 8:00, I ate dinner. At 11:00, I went to sleep.

Not very creative, but it gets the point across. My teacher said it was a bit too repetitive. An hour later, we had this beauty, which says almost the same thing (with some additions), but in a much prettier, fancier way:

wǒ liùdiǎnbàn qǐchuáng.wǒ qīdiǎn chī zǎofàn, shídiǎn qù shàngkè měitiān dōushì. cóng shídiǎn dào shíèrdiǎn, wǒ zài shàng hānyǔ kè. xiàkè hòu, wǒ qù chī wǔfàn. chī wǔfàn hòu, wǒ zài shàng le liǎng gè xiǎoshí hānyǔ kè. wǒ měitiān shàng sì gè xiǎoshí hānyǔ kè. wǒ sāndiǎn xiàkè. zhīhòu, wǒ qù le měiguó lǐngshìguǎn. wǒ huí jiā hòu, wǒ zuò le hānyǔ zuòyè. zuò zuòyè hòu wǒ zuòfàn gěi zìjǐ hé xiānsheng chī. wǒ xǐhuan zuòfàn. wǎnshàng wǒ hé xiānsheng yìqǐ kàn diànshì. zhī hòu wǒ qù shuìjiào.

To make it clear, my teacher did most of the work on this. I filled in words here and there and can read and understand what it says, but there is no way I could produce something like this on my own! Even now having this template, I don't think I could reproduce it myself as there is no chance I remember all the "then", "after that", "later", and other connecting phrases.

Much of what I have learned so far is pretty useful stuff for everyday life. I know a bunch of foods and can order (if the waiter doesn't ask me any questions and the menu isn't in Chinese characters) in a restaurant. By the time family comes to visit, I should have restaurant ordering mastered. Although if I can't do the complicated stuff,  I can already point at pictures and say "this one" like a pro.

I also have picked out a few words/phrases that I will teach my parents and their friends when they come visit. This started in Macedonia when they expressed an interest in being taught how to say something in Macedonia. The phrase there was, "I saw a cow today". A year and a half later, the phrase is somewhat forgotten, but the memory of "Edna krava" and arms waving wildly has not been forgotten. They have even taken to naming cows they like Edna (the Macedonian word for one/a). I even saw that Edna the cow was featured on my father's Facebook recently.

99.9% of what I have been learning so far has been in pinyin (i.e. the above text about my day). Pinyin is the phonetic transliteration of Mandarin characters. This makes it much easier to read as I understand the Latin alphabet. In addition to the letters though, are the fun little lines above certain vowels, showing the tone(s) of the word. I'm just going to say it- I don't like tones. I know they are important (mā, má, mǎ, and mà all mean different things), but boy is it hard to remember 1) the correct way to say the word, 2) the tones, and 3) the meaning of the word. I find myself focusing on either the tone or the pronunciation, but it is still quite difficult for me to do both at once.

While most of what I have done has been in pinyin, I have been learning a few characters though. I now know about 30 characters. While that may sound like good progress, it takes 3000-4000 to be considered fully literate. No matter how hard I work, its going to take me a looooong time to get there (if ever). I did have quite a bit of fun the other day picking out every character I recognized on signs when PM and I were walking to dinner. And I was pretty pleased with myself one day last week when I put two characters I know together to make a word that I see 100 times a day.

*Not my picture. I am afraid that if I obviously take a photo in the metro I will get screamed at in Chinese.

Chinese is definitely a difficult language. Certainly the most difficult I have ever learned. I am not going to sugarcoat it- some days I hate going to class. It's not that I dislike class or my teachers, but rather I feel so unprepared and overwhelmed. I am still not used to the Chinese teaching methodology of memorization to the extreme and maybe its just me, but my brain can not handle memorizing 150+ new Chinese words a day. I come home exhausted and not wanting to study. Most days, I force myself to study for two to three hours, but some nights, I open my book and just stare at it with words swirling around in my head. I have also had the pleasure of waking up repeatedly during the night thinking of words and saying them over and over trying to get the tones correct. I feel very fortunate to have the chance to study Chinese so I am a bit more comfortable and connected here, but I often find myself wondering, "who thought it was a good idea to study Chinese four to seven hours a day?" and am looking forward to Chinese New Year when I get a long, hopefully relaxing, break.