Monday, May 23, 2005
wo hui shua putonqua
I bought the Pimsleur Mandarin CDs so that I can impress the locals when I hit China in mid-June. My previous experience with Pimsleur (an excellent conversational language program that reminds you of words at scientifically perfected intervals so that you learn in an easy and effective way) was for Spanish which I already knew. I didn't appreciate how hard it would be to acquire a language from scratch, especially a tonal one. I've been spending time with our new Czech employees and have heard a lot of their language. Even though I don't know a word of Czech beyond "hello" ("ahoy"), I can distinguish where words and phrases begin and end as well as the underlying emotion. At the start of a Pimsleur lesson a conversation between fluent speakers is played. The Mandarin segment was completely incomprehensible. After listening to the first lesson last night and this morning, I felt ready to give speaking it a try. I knew I was shaky, but I tried to say "I can speak Chinese" to my Chinese coworker. She giggled through the sixty seconds it took for me to get it out, then proceeded to correct every single syllable.
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4 comments:
LOL - you gotta love that...
At least you have somebodsy to bounce words and phrases off of, and you're not going to this foreign country totally screwing up everything you have learned in their language
um... Somebody
When Dad and I were in China, we tried to pronounce our students names. We took one at a time and gave it our best. They laughed hysterically every single time - we didn't get one name right. We finally gave up and used their English-chosen names.
However, a woman from Minnesota only used her student's Chinese names. She even said them over the loudspeaker for our graduation ceremony and no one laughed. So I guess it can be done.
Maybe you should just go to japan instead. I've heard japanese is easier.
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