Back to life, back to reality, as we were taught by Soul II Soul.
My language classes did not go away last month, but now I feel an urge to double down a bit. Due to Covid, my Vietnamese classes were switched to Skype. Somehow, not feeling a need to clean the bathrooms and make sure the kitchen is spotless before the teacher arrives makes studying easier. I can focus on the language, and not on the impression I make on my teacher. It's very freeing!
Vietnamese class was this morning, and Mandarin class - also Skype - will be tomorrow morning. {It's usually Mondays, but this weekend was the Labor Day holiday in China, and my teacher cautioned me that she was going out with friends Sunday night and might not be ready for class so early Monday morning. LOL. We understand each other. I told her to have a drink for me.}
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| It's chaos, I tell you! Chaos! |
I started Mandarin while living in China. When we moved to Vietnam, I wanted to continue, because if I'm living anywhere in this part of the world, Chinese is not a bad language to know. After we got to Vietnam, we realized a majority of tourism here comes from China. (Korea is second.) Many businesses have their signs in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean.
Even so, I don't practice my Mandarin regularly. Sometimes - before Covid - I might have heard some people speaking it in a store or restaurant, but I rarely felt compelled to chime in.
At first, I thought Vietnamese was coming more easily to me than Mandarin. They are both tonal languages, and share some grammatical similarities. Even some words are similar. Think of how many English words are recognizable when you learn them in another Latin-based language?
I now consider Vietnamese the harder of the two. Sure, reading Chinese is torture, because if you don't know "that specific" character, you have no idea what it sounds like or means. Vietnamese at least sort of looks familiar. But that's a fools game. It doesn't sound familiar, and I have realized I have no ear for it at all. Tones or not, Vietnamese has 11 vowels! And I cannot hear them all.
Fortunately, my teacher is very flexible. Lately we've been spending most of the lesson on conversation, and practicing speaking and hearing. We are moving very slowly through the book, but in the end, I think I will be better able to function with what I am learning. Little though it is.
Excuse me now. I have to study Vietnamese.
Or maybe I should review my Mandarin, since I have that class tomorrow.
Some days, I miss complaining about my high school German classes.
Both are so difficult, my point of view ;) Enjoy your Mandarin lesson :)
ReplyDeleteMy Mandarin class is interesting culturally, too. I've been with this teacher for 3 years now, and she's engulfed in the expat world in China enough that she can answer difficult questions about "why" things are one way or the other. I'm finding out first-hand how China is coping with this pandemic.
DeleteGood for you. When you live there its important to speak their language out of respect and courtesy.
ReplyDeleteThat's the main reason I do it. We can get along without knowing the language. Many expats swear there is no point to learning it because the language is very different from the north to south parts of the country. Plus, most locals who do business with expats like to practice their English. But you're right, when I use my meager Vietnamese, there's a little respect and even compassion returned to me.
DeleteI liked your positive and practical attitude towards languages that one doesn't know. Language is such a divisive issues in India.
DeleteWhen I took oboe lessons, my teacher used to get out books for us to site read. Being able to jump in and read music was much more helpful once I had mastered the basics of playing the instrument.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I think your conversations are probably better than the grammar and book stuff. Not that that's not important, but day-to-day you'll do better just knowing how to communicate. Good luck with your language lessons.
I have funny mistake stories from each language. I knew, from restaurants, that in Vietnamese "opla" (can't show proper characters with tone, sorry) means "eggs"! Cool. Our corner store had crates of eggs that we could buy by the kilo. I was so proud to be able to tell them that I wanted "opla".
DeleteJust last month I learned the "opla" means omelet. LOL! Fortunately the people here are unbelievably kind. They knew what I meant, and just got me my eggs. For MONTHS!
So there's Mark Twain's old line that most students would rather decline a drink than two German verbs, and it sounds like anyone studying either Mandarin or Vietnamese hears that and thinks, yeah, Twain hadn't heard anything.
ReplyDeleteAnd studying two languages at the same time is impressive.
Haha! As much difficulty as I am having, as least half of the problem is that the sounds - and therefore pronunciations - come from mouth shapes I'm not used to. IMHO, Mandarin grammar is way easier than English. And frankly, German grammar is a b***h!
DeleteI can attest to that Mark Twain quote. Verbs in German are insane.
It's good learn and understand different languages, especially the one where one lives.
ReplyDeleteI am just wondering if characters in Mandarin, Vietnamese etc are also pictorial, like Japanese ...
India has so many official languages (for each of the states) that there is no national language, though Hindi is the one that is spoken by the most number of people.
It's also a very divisive issue with many in the South looking at Hindi as the language of the north and that of the power-centre, since New Delhi, the country's capital is in the north. Ironically, many in the south would rather prefer English to Hindi.
I actually went to school in India as a kid. I'm familiar with the disparity of languages there. At the time, I wasn't brave enough to try to learn Tamil or Hindi properly.
DeleteChinese is a character based language, and even shares some characters with Japanese, although they are pronounced differently and may have different meanings. Vietnamese (insert eye-roll) WAS once a character-based language, but in the 1600s a Portuguese explorer created a new language based on a Latin alphabet. So it reads more like Chinese, but looks European. It's a nightmare.
Thanks, Red, for the detailed reply. Glad to know you had schooling in India.
DeleteHaving Latin alphabet makes it very easy, I can understand.
Good to come back as part of A to Z Roadtrip and know what our friends are doing now. Learning languages seriously. I try to learn through some books only. Of course it will take a lot of time.
ReplyDeleteI am continuing my A to Z effort with offering Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course
Thanks for visiting! I'll return the favor soon.
DeleteI only managed to improve my Chinese when the place that I taught suddenly hired a bunch of ladies from China.. .and if I needed anything to be done / understood quickly and reliably it was going to have to be said in Chinese. That's when my Chinese really got way better. All the years in school did nothing for me, evidently.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure as you go out and about and use the language it will get easier. Even if you don't become a pro at it, being understood at least is a GOOD thing.
Yes. Vietnamese is the bigger struggle for me, but I have more opportunity to practice it. In my Mandarin classes I'm working on speaking more conversational Mandarin in addition to following the course.
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