Lost Horizons

Learning Mandarin

Nihao

Well, I've finally etracted my digit, and booked a course of Mandarin lessons. Mandarin? I hear you ask, surely they speak Cantonese in Hong Kong? That's like being posted to Germany and learning French! Well, the truth of it is that my company will pay for me to learn Mandarin and not Cantonese. Also my work colleagues are either expat or from the mainland, and I visit Dalien and Shanghai quite regularly, so its quite reasonable.

I had my first two hour private lesson and I reckon it went quite well :- numbers, dates, days of the week, etc. Not only am I learning to speak and understand Mandarin, but read and write it as well. This is going to be a challenge!

The biggest test will be tomorrow in the office, when I try out my newly learnt words on my colleagues!

Zaijian

posted by Luke @ 8:52 PM