With a heavy load on a long journey
They say that there are two dimensions to learning Mandarin: i) Reading and Writing, and ii)Listening and Speaking.I have been concentrating on the former, because, its easier, more useful to me, and I enjoy talking to people more than writing (now, that's an admission from a blogger!).
Given the numbers of Chinese language blogs I don't see how my being able to write Chinese will improve things.
My refusal to bother with Chinese characters really gets my Mandarin teacher upset: "you will learn so much more about Chinese culture if you can read and write Mandarin" OK some of the simpler characters, say 3 or 4 brush strokes I can handle, but when you get chareacters like
亀 I just draw a blank
Finally, I have moved onto book 2 of the Survival level, and it has been hard going - my Chinese colleagues insist on speaking English and won't let me practice my Putonghua, I am not getting across to the Mainland as often as I would like, and I am only having one lesson each week for two hours.
But I now have a new tool to learn Mandarin, which is Chinese podcasts, that I download for free from www.chinesepod.com, stick them on my iPod, and when commuting to and from work I can listen to Ken and Jenny discussing Chinese phrases.
The podcasts come in four levels:-newbie, elementary, intermediate and advanced. By far the most podcasts are in the newbie level, which suits me just fine.
Sometimes, I even have the coincidence of hearing a podcast that relates to the lesson I just had, for instance yesterday in the lesson I was learning about the seasons and weather; then, walking to work today the key word in the podcast was leng (3rd tone) meaning cold, so I am going about the office asking everyone "ni leng buleng?", and they all think I am mad!
My boss is in the UK at the moment and has been talking to the HR department (dangerous!), so , sends me an email asking how long I wanted to stay in Hong Kong, and what did I want to do after I left Hong Kong. Well I have only been here part of a dog watch, so it seems a bit early to be thinking of moving on, but in my company foreign assignments tend to last for upto three years, and foreign assignments are hard to come by (3% of the staff world wide are on foreign assignments, and the number is going down), so I reply to him – how about I stay here for another twenty years and retire, but at the very least until 2010. He seems happy with that plan, which to me is great, and means that I can settle into life here in Hong Kong, and carry on learning Mandarin. Of course, just because he thinks it is a good plan doesn’t mean that it will pan out that way. I have seen too many instances of people getting settled into a new role and beginning to make things work well, and then they are moved on to pastures new.
Anyway the weekend is coming up, so a few drinks with P tonight, and see what happens next!
posted by Luke @ 9:46 AM
3 Comments:
Just in case things head south with P, one thing I've learned is that there is no shortage of Mainland Chinese women living in HK who would love a western boyfriend. Not only would it help you with your language study, but the fact that you're studying putonghua makes you 27 times more attractive to these women.
I know exactly where you are, because I did a month of mandarin lessons in Shanghai last year and have had so little opportunity to use it in HK that I've probably forgotten half of what I learned.
And do pay attention to the written characters. Trust me, learning a few hundred characters made a huge difference for me.
Thanks for the encouragement, Steve. I have a colleague, here int his office, who is learning Mandarin using the pillow talk method, and he seems to be doing well!
I do try and pay attention to the charecters, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
I admire people who make an effort to learn thelanguage of the locals. It means they're eager to learn the culture at a deeper level. So good on you Luke(and Steve as well)!
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home