I have been having a great time learning Chinese recently. There have been only a few occasions where I feel it’s hopeless. The best thing for me to do then is to just stop practicing Chinese and go back into the world of English, get my confidence back, and try again later. Even though I can understand almost nothing that’s said to me, speaking is at least semi-functional with my limited vocabulary. Except the times when I say something simple and I just get blank stares that indicate no understanding…those times are the frustrating ones. Here are my observations so far in learning Chinese:

Chinese is easy where English is difficult:

• Grammar – there are no conjugations! So the sentences “I go”, “He goes”, “We went” are almost identical in Chinese. The verb is “qu” and it never changes.
• There are no articles. So there are no “a”s, “the”s, etc.
• I haven’t quite figured this out yet, but there doesn’t seem to be any plurals. So, you don’t need to change the article or add an “s” to the end.
• The words are mostly mono syllabic and you create fancier words by putting multiple words together. I can’t remember the exact phrase, but bicycle is something like “self powered vehicle”. I only know vehicle which is “che”. If you say “Qi che” (no sure how it’s spelled) it means “car”. If you say “Chu zhu che”, it means taxi. Taxi is something like “For rent car”.

Chinese is very hard where English is easy (easier):

• Pronunciation! One word spelled the same way can mean something completely different. Yes, English has this, but the complexity of Chinese is that it’s much more common and, what’s worse, the words differ only by tone! So, if the same word has an up intonation and another has a dip intonation (down then up) it means something completely different. For example, if you just drop the end of this phrase “jiu dian” it means “hotel”. If you don’t, it means “nine o’clock”! “Hello, I need a ride to the nine o’clock.” (I made this exact mistake one day) This is very difficult for us English speakers, but it’s important. One thing you have to cure yourself of is the natural inclination of English, maybe western, speakers to end questions with an up intonation. This completely breaks down in Chinese. Instead, you can add on words, like “ma” with an even high pitch, to indicate a question. Of course, that’s only for certain questions.

I’ve picked a few favorite words and listed them here. I like these because they sound weird. My favorite words so far:

• Si – “four” Imagine you want to say “suh” phonetically, but you don’t finish the vowel sound, you stop just as the vowel sound is coming out.
• Shi – “yes” or “to be”. Say this by saying “shuh” phonetically, but keep your front two top teeth and your bottom two front teeth touching while you say it.
• Zhu – “Pig” To say this, try saying something close to “choo”, except really purse your lips together, do not change the vowel sound, and say it in a high tone.
• Yu – “Fish” This is my favorite. Start in a low tone saying “yoo”, never altering the vowel sounds, and ending high. This one sound really weird to me.

I was able to pull off this sentence on my own today:

“Have you ever been to the factory?” “Ni qu go guan cha ma?” (I have no idea if I spelled factory right but that’s pretty close. I was proud of this one.)