Day 19 – First day of class
First day of class goes by well. Learn the 4 tones of Mandarin Chinese.
All of the people in my class are from different cultures (ex. Spanish, Russian, Finnish, Ethopian, Japanese), so that makes me the only person that is ethnically Chinese.
Being in the absolute beginner class (Have zero knowledge of Chinese), I start to wonder if I’ll be able to learn Chinese any faster than the people from other cultures, due to the fact that I am actually Chinese. Sorta brings up the Nature vs. Nurture arguement, hmm. But you can tell me what you think.
Get my student card.
My dormitory hallway during le golden hour.
Baguette sandwich. Onion, ketchup, and last but not least… hickory sticks!!
Hao chi.
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
You should be able to learn to speak Mandarin faster than many of your classmates, but not because you are ethnically Chinese. As an English speaker and a Canadian you have advantages. The linguistic range of English is only slightly narrower than Mandarin, so you need only learn two new sounds. Your ear will be able to differentiate the nuances of Mandarin sounds as they are similar to English. North Americans are more outgoing and like to speak to other people, so you should get more practice. These advantages will help you learn to speak faster. Also Mandarin and English grammar is very similar.
It will be more difficult for you to learn Chinese characters. Most characters have no logic in the number of strokes and sometimes their stroke order. Your capacity to do rote memorization will not be as good as other classmates from other countries (Asian), but this will develop quickly. Keep at it, review your older characters often, and learn new characters daily. Your memorization capacity will eventually rival your classmates.
As for written characters, your Japanese classmates have a huge advantage, and to a lesser extent your Korean classmate, because their native languages include Chinese characters. Their challenges include having to learn simplified Chinese (vs their native traditional Chinese characters), the meanings of the characters can be markedly different, the pronunciation will be completely different, and some characters have multiple pronunciations that depend on context. It is notoriously difficult for a Japanese speaker to learn how to speak Mandarin well. This might be discouraging for you in a written test, but remember your advantage in speaking. No culture really has a clear advantage in learning Mandarin.
Comment by Don Tai — November 7, 2011 @ 11:15 AM
was the baguette wrapped in a paper bag because it was to tell where the bread was. You can duplicate this at home if the hickory sticks are like the chips things.
Comment by dianayee — November 20, 2011 @ 10:15 PM