2009 Resolution: learning Mandarin (for real)
I’m endeavoring to attempt something never before achieved in the history of mankind: make a New Year’s resolution, and stick to it. Given my desire, it’s apropos that I write this on the first day of the lunar new year, since the resolution for 2009 was: learn Chinese, like for real.
“For real” means expanding beyond the lazy, expat-level of everyday, common Chinese I’ve been stuck at, for a while now, being one of a plethora of lazy Americans living in Beijing or Shanghai. It means actually having a damned vocabulary, for one, and it means taking more than a token a swipe at learning some lingo, and some words that don’t appear in the everyday Chinese dictionary.
In order to learn something, to really learn something, it takes commitment, it takes repetition, and it takes curiosity. The intellectual curiosity is not the problem for me; it’s the commitment and repetition I’ve had trouble with. Also, you absolutely have to make it fun. Well, technically, you don’t. You can sit there and force – no, torture – yourself by having your head buried in books, but you’ll have two undesired end results: (1) you’ll be bored; and (2) it’ll be less efficient. So, I’ve decided to make it fun. When things are fun, the learning just comes.
So, I’ve started out by learning a word a day and putting it on Twitter, with a twist: I’m going to create a narrative out of it by re-using the previous words en route to learning new ones. Along the way, I’ve found that Twitter is not enough, because of its paltry character limit, and that I need to introduce some new words and sentence structures at the same time. It’s a fun challenge, and of course, this being me, the sentences will be absurd. (But therein lies the “fun” for me. If I have to learn how to say “Where is the pharmacy” one more time I’ll shoot myself.) This whole artificial construct should create enough repetition for me to actually learn the concepts I set out to learn.
And, given that it’s so public, maybe it’ll give my friends some entertainment, so they can laugh at my pathetic progress as time goes along. Laughing at people is always fun, after all…
Below are the first three days of this exercise: future efforts will come every day or two, and I will couple the brief Twitter post with an explanation here on my blog of whatever I’ve mentioned. I’m structuring this as if I am teaching, which is really amusing, because I completely suck at Chinese. But, somehow, the process of explaining all of this, as if I was explaining it to someone else, reinforces my learning, so I will continue to front as if I know what the hell I’m talking about.
If you detect errors in what I write, please, please, please…point out the errors of my ways in the comments, because I do not wish to lead astray other poor unfortunate souls who happen upon my blog.
Day ONE:
I was sitting around on my ass watching “Doctor Who” one day and realized I didn’t even know the word for remote control. My example sentence originally was going to be more ambitious, but I capitulated to Twitter’s shortcomings and simplified it. But, that’s probably better for learning anyway.
遥控器
yáo kòng qì
remote control
Sentence:
给我遥控器!
gĕi wŏ yáo kòng qì!
[gĕi / to give] [wŏ / me] [yáo kòng qì / remote control]
Give me the remote!
Notes: Mandarin has simpler rules than English regarding verb tenses, articles (to some degree) and plurals. So, the literal translation here is “Give me remote!”, which sounds simple and harsh to an English speaker, but really isn’t. Thankfully, a concept I can actually talk about that makes me sound as if I know something.
Day TWO:
On the second day, I already abandoned my narrative. But, it was Obama’s inauguration day and I realized I didn’t even know the word for PRESIDENT (shame on me).
总统
zŏng tŏng
President
Sentence:
奥巴马是美国总统!
[ào bā mǎ / Obama] [shì - to be] [měi guó - USA] [zŏng tŏng - president]
Obama is the U.S. President!
Notes: Names can be tricky in Mandarin, because they map to characters, rather than meaning. “Ao Ba Ma” is meaningless; it’s a phonetic approximation of Obama’s name, based on how the characters sound. This raises the question of who gets to choose the characters the first time someone’s name is used?
I have not been able to get a satisfactory answer to this question from Chinese colleagues, but I imagine it must have been an issue during the Olympics. Like, take this baseball pitcher from the ’80s: Tom Niedenfuer. Now, I have no idea how the Chinese would say this guy’s name. I imagine if Tom Niedenfuer had showed up to play an exhibition baseball game in China, the first guy (TV commentator?) who said it would get dibs on determining which characters make up his name? I don’t know, because there are a few different character combinations that would seem to work. Or maybe there’s some official panel of people somewhere in the deepest recesses of the Chinese language-control hierarchy that determines these things.
Day THREE:
On the third day, which ended up being almost a week later, we’re continuing with our narrative.
震动棒
zhèn dòng bàng
vibrator
这个震动棒有附送遥控器吗?
[zhè gè - this] [zhèn dòng bàng - vibrator] [yǒu - to have] [fù sòng - free/included] [yáo kòng qì - remote control] [ma - question particle]
Does this vibrator come with a remote control?
Notes: A few notes today. First, “这/zhè” really means “this” and “个/gè” is a kind of article, or preposition (although Chinese has neither). It’s often used together like this, but I wanted to point out that the sentence breakdown above is a tad bit simplified.
Second, “震动棒/zhèn dòng bàng” has a rather funny direct translation. Altogether it means vibrator, but break it down and the literal translation is “vibrating sticks/rods”.
Third, “附送/fù sòng” means “free” when used on its own. When it’s prefaced by “有/yǒu”, it translates more to “comes with”. The word “有/yǒu” translates to “to have” but it is used a lot more liberally in Chinese, sometimes to indicate if something exists, or even if something happened or not.
Finally, “吗/ma” is a very common question particle in chinese. Being a tonal language, one doesn’t raise their voice to indicate a question; there are other indicators. “吗/ma”, as it was described to me, is usually placed at the end of questions that will have a yes/no response.
That’s it, for now. I’m mostly just posting this crap to force myself to type these words enough so as to drill the concepts into my own head. If it helps someone else, then hey, that’d be super.