I think for most foreigners trying to learn a language that is different than their own, we struggle with trying to speak like a native in the beginning only to imitate someone who may be trying too hard. I remember decades ago when I first started learning Chinese, my instructor was a woman and in my Western way of thinking, I was afraid that if I studied too long with her, that I might speak Chinese like a woman instead of like a Chinese man. How silly I was for thinking like that, looking back in hindsight.
Something as simple as getting the word order correct in Chinese proved to be something that many of us get wrong, without really thinking about it. When you’re thinking in your native language, its very easy to embed your native language's grammar upon the language you’re trying to learn, rather than just accepting what seems unconventional as conventional.
For example, In Chinese Culture, the family name or last name comes first, showing reverence and respect for the family. Even when you address someone with a title or honorific in Chinese, the tendency is to put the title or honorific before the person’s name, rather than the proper way in Chinese and that is after the person’s name, such as Lee Jin Professor or Lee Jin Laoshi. Another example is Ms. Wei Jian or Wei Jian Xiao Jie.
When I’m living in East Asia and South East Asia, I am always amazed at how much I’m understood and misunderstood when I spoke Chinese. When I’m in Beijing or Shanghai, I’m mostly understood, but when I’m in Kuming or Hong Kong in the South, I’m mostly misunderstood.
Most of the Chinese that I’m in the company of here when I visit the United States predominately come from Southern China, so I’m often misunderstood, except of course when I encounter someone from Fujian Province. I noticed that a fair number of folks that run the Chinese Buffets here in America are from Fujian Province.
I studied Chinese (Mandarin) for more than six years in Boston and got to practice it in the local Chinatown where the majority of people spoke Cantonese. You can imagine how that went over. My Chinese was enough to get a decent meal, but because Mandarin and Cantonese when spoken is so very different, the meals I got were unusual and exciting if not expensive sometimes. Most of the time, I didn’t know what I was eating, so long as it was warm and not moving on the plate or in the bowl.
That experience in the local Chinatowns of Boston and New York, taught me to pay more attention in class and listen more intently when my Taiwanese girlfriend at the time instructed me to the point of frustration to pay more attention. I think if China hadn’t fired those missiles from their mainland over Quemoy, off the Taiwan Straits in the Spring of 1996, she and I would still be together. She went home rather abruptly to Taiwan, fearing for her family there during this missile crisis and the presidential elections run-up, effectively ending my one-on-one mentoring in Chinese.
I moved to Hong Kong for awhile, I don’t know why exactly, but maybe it was to be close to my girlfriend, after all, she never told me that we were breaking up, only that she had to go back to Taiwan in a hurry, because of the things China was doing. I lived in the Wan Chai and Central area of Hong Kong and later I moved to Kowloon and the Mid-Level area near University of Hong Kong Library Annex, whittling my time away reading Chinese Philosophy and looking for the next business venture.
The days languished into weeks and the weeks into months and I found myself learning less and less Mandarin Chinese and more and more British English and Cantonese. I finally grew to accept the fact that my girlfriend was no longer my girlfriend and that I had to move on with my life. Weeks later I moved to the Philippines to settle in the Makati City area near Pasig River.
My Chinese language lessons stopped for a while when I lost my Taiwanese girlfriend, so I begun concentrating on the languages around me in the Manila area and they were Tagalog and Iloconos. I approached my Tagalog lessons half-halfheartedly, but eventually learned enough to get around and enjoy my stay in the Philippines until one day, I heard that my father wasn’t well and that I should come at once to the States.
Back in the Southern United States, life seemed amazingly boring compared to the life in Asia. I missed the daily haggling over prices in an attempt to get a bargain and here in the States, pretty much everything was fixed priced and bargaining was discouraged or non-existence in most places. Also, I missed the people of Asia, where there wasn't even a hint of privacy because you’re always surrounded by so many people eeking out a living for themselves. I spent my time wrestling with my father’s condition, Alzheimer and while in the States, flunked my flight physical. The horrors of my service in the Army had finally caught up with me. I had Agent Orange Related-cancers, compliments of my time in the military during the Vietnam Conflict Era. Remember, Congress never declared the whole Vietnam debacle a war, so benefits were limited if any, when it was all over. It’s amazing how dealing with the Veteran’s Affairs Office is more combative than any war I could have fought.
On a good day, when the 48 pills and 5 syringe injections that I take each day, permit me to make sense of what’s going on around me, I wrestle with my memory trying not to lose myself. My Chinese sounds really strange now that I’m back in the States for a few months. Most of the people that I meet that speak Chinese, speak Fujian, which is in Southern China, but close to the language of Taiwan. Taiwan has lots of Fujian people and ancestors, so it’s no surprise it’s easy for me to understand, remember my first tutor and ex-girlfriend was from Taiwan?
After so many decades, I’m fluent in eight local Chinese languages and of course the “People’s Language,” Mandarin. For those of you learning Chinese for the first time, get yourself a Chinese girlfriend or if that isn’t possible, a good text book such as “Gwoyeu Romatzyh,” which will put the Chinese characters into a Romanticized character that most English speakers are accustomed to. “Gwoyeu Romatzyh” is the English-character equivalent to Pinyin in the West.
For multimedia aids, I recommend the Paul Pimsleur Audio lessons in Chinese and the Rosetta Stone Series in Chinese. The Pimsleur Audio Lessons are affordable for most, but many will find the Rosetta Stone Video Chinese Series, very expensive. Both are worth the price if you’re serious about learning Chinese, but can’t hire a Chinese teacher or visit a Chinese speaking country right away, but still want to learn Chinese. My advice for beginners of Chinese is don’t get so hung up on the tones when you start out, it will only frustrate you and discourage you from learning Chinese. In time, you’ll get used to the correct way of pronouncing familiar gestures and before you know it, you’ll be speaking very good Chinese. Practice makes it easier of course, especially if you can practice several times a week and as always, I believe that boots on the ground, arriving in China, Taiwan, Singapore or a large Chinatown, is the best way to learn to speak Chinese. Best wishes and enjoy the Chinese culture.
