'Your pronunciation is causing me physical and/or mental suffering'

And so goes the latest gory indictment of my less than stellar progression in Chinese, the world's most traumatised and traumatising language. This confidence-imbibing remark was made to me this morning by one of my teachers at the university. In fairness, she does have a point: my pronunciation is dreadful. I just have to admire the frankness.


The new term started last week. I'm in what's meant to be the 'Upper Intermediate' class, which has about 11 students - half are Koreans, two Japanese, a Thai and an Aussie. It's not bad, but with the teaching more or less remaining as it is, it remains an ineffective way of learning language. While I plan to be in China for 2008, I doubt it will be at a formal institution like this. Whichever way you look at it, and I've looked at it every convievable way, Chinese is an absolute stinker of a language.



Yesterday I spent 3 hours writing out characters over and over again. And the really fun thing about this is, is it 24 hours later I've completely forgotten most of them, so you have to do it again. And again. And again. Until 2 weeks later I test myself again and can write it. A lot of the words I'm learning now are ones I haven't had an opportunity to speak, so I'm learning the language backwards. If you think about how you learnt English, you first listen to it, then say it, then read and write it. I'm doing it the other way round here, and the ineffectiveness is all too visible. I've also discovered the more I know, the more I realise I don't know. So heart-warming.



Learning Chinese for me is a matter of peaks and troughs. Sometimes I feel really good about it, my progress is visible, I can talk to people without constantly saying 'shenme' (what?). Then I have a few days of not thinking much in particular, then a few days of not understanding anything, pronouncing my Chinese name incorrectly, forgetting how to write my name, holding the pen upside down, etc. The my mood goes back up again, and so on.

I can't say I have a huge number of Chinese friends - I have plenty of people's phone numbers, but only a few I see regularly. I discovered Chinese people have many friends, but few friendships i.e., they know lots of people, but have very few really good friends. I'm kind of the same here. I go to a bar and some small restuarants near my flat quite often, to eat, drink and 'blow the cow' (a Chinese phrase meaning 'hang out and chat') (or so I'm told). Not speaking enough is the one major problem I face on a daily basis. However, I've been here over 6 months, and the difference is huge. As the final line of the Chinese national anthem goes, 'qian jin!' (surge ahead!)