Yesterday I started taking a beginning Chinese class. I’d forgotten how much better I liked my life without anyone saying “no, no, is zh not zh“. At least the prof doesn’t giggle when she says it.
She has the same frustrations as I do when trying to teach basics in a native language. I am completely baffled when my English students, here or in China, can’t identify a verb. It’s the word that’s doing something, how could I possibly make this more clear? I think my Chinese teacher feels the same way. There are four tones, except when there are five, how could I possibly make this more clear?
Our text seems to be well-organized, and I’m excited about having classmates on my level. But I still have such basic questions about Mandarin. For example, some Chinese nouns need zi on the end but it doesn’t have a meaning but you can’t leave it off. Or certain word order seems to change the tones (or I’m just saying ti wrong, which is probably just as likely) and I don’t know how that works. I think I really want to learn Chinese in a Westernly logical way.
(Please try to keep the ???? emails and comments to a minimum this time, ok?)
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