Challenges of learning Chinese in China

Our intern Dave is experiencing some struggles with picking up the finer points of the Chinese language – but every day brings a learning curve!

I have no idea what anyone is saying here at any given time. It is very frustrating. I have sat down with books and CDs and phrasebooks and guides and apps and all kinds of things. None of them are working I mean…I haven’t opened them, read them, listened to them or anything but I kinda feel like some of the Chinese should just go into my brain through osmosis. I have been here for almost two months and Benny Lewis ‘The Irish Polyglot’ wrote a book called Fluent in three months and has a blog by the same name, unfortunately I forgot to take any of his advice, instead I just regurgitate his advice to other people to allow me to look smart.

That was the first month basically, since then I have been listening to a collection of CDs on my phone on every 45 minute bus ride to the nearest subway, which then takes me another 40 minutes to get to my destination via a Starbucks more often than id like to admit. One of the most exhilarating things I have experienced is walking up to a street vendor and saying 一瓶水 and then receiving what I intended without question. The hardest part of learning Chinese is that you have to learn the sounds of the characters which mean something, but also lots of other things. Each character is a sound and also a word, but just because a word has that sound or word in it, doesn’t mean it has anything to do with that. Also because a character has a character from another character in it doesn’t mean that has any relevance either. It can be pretty confusing sometimes.

Some people find it very easy and not at all embarrassing to say the same thing over and over again to a confused face until they pull out the plastic sheet with the pictures of the burgers on it. I am trying to overcome the unbearable shame this makes me feel by learning Chinese.

The worst thing I’ve found myself doing is actually just accepting the language as white noise. It is an awesome language and after you get through the teething issues at the start is actually appallingly simple so though you may be coming to China for a small period of time, I severely suggest you have a look over some literature on how to speak Mandarin. Even just so you can say ‘If you put any more bloody coriander in these dumplings I am going to be very sick on your floor.’