I’ve been trying to learn Chinese for over half a year now and, well, it’s kinda tough going. Not only do you need to learn a whole new way of speaking, but you also need to learn two written languages: pinyin (the English transliteration of Chinese words, so you can actually read anything), and Chinese characters themselves.
The spoken language is difficult in its own right due to tones. These are like the accents found in other languages, but more complicated and unfortunately much more important – getting the wrong tone in a word can change the meaning completely, to the extent that you could call your mother a horse by using the wrong inflection.
This is further complicated by different dialects. The majority of people in China speak Mandarin, while people in the South (and most of the Hong Kong expatriates around the world) speak Cantonese. They both use the same characters, but they are pronounced very differently. Actually, that’s not entirely true – Mandarin speakers use ‘simplified Chinese characters’, while Hong Kong and Taiwan use ‘traditional characters’. Sometimes they look similar, sometimes not.
Did I mention the other half-dozen regional variations? It’s enough to cause you to weep.
As you can imagine, this makes for a daunting and frustrating experience. My hope is that the learning curve for Chinese is very steep to begin with, but then flattens out – the language itself has very little grammar. Contrast this to French where it’s relatively easy to get into, but quickly becomes difficult if you want to master the grammar. That’s my theory anyway.
I came across a rather nice site called Authentic Asian. This website attempts to explain the background behind a lot of Asian culture, particularly that of the Chinese. So far it’s taken several Chinese characters and split them apart, with information on how the character evolved and how it found its place in history. Fascinating stuff, and it certainly makes it easier to learn a character when it’s more than just a collection of random lines.
I also recently finished reading Fortress Besieged, a book claimed to be one of the best examples of modern Chinese literature. It’s based in and around the time of the Japanese occupation of China and follows the somewhat comical adventures of a student freshly returned from Europe. It’s surprisingly easy to read, and it was very interesting to see that important period of Chinese history when it moved from the traditional to modern. It’s also fun to see what the Chinese thought of the west at the time.
In a novel set in middle-class Chinese society on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, Fang Hung Chien obtains a teaching position, using a degree from a fake American university, in a Chinese university – where the pseudo-intellectuals become the butt of the author’s satire.
Good stuff.