[Self] Speaking To Six Year Olds {Cut}
Ni hao! Wo jiao Jimushi. Wo zai ruanjian gongchengshi, zai yin hang gongzuo. Wo zai zheli gongzuo yi nian ban le, dasuan si nian hou hui Yingguo. Yinwei wo gongzuo hen mang suoyi mei you shi jian he wo de pengyou lianxi hanyu
Hello! I'm James. I work as a software engineer for a bank. I've worked here for one-and-a-half years, before that in the UK for four years intending to return to the UK in four years. Because I'm so busy at work, I don't have time to practise Chinese with my friends
Of course, writing it is relatively easy. Speaking it, and understanding it spoken, is hard - I reckon I could probably have a utterly boring conversation with a patient six year old. On a good day! Part of the difficulty is the tonality, but part of it is the very subtle differences between characters - like s, c and x, for example - which exists in English but is driven by where the character appears instead. Rebalancing my filters is proving fun :)
But being able to speak Mandarin is not my intention for learning it. What I'm really there for is understanding people who speak Mandarin - how the language frames (and constrains) their thoughts, where the subtleties occurs, and so on. That side of things is extremely interesting. For example, there is no easy way (or perhaps none simple enough to teach us yet) of expressing how one felt in the past. You can express past acts, future acts and future feelings, but not past feelings. And if you can't express it, is it something you can talk about? As I said, it is perhaps something we need to know a lot more before it is appropriate to teach us. But it is still interesting
And I'm still learning :)
Hello! I'm James. I work as a software engineer for a bank. I've worked here for one-and-a-half years, before that in the UK for four years intending to return to the UK in four years. Because I'm so busy at work, I don't have time to practise Chinese with my friends
Of course, writing it is relatively easy. Speaking it, and understanding it spoken, is hard - I reckon I could probably have a utterly boring conversation with a patient six year old. On a good day! Part of the difficulty is the tonality, but part of it is the very subtle differences between characters - like s, c and x, for example - which exists in English but is driven by where the character appears instead. Rebalancing my filters is proving fun :)
But being able to speak Mandarin is not my intention for learning it. What I'm really there for is understanding people who speak Mandarin - how the language frames (and constrains) their thoughts, where the subtleties occurs, and so on. That side of things is extremely interesting. For example, there is no easy way (or perhaps none simple enough to teach us yet) of expressing how one felt in the past. You can express past acts, future acts and future feelings, but not past feelings. And if you can't express it, is it something you can talk about? As I said, it is perhaps something we need to know a lot more before it is appropriate to teach us. But it is still interesting
And I'm still learning :)