Learning Chinese

Learning Chinese in China is like building a house. You're pretty much stuck until you learn to recognize the tools, and how to use them. Once you know how to swing the hammer, you're getting somewhere...then it's the saw, and all of a sudden you can cut a board and stick it to something. The problem with Chinese: there are thousands of tools they like to call characters and grammar patterns, and you're not going anywhere until you can use a lot of them. Maybe you know what a nail looks like, and how to drive the truck, but they're pretty much unrelated, and you aren't going to get the house built driving a truck and holding a nail.

The toughest part about learning Chinese is that there are so many tools. No matter how long you're building, every day you're going to have to learn how to use a new one. Using them really isn't that tough. Everything's nice and simple; it's just that it's...everything. With other languages, I imagine that the tools are a bit more complex. They have more facets, more gadgets and doo-dads. Maybe it takes a little longer to get familiar with each grammatical device. But then, once you've got it figured out, you're off and running. You can use the one tool to do all kinds of things. The grammatical devices of Chinese are a little...different. Aside: I'm not a linguistics expert, and I don't actually know the definition of a grammatical device. All of you up and coming publishers out there, be kind. They don't use verb conjugations, for instance. The phrase we hear is "grammar pattern". What that means is, if you want to say this, then you just put these characters together in this order and you're set. "If you want to say 'I haven't done [verb] for [amount of time]' then you just put these characters around the desired verb and amount of time". Simple right? It really is. But it just keeps coming, and the different patterns don't have a predictable relationship. They're related enough to help you remember them, but not related enough to help you predict new ones. Result: more exhausting blind memorization. Memorization is not that tough by itself, but then water won't hurt you either until you try to drink from Niagra Falls*.

Learning Chinese in China is also like hiking with the Perkins: exhausting and frustrating at first, but eventually rewarding and eye-opening. This analogy is a little confusing, so let me clarify: climbing the mountain is learning Chinese, and the Perkins are China, forcing you to do it at the most intense pace your body can handle. I remember the Mount Stuart hike well. The trail on the valley floor was nice and flat...America. Then, it veered sharply left into a steep vertical slope, and continued straight to the top of the mountain...China + language pledge. There was no way to stop and rest, because the sun was rising and we'd get too hot if we hiked in direct sunlight. Better to go nice and fast without stopping to be more comfortable. Or, in China, no rests because of the language pledge, never mind that my toilet's broken and I don't know how to tell the lady at the desk "it won't flush my turd!"

So I'm not very good at explaining what its like to learn Chinese. Maybe sinking into unusual, disjointed metaphor is not the best way to go about it. Maybe it's just not that easy to explain. Right now, I'm just relieved because I think the slope on the mountain is getting a little more reasonable. After a month plus here at HIT's Dorm 6, I'm starting to see a light. Even though I know it's not the end of the tunnel...it's something. The tools are finally starting to work together in a way that's not totally clumsy and useless.

Progress is a great motivator. Maybe I'm just imagining the light, but I do feel buoyed by the signs I see of how far I've come. I remember in Beijing that first night, we went out to eat at a kabob stand. One of the other students effortlessly asked the vendor how many kabobs would feed the four of us, what kind of meat they were, how much they would cost. I was in awe of the fluidity and confidence in the simple exchange. Last night I went alone to a restaraunt, asked the waiter for something vegetarian without too much oil (menus are another story), and was rewarded with a nice plate of fried vegetables and tasty light dressing. It's not the ultimate expression of language fluency, but that's progress I can taste.

*Thank you William for the firehose metaphor, which morphed and became Niagra Falls in my head before spilling out in this blog entry.