Brings back fond memories of my early army days (1967-68) learning Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute, West Coast branch in Monterey, CA. We had classes six hours a day with a different instructor each hour, most if not all of whom were refugees who had fled the mainland during the communist takeover. They were a very mixed lot, but my favorite was a former governess from Shanghai named Lily Woo (Woo Tai Tai). She had been governess to a French diplomat’s family and spoke fluent French. Having taken a number of years of French myself in school, in my early weeks with her, reaching for something non-English, I often found myself using French instead of Chinese, at which point she would always fix me with a faux sternness, and say “Guan" (my classroom name, being close to Quinn) "GwoYu, GwoYu" (Mandarin).
Your four requirements for learning a language as a an adult miss a critical fifth: opportunity for use. I first learned German in high school 1969 -72. I worked in Germany for three months in 1985, and since then have corresponded with friends in German, joined German Saturday classes at nearby Lutheran churches, read some German nearly every day, listened to German radio first via short wave and now via podcasts, and yet my command of the language is still, fifty years later, mediocre. The missing key is the opportunity to use it regularly in conversation. I belong to a club where we speak German once a month for an hour. Compare that to Europeans that must use it daily at work or dealing with random tourists. Not only that. In Dresden earlier this week I heard teenagers exercising their English with one another. Just this evening in Prague I sat next to a Czech couple that recieved German friends at their table, and spoke in...English. We Americans have nothing that compares.
Agreed. This is an under-discussed reason for why native speakers of English tend to be monolingual. Unless we are learning Spanish or live in another country, it is almost impossible to get enough practice speaking another language to develop proficiency.
And even then we might not. I lived in Prague for four years and have lived in Switzerland for the past seven. While my friends from other European and Asian countries are all at least trilingual, my husband and I are the only native English speakers we know who learned Czech and German.
I liked your story about the Czechs and Germans speaking English as they dined together. It accords with my experience. My husband and I once attended an open rehearsal of Collegium 1704, an excellent chamber orchestra and chorus in Prague. The musicians came from Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, and Austria. They rehearsed in English.
Such a fun and fascinating article! The different languages spoken throughout China remind me of the dialects of German in Switzerland, where I live. (Interestingly, Swiss French is, with the exception of its more logical names for numbers, pretty much the same as the French spoken in France.) German-speaking Swiss will tell you that their mother tongue is their dialect, and they refer to standard German as “school German.” They all learn to speak standard German fluently (which is lucky for me, because after seven years in the country I still can’t converse in Bern Deutsch), but it will always be a second language for them. I wonder whether Chinese people will feel the same way about Beijing Chinese.
I wonder if the conception of time moving left-->right vs top-->bottom has to do with the directionality of written language. I can also imagine natural influences: waterfalls, for instance, or any dropped object starts up, ends down.
I only spent 3 weeks in China, but a little spoken Chinese helped a lot. That Sedaris excerpt is perhaps my favorite and immediately recognizable for anyone who has tried to explain something in a foreign language!
Not to oversimplify, but Chinese was traditionally written vertically, so it makes sense that temporal progression would be conceptualized as movement from higher to lower, without the value judgement implied in Western culture. The author’s example of the vertical sundial is an interesting corroboration of this idea.
I wonder how learning to read and understand music compares to learning a new language. After retirement I started to take voice lessons and sing in a choir. These things were followed by learning to read music, ear training and singing in the chorus of an opera company. It’s been 5 years and I understand what is expected even if the timing, pitch and octave aren’t always right.
Great piece, you should be very proud! I tried to learn Vietnamese, but the tonal nature of it was too difficult for me to grasp. Tying to "learn" Korean now, a language my mother speaks, but she only taught me fragments of, so while I excel at Duolingo, I'm at the plateau you speak of where I can only get bits of K-dramas, but I need to start conversing with more native speakers. You have me motivated to take it to the next level!
I have a friend (native Russian speaker, but also speaks English and other languages) who has lived in Vietnam for 10 years, has been trying very hard to learn Vietnamese, and is married to someone who is Vietnamese (who is a Vietnamese tutor for foreigners!)… and yet still only has a B1 level at most. He said it’s insanely challenging!
Another issue he mentioned is that the dialects in the north and the south are quite different, and it can be hard to find materials to help you with all of them so that you can understand everyone.
Can I comment if I am not a paying subscriber? (I don't have enough money to pay my electric bill and home owners insurance, which have tripled).
in 1973 I was one of 3 people on a business trip to PRC. The reason was to get in on the huge market PRC represented. It was not that long after Nixon had gone there, and everyone was intrigued and wanted to go. The product was offshore oil drilling equipment (Baker Oil Tools. The other two people were an international lawyer and his client the owner of Baker Oil tools.
We spend 48 days in the country. I had no language at all, and ended up translating into Spanish the man in the Tourist Office who miraculously had learned Chinese flavored Spanish, was attempting to process our papers at 11 pm on our arrival. We were kept in Guangzhou (for the wai guo ren). We were then subjected to a rating system where we sat at a card table with two Chinese officials at the Trade show, while they recited platitudes to us in English, and we responded in kind ("Yours is a very great country." Your country is very great, too" "we learn from each other" "Self reliance is important" etc). They decided we had something they were interested in (information about technology of offshore oil drilling) and that were probably harmless otherwise. :-)
It culminated with our being the only Americans promoted to Peking -- flew on a Russian jet seated next to a small Chinese man literally green with terror -- he had never flown before). Then two weeks of 9 to 4 talks seated opposite 13 of of the top oil engineers (all men, with one lone woman interpreter going non stop without relief for the entire session, about offshore oil drilling questions asked by the Chinese, and the Baker oil owner racing back to call his company and find out the answers to the completely technical, very detailed queries the Chinese pumped him for. He ended up getting a $1M deal at the end of the visit.
A lot more to tell, but will switch to the language. I studied afterward at U of Pa a 2 year language course taught by Carma Hinton (audited) who was born and raised in PrC, daughter of Bill Hinton, author of Fanshen; Carma coule barely speak English, but her Peking dialect was beautiful.
Since then, worked on New China Magazine as editor and writer, and have beeen studying Mandarin by listening over and over to a half hour interview by Fred Engst, Carma's cousin, whom I met as a young arrival in Philadelphia (later returned to PRC and is still (I think) a professor at Beijing University). I have found that repeated listening to the same tape, .is at first impossible to understand, then gradually the patterns and rhythms become familiar, and
the meanings poke through little by little. . Not sure if this is a "good" way to study Chinese, but it seems to work so far for me.
Congratulations on your progress, and keep at it. I wanted to underline your last point, #18, especially. I teach at a small college that is no longer able to offer much at all in the way of languages. So although I'm a political theorist, a few years back I introduced a course that lets students study a language mostly independently, with some oversight by me, using online platforms like Duolingo. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. But I always tell the students that learning a foreign language is the only thing they can do that suddenly doubles the amount of cultural content available to them--books, newspapers, websites, music, movies, friendships, etc. I don't think you can learn anything else with a comparable pay-off.
Fantastic piece. I’d add that in my opinion not being able to read a language (e.g., due to a different alphabet) makes it much more difficult to learn how to speak it. The lack of vocabulary reinforcement gained via reading is detrimental.
This is an absorbing and perceptive article about the joys, frustrations, and fascination of learning Mandarin.
An English speaking American with minimal foreign language interest or ability-despite having suffered throughs years and years of Latin and French in primary and high school-I was practically struck dumb by my very first Mandarin lesson in college.
There is no grammar in this language! Hallelujah!
I went on to move to Taiwan for language lessons, marry my Mandarin instructor, and launch a 40 year career in international trade, helped every step of the way by my ( meager) ability to make myself understood in written and spoken Chinese.
When Coca-Cola first started selling Coke in China, they had to come up with the Chinese characters that sounded as close as possible to "KOH-kuh-KOH-luh", while meaning something positive and meaningful.
From what I understand, the characters that Coke picked mean "tastes good, tastes happy". But a slight variation in the pronunciation leads to weird meanings, such as "bite the wax tadpole".
Chinese often learn lots of English in school. So they are good in a local language, Mandarin, and English. I've met Chinese who were also very fluent in Russian, from before the split up, and also German as they were assigned to East Germany. English though is now the most useful.
Everyone should try to learn Mandarin. It's a very sensible language. Learning to write also helps to understand the basics. I had never studied anything but learning just a little bit was a big help.
Yascha I was very excited to hear you were in China! I did a couple of art residencies there 10 years ago. I still can't explain what got me so incredibly hooked on the country, culture, trying to learn the language etc except I just felt stimulated by everything but also completely bemused by so many things that happened and that I saw. I never really know how to begin explaining China to anyone! Anyway there is this place near Xiamen (where I stayed) called Gulangyu. Now I don't know where you went when you visited but it's not really a Western tourist destination but it IS a huge tourist destination for Chinese people and I think it is one of the most fascinating places on earth. This little island was once the richest square mile of China due to the foreign residents who made it their home after the first opium war. Anyway you can just Google it...I'd really recommend visiting next time you go!
Ich erinnere mich an einen etwa zwölfjährigen, deutschsprechenden Knaben, der mit seinen Eltern in eine kleine toscanische Stadt gereist war und dort einen Italienischkurs besuchte, weil seine Mutter das für eine gute Idee gehalten hatte. In der Sprachschule, in der natürlich nur ältere Semester eingeschrieben waren, lief der Junge nur so irgendwie am Rande mit. Nach etwa vier Tagen, weil er Fußball liebte und ein für ihn wichtiges Spiel im Fernsehen lief, machte er sich abends selbständig auf den Weg in eine Bar, wo ein Fernseher das Spiel übertrug. Er war dort natürlich nicht der einzige sehr minderjährige Zuschauer. Die Eltern waren unbesorgt ihn gehen zu lassen. Sie waren ein wenig unruhig als der Junge, obwohl das Spiel schon längst zu Ende war, immer noch nicht zuhause erschien. Gerade als sie sich auf den Weg machen wollten, um ihn von der Bar abzuholen, kam er ihnen begeistert entgegen. Begeistert nicht etwa, weil seine Mannschaft gewonnen hatte, sondern, weil er dort, inmitten italienisch sprechender Menschen, die plötzliche Gewissheit erlebte, dass er diese Sprache plötzlich verstehen und sprechen konnte, dass er Teil einer neuen Gemeinschaft geworden war. Mich hat das spontane neue Lebensgefühl dieses Knaben mit großem Neid erfüllt. Ich habe nämlich erfahren, dass es ganz offensichtlich auch eine Frage der Begabung, eine Frage der Selbstsicherheit und wirklich nicht zuletzt eine Frage einer sympathisierenden (liebenden) Umgebung ist, die das Erlernen einer neuen Sprache begünstigen.
Brings back fond memories of my early army days (1967-68) learning Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute, West Coast branch in Monterey, CA. We had classes six hours a day with a different instructor each hour, most if not all of whom were refugees who had fled the mainland during the communist takeover. They were a very mixed lot, but my favorite was a former governess from Shanghai named Lily Woo (Woo Tai Tai). She had been governess to a French diplomat’s family and spoke fluent French. Having taken a number of years of French myself in school, in my early weeks with her, reaching for something non-English, I often found myself using French instead of Chinese, at which point she would always fix me with a faux sternness, and say “Guan" (my classroom name, being close to Quinn) "GwoYu, GwoYu" (Mandarin).
Your four requirements for learning a language as a an adult miss a critical fifth: opportunity for use. I first learned German in high school 1969 -72. I worked in Germany for three months in 1985, and since then have corresponded with friends in German, joined German Saturday classes at nearby Lutheran churches, read some German nearly every day, listened to German radio first via short wave and now via podcasts, and yet my command of the language is still, fifty years later, mediocre. The missing key is the opportunity to use it regularly in conversation. I belong to a club where we speak German once a month for an hour. Compare that to Europeans that must use it daily at work or dealing with random tourists. Not only that. In Dresden earlier this week I heard teenagers exercising their English with one another. Just this evening in Prague I sat next to a Czech couple that recieved German friends at their table, and spoke in...English. We Americans have nothing that compares.
Agreed. This is an under-discussed reason for why native speakers of English tend to be monolingual. Unless we are learning Spanish or live in another country, it is almost impossible to get enough practice speaking another language to develop proficiency.
And even then we might not. I lived in Prague for four years and have lived in Switzerland for the past seven. While my friends from other European and Asian countries are all at least trilingual, my husband and I are the only native English speakers we know who learned Czech and German.
I liked your story about the Czechs and Germans speaking English as they dined together. It accords with my experience. My husband and I once attended an open rehearsal of Collegium 1704, an excellent chamber orchestra and chorus in Prague. The musicians came from Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, and Austria. They rehearsed in English.
Such a fun and fascinating article! The different languages spoken throughout China remind me of the dialects of German in Switzerland, where I live. (Interestingly, Swiss French is, with the exception of its more logical names for numbers, pretty much the same as the French spoken in France.) German-speaking Swiss will tell you that their mother tongue is their dialect, and they refer to standard German as “school German.” They all learn to speak standard German fluently (which is lucky for me, because after seven years in the country I still can’t converse in Bern Deutsch), but it will always be a second language for them. I wonder whether Chinese people will feel the same way about Beijing Chinese.
Gruessech. ; )
Gleichfalls!
I wonder if the conception of time moving left-->right vs top-->bottom has to do with the directionality of written language. I can also imagine natural influences: waterfalls, for instance, or any dropped object starts up, ends down.
I only spent 3 weeks in China, but a little spoken Chinese helped a lot. That Sedaris excerpt is perhaps my favorite and immediately recognizable for anyone who has tried to explain something in a foreign language!
Not to oversimplify, but Chinese was traditionally written vertically, so it makes sense that temporal progression would be conceptualized as movement from higher to lower, without the value judgement implied in Western culture. The author’s example of the vertical sundial is an interesting corroboration of this idea.
I wonder how learning to read and understand music compares to learning a new language. After retirement I started to take voice lessons and sing in a choir. These things were followed by learning to read music, ear training and singing in the chorus of an opera company. It’s been 5 years and I understand what is expected even if the timing, pitch and octave aren’t always right.
Great piece, you should be very proud! I tried to learn Vietnamese, but the tonal nature of it was too difficult for me to grasp. Tying to "learn" Korean now, a language my mother speaks, but she only taught me fragments of, so while I excel at Duolingo, I'm at the plateau you speak of where I can only get bits of K-dramas, but I need to start conversing with more native speakers. You have me motivated to take it to the next level!
I have a friend (native Russian speaker, but also speaks English and other languages) who has lived in Vietnam for 10 years, has been trying very hard to learn Vietnamese, and is married to someone who is Vietnamese (who is a Vietnamese tutor for foreigners!)… and yet still only has a B1 level at most. He said it’s insanely challenging!
Another issue he mentioned is that the dialects in the north and the south are quite different, and it can be hard to find materials to help you with all of them so that you can understand everyone.
Can I comment if I am not a paying subscriber? (I don't have enough money to pay my electric bill and home owners insurance, which have tripled).
in 1973 I was one of 3 people on a business trip to PRC. The reason was to get in on the huge market PRC represented. It was not that long after Nixon had gone there, and everyone was intrigued and wanted to go. The product was offshore oil drilling equipment (Baker Oil Tools. The other two people were an international lawyer and his client the owner of Baker Oil tools.
We spend 48 days in the country. I had no language at all, and ended up translating into Spanish the man in the Tourist Office who miraculously had learned Chinese flavored Spanish, was attempting to process our papers at 11 pm on our arrival. We were kept in Guangzhou (for the wai guo ren). We were then subjected to a rating system where we sat at a card table with two Chinese officials at the Trade show, while they recited platitudes to us in English, and we responded in kind ("Yours is a very great country." Your country is very great, too" "we learn from each other" "Self reliance is important" etc). They decided we had something they were interested in (information about technology of offshore oil drilling) and that were probably harmless otherwise. :-)
It culminated with our being the only Americans promoted to Peking -- flew on a Russian jet seated next to a small Chinese man literally green with terror -- he had never flown before). Then two weeks of 9 to 4 talks seated opposite 13 of of the top oil engineers (all men, with one lone woman interpreter going non stop without relief for the entire session, about offshore oil drilling questions asked by the Chinese, and the Baker oil owner racing back to call his company and find out the answers to the completely technical, very detailed queries the Chinese pumped him for. He ended up getting a $1M deal at the end of the visit.
A lot more to tell, but will switch to the language. I studied afterward at U of Pa a 2 year language course taught by Carma Hinton (audited) who was born and raised in PrC, daughter of Bill Hinton, author of Fanshen; Carma coule barely speak English, but her Peking dialect was beautiful.
Since then, worked on New China Magazine as editor and writer, and have beeen studying Mandarin by listening over and over to a half hour interview by Fred Engst, Carma's cousin, whom I met as a young arrival in Philadelphia (later returned to PRC and is still (I think) a professor at Beijing University). I have found that repeated listening to the same tape, .is at first impossible to understand, then gradually the patterns and rhythms become familiar, and
the meanings poke through little by little. . Not sure if this is a "good" way to study Chinese, but it seems to work so far for me.
Really liked your article..
Kate Delano-Condax Decker
Congratulations on your progress, and keep at it. I wanted to underline your last point, #18, especially. I teach at a small college that is no longer able to offer much at all in the way of languages. So although I'm a political theorist, a few years back I introduced a course that lets students study a language mostly independently, with some oversight by me, using online platforms like Duolingo. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. But I always tell the students that learning a foreign language is the only thing they can do that suddenly doubles the amount of cultural content available to them--books, newspapers, websites, music, movies, friendships, etc. I don't think you can learn anything else with a comparable pay-off.
Fantastic piece. I’d add that in my opinion not being able to read a language (e.g., due to a different alphabet) makes it much more difficult to learn how to speak it. The lack of vocabulary reinforcement gained via reading is detrimental.
加油！
not the easiest project to embark upon
This is an absorbing and perceptive article about the joys, frustrations, and fascination of learning Mandarin.
An English speaking American with minimal foreign language interest or ability-despite having suffered throughs years and years of Latin and French in primary and high school-I was practically struck dumb by my very first Mandarin lesson in college.
There is no grammar in this language! Hallelujah!
I went on to move to Taiwan for language lessons, marry my Mandarin instructor, and launch a 40 year career in international trade, helped every step of the way by my ( meager) ability to make myself understood in written and spoken Chinese.
Very, very well said!
Subscribed!
Joe Rousmaniere, New York City.
When Coca-Cola first started selling Coke in China, they had to come up with the Chinese characters that sounded as close as possible to "KOH-kuh-KOH-luh", while meaning something positive and meaningful.
From what I understand, the characters that Coke picked mean "tastes good, tastes happy". But a slight variation in the pronunciation leads to weird meanings, such as "bite the wax tadpole".
Chinese often learn lots of English in school. So they are good in a local language, Mandarin, and English. I've met Chinese who were also very fluent in Russian, from before the split up, and also German as they were assigned to East Germany. English though is now the most useful.
Everyone should try to learn Mandarin. It's a very sensible language. Learning to write also helps to understand the basics. I had never studied anything but learning just a little bit was a big help.
Yascha I was very excited to hear you were in China! I did a couple of art residencies there 10 years ago. I still can't explain what got me so incredibly hooked on the country, culture, trying to learn the language etc except I just felt stimulated by everything but also completely bemused by so many things that happened and that I saw. I never really know how to begin explaining China to anyone! Anyway there is this place near Xiamen (where I stayed) called Gulangyu. Now I don't know where you went when you visited but it's not really a Western tourist destination but it IS a huge tourist destination for Chinese people and I think it is one of the most fascinating places on earth. This little island was once the richest square mile of China due to the foreign residents who made it their home after the first opium war. Anyway you can just Google it...I'd really recommend visiting next time you go!
Ich erinnere mich an einen etwa zwölfjährigen, deutschsprechenden Knaben, der mit seinen Eltern in eine kleine toscanische Stadt gereist war und dort einen Italienischkurs besuchte, weil seine Mutter das für eine gute Idee gehalten hatte. In der Sprachschule, in der natürlich nur ältere Semester eingeschrieben waren, lief der Junge nur so irgendwie am Rande mit. Nach etwa vier Tagen, weil er Fußball liebte und ein für ihn wichtiges Spiel im Fernsehen lief, machte er sich abends selbständig auf den Weg in eine Bar, wo ein Fernseher das Spiel übertrug. Er war dort natürlich nicht der einzige sehr minderjährige Zuschauer. Die Eltern waren unbesorgt ihn gehen zu lassen. Sie waren ein wenig unruhig als der Junge, obwohl das Spiel schon längst zu Ende war, immer noch nicht zuhause erschien. Gerade als sie sich auf den Weg machen wollten, um ihn von der Bar abzuholen, kam er ihnen begeistert entgegen. Begeistert nicht etwa, weil seine Mannschaft gewonnen hatte, sondern, weil er dort, inmitten italienisch sprechender Menschen, die plötzliche Gewissheit erlebte, dass er diese Sprache plötzlich verstehen und sprechen konnte, dass er Teil einer neuen Gemeinschaft geworden war. Mich hat das spontane neue Lebensgefühl dieses Knaben mit großem Neid erfüllt. Ich habe nämlich erfahren, dass es ganz offensichtlich auch eine Frage der Begabung, eine Frage der Selbstsicherheit und wirklich nicht zuletzt eine Frage einer sympathisierenden (liebenden) Umgebung ist, die das Erlernen einer neuen Sprache begünstigen.
As my first Chinese language teacher whispered to me decades ago, “the first ten years are the hardest.”