Eric's Beijing Diary

Showed an interesting video to some friends today about some missionaries doing work among a tribal group on an island in Indonesia. One thing that really amazed me about this story is the amount of work the missionaries had to do just to be able to communicate. They spent four full years living among these people just to learn their language. Gives me hope when I think of how long I have been studying Mandarin, and how little progress I have made. Sometimes I wish I could spend even two years studying language full time, but I have never been able to do it. If you are struggling with a foreign language right now, and you want to put the matter in perspective, I do recommend this video. It is called, "The Taliabo Story."

It is just about exactly five years ago, now, that I first began to study Mandarin. I took my first trip to China in the fall of 2001. I traveled to Yunnan Province to participate in a charity project at a small village elementary school among the Naxi minority. I was preparing then to move to China, but didn't know exactly where. The trip to a remote village was good for me, because absolutely no one (except our interpreters) spoke English. There is nothing like linguistic isolation to underscore the importance of getting down to the business of learning language. When I got back to the States, I decided that I had better start studying Chinese, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. I found my first tutor quite by accident. I was doing my laundry one day in the laundry area of my apartment, when I saw a sign on the wall that said, "I will teach your children Chinese," and gave a phone number. I called the lady and told her that my children weren't interested in learning Chinese, but I wanted to study myself.

Lili and her family were in America for a brief stay. Her husband had come to ASU on some kind of research grant, and she had assumed that she would be able to find Chinese people who would want a tutor for their kids, so she had brought along a few primary level readers. So I got my start with Chinese reading a book for little kids:

鸟叫了 (The bird sings.)

花开了 (The flower opens.)

I took it one character at a time. I pointed to the first character (鸟).

"What does this mean?"

"Bird."

Next character (叫). "What does this mean?"

"Sing, or call."

Next character (了). "How about this?"

"It doesn't mean anything."

Sure it does. Chinese characters are meaning intensive. They have a meaning."

"No, it doesn't mean anything."

"Then why don't we just get rid of it?"

"No! you must have it!"

"Well, if we need it, then what does it mean?"

"Nothing. It doesn't mean anything."

"Then I say we toss it. Chinese has lots and lots of words. One little word isn't going to make that much difference."

"Oh, no! You can't do that!"

I went to Borders, got a dictionary, and looked it up:

"Particle indicating completed action." A grammar thing. OK, I can deal with that.

But it was oh, so slow. And I got impatient. I said, "Lili, this is a cute little book. I see the picture of the rooster, and the ducks in the pond..very pretty. But...can't we go on?"

"No. You're not ready."

Now, five years later, I am still moving ever so slowly. The pace has picked up, though, and I have lots more opportunities to use what I learn. Not as much in Beijing as I would if I lived in the countryside, but certainly much more than in Arizona. The problem with learning a language is that sooner or later, you need to have experience conversing with native speakers who do not speak your language. It isn't that hard to find native speakers of Mandarin in America. But they all speak English. Any two people communicating will tend to gravitate toward the language they have in common. So you will really not get much practice speaking Mandarin with someone who speaks reasonably good English. I don't learn much Chinese from students. But I do learn a lot from kids, and from the working people I encounter in my daily life. Little by little. Bit by bit. Sometimes mountains have to be moved by the shovel full.