Thinking back to the first weeks and even months of living in China, anytime someone would speak to me I would have a mini panic attack. Coming with the notion that "Chinese" is the hardest language in the world to learn meant I was in quite a daunting situation. Being a tonal language, the sounds were just so foreign and with having some knowledge of French and Spanish (so easy, right?), Mandarin just seemed impossible. I quickly learned the basics: greetings, "thanks", "yes" and "no", "this" and "that", and numbers. Actually, one of my first phrases was
ting bu dong - a very helpful "I don't understand". Unfortunately, this hasn't been the easy "one answer fits all" solution I was hoping for. Unbeknownst to me,
ting bu dong roughly translates to "I don't understand what I'm hearing." China is made up of many cultures and peoples all with their own spoken language. They have been united, however, under a shared written language. That's right. They can speak and not understand each other but write out some characters and they're all on the same page. So, they have found that if someone claims to "not know what they are hearing" a handy solution is to write the characters. Except this didn't work on me. I was still lost. And even more confused that they wouldn't leave me alone after I already said "I don't understand!!" They will kindly speak more slowly and enunciated but it really doesn't help when I still have no clue what they are saying to me. It's rather humorous and usually ends in us sharing a laugh, me apologizing and them walking away shaking their head. Pretty scary situations for this new expat. ;)
After a couple of months I felt Chinese (ok, technically it's Mandarin, but everyone here just says "Chinese") was starting to sound familiar. I could catch some words and tones and felt encouraged by the few phrases I was learning to recognize - the common ones we are asked such as, where are you from and how old are you (to the kids only - ha!!) - and how to answer them appropriately. This made simple exchanges a fun challenge.
With not having taken any official Chinese lessons, I now feel quite confident to go shopping in the markets (and haggle!!) and tell a taxi driver how to get to where I want to go. I can get by for the most part. Knowing the numbers has been probably the biggest benefit as I do about 50% of my shopping in markets or little "hole in the wall" shops where it's cash only. I still have encounters where I don't understand but I have found that faking it and speaking in English even if they are speaking in Chinese will do the trick about half the time. I feel my understanding is far above my speaking abilities, be it ever so minimal. I have found the Chinese people to be very gracious and a little effort goes a long way with them. We are certainly getting used to talking with strangers on a regular basis and doing a lot of laughing over our inability to communicate, not to mention our use of charades. :) I truly believe that without my kids it would be a different story, they are totally drawn to these little blondies and then initiate conversation.
I would love to learn more Chinese and become proficient at it, mostly to eavesdrop and surprise those who don't think I understand, but sadly, it is not high enough on my priority list these days to accomplish. So I will continue with what I've got and hope to pick up a bit more along the way.
Written by Brenda
