Learning Chinese

This is part of my study desk. This is where I have my Chinese lessons and do my study. Chinese is a very difficult language (for me) to learn. From the top left.. You can see the small Chinese/English dictionary. Then the small laminated cards I make to try to remember the Chinese characters. I carry them and try to practice on busses and taxis. My electronic translator, my text book and my writing pad where I write the characters at least 50 times each.

Orally... Chinese all has to do with the way you say each word. There are 5 tones for almost every syllable. For instance, just the simple word "ma".. if you use the wrong intonation when you say that word in a sentence, it can mean the difference between talking about someone's mother, or their horse. It can mean the difference between telling someone you want to buy something.. or sell something.

Written Chinese it is even worse. I imagine that most people have seen SOME Chinese writing and it just looks like a lot of lines an squiggles. To be honest... IT IS!! Each character is one word and there is no way to actually read a new character. There is no flow to it. If you don't know what it is and you can't understand the context of the sentence, you have to look it up. And to make things worse.. sometimes the same character can have completely different meanings. AND.. sometimes when two characters are put together, they mean something completely different. I have looked at signs here and known every word.... but had no idea what the sign means. There are about 47,000 characters. I have been told that when you can read 3,000, you can read the newspaper. I can read about 500 I think. Writing Chinese though is fun. Its almost like drawing until you get used to it. My handwriting has improved emmensely since I started writing Chinese.

I have been told that the best way to learn Chinese is to speak it.. But that is very difficult because half the time when you speak Chinese to a local, they either don't realise that you are speaking Chinese.. They expect that you are speaking English (Or Russian), or they laugh because its such bad prininciation that they can't understand me.. heheheh..

Oh well.. Can only keep trying