On Learning Chinese

It’s been two months since we arrived in Taiwan. And I can say a grand total of four Mandarin Chinese phrases: “hello,” “goodbye,” “thank you,” and “to go” (as in take out food). One of my goals for our time here is to learn some Chinese. I have so far failed miserably. But I shall succeed.

In Ecuador, since we spoke Spanish, Jill and I took for granted the ability to communicate easily with Ecuadorians in their native tongue. I figured that here, even though Chinese is much harder to learn, I’d be bandying about phrases like “I’d like two cold beers, please,” inside of a couple of weeks. Ha.

I vastly underestimated how hard it is to pronounce the tones of Chinese words–even if you’re reading pinyin, which is an English approximation of Chinese characters. Of the foreigners I’ve met here, only those who’ve been studying Chinese dilligently for several years are anywhere near functional speakers. Peter Hessler, in his excellent memoir “River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze,” says Chinese is four times as hard for English speakers to learn as romance languages. I believe it.

Looking ahead, we’re hoping to begin Chinese classes soon. We’d been waiting until our schedules were more flexible and our finances were more settled. I’ll keep you posted….