Chatting in the changing Chinese world
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-05-19 07:14
I was puzzled the moment my
Chinese teacher told me about the four tones. It was my first private lesson in
what I thought was this funny-sounding foreign language. I had found my teacher
in the personal ads of Beijing Today. Her 30 yuan
(US$3.70) fee per hour had looked very attractive indeed.
"What do you mean
'four tones'?" I asked. How could a spoken language have specific tones? I
wondered. Sure, I knew that you used a variety of tones in Western languages to
express doubt, surprise or anger, but how could a language have four, separate,
individual tones, and how were they used? What did they sound like?
My teacher pointed politely
to the page of the open textbook, lying on the desk in front of me.
"We use tone in
Chinese to express different meanings," she said. "We have a flat
tone, an up tone, a down-up tone and a down tone. It's not so bad. You'll get
used to it after a while." I stared unhappily at the four rising and
falling accents in the book, as she intoned the different ways to say the vowel
"a" in Chinese.
"They all kind of
sound the same to me," I said. "Can you tell the difference when
people are talking quickly?"
"Of course, I
can," she answered proudly. "I am Chinese. It's natural for me. Don't
think about it too much to start. The big secret is we Chinese don't really use
all the tones when we are talking in everyday conversation. We only emphasize
key words. You'll pick it up quickly with practice. Practice makes perfect, you
know."
"I know," I
thought, but how much practice will it take an average student like me to learn
a sing-song sounding language which was based on tonal variations that most
people apparently didn't bother with most of the time.
That was one year ago.
Although my mastery of the Chinese tones still has a long way to go, my
progress has been satisfactory and more importantly, my fear of the language
has gone.
After several false starts
such as buying a CD-learning kit or attending Chinese lessons with 30 other
people, I decided that intensive, private, individual tuition was the only way
to go.
The pronunciation of the
language was just too exotic to spend time listening to a CD alone, or sitting
in a classroom for one hour saying perhaps two or three sentences if I was
lucky. Intensive pronunciation practice was what I needed in order to learn.
The speech centres in my brain needed to actively use these strange
new sounds in order to process and store them.
After a month, I analyzed
my progress and realized that I could say the sentences quite well with my
teacher, but the following day most of what I had learned had completely
disappeared.
My short-term memory could
retain the new information but getting it into my long-term memory was
something more challenging altogether. A lot of repetition would be required.
Months of learning and repeating the same simple stuff would be needed to build
a basis of tonal variations in my mind.
After a few months, I even
felt that I was starting to make "negative progress." When I started
to learn new things, they appeared to have a detrimental effect on all the
stuff that I had already learned. Confusion reigned.
Did we get our word
"confused" from the name of the famous Chinese philosopher
"Confucius"? I wondered. The tones were so confusing I sometimes
thought so.
But after half a year of
regular practice, the new linguistic network in my mind began to crystallize
into what I imagined to be a new, wonderful and growing diamond. A new light of
understanding shone through in a multicoloured
spectrum of knowledge and satisfaction.
The confusion fell away.
Sometimes people began to understand what I said. Sometimes I understood parts
of what they said. I had also studied some Chinese characters and street signs
began to have some meaning. Parts of headlines in newspapers became magically
transformed with my new pictograph recognition abilities. There was still a
long way to go, but the diamond had definitely taken shape. All it needed now
was time and work to reveal all of its inner beauty.
Before learning Chinese,
logic and language were words I did not think were closely associated with one
another. In fact, I thought a "logical language" was an oxymoron just
like military intelligence.
Normally languages are
anything but logical irregular verbs are common, peculiarities of pronunciation
occur everywhere, there are general rules but always exceptions to these rules,
too.
After having studied
Chinese for a short time, the economy and simplicity of compound words in the
language began to jump off the page. In a matter of minutes, I had learned the
days of the week and the months of the year just by compounding prefix or
suffix words with numbers 1 to 7 and 1 to 12.
A vet was an "animal
doctor"; a helicopter a 'straight up machine"; a volcano "a fire
mountain." I laughed to think what people at home would think if I said I
was going to get a "steam vehicle to see the tooth doctor" in English
translated as "catch a train to see the dentist."
My main problem with
Chinese now is that many Chinese people whom I speak
to look upon any communication with me as a chance to speak English. They will
not permit me to speak in Chinese. All of my efforts to speak in their language
are ignored. Their main concern appears to be practising
their own language skills. Whether I want to use what I have learned means
nothing to them. Even my Chinese girlfriend is very reluctant to speak Chinese
with me.
Taxi drivers usually will
engage in some sort of conversation, but saying "Straight on,"
"Turn left," "Turn right" can get tiresome after a while.
Most young people who have had access to English learning will simply refuse to
speak to me in their language.
Last week, I went shopping
and upon seeing something I liked, I asked an assistant, "Duo shao qian?" in my best
Chinese. Even before I had said the last word, he called out the name of a
colleague in the shop. She came rushing over, looking very concerned.
"I can speak English.
Can I help you?" she announced proudly.
"No.
It's OK. Just looking," I replied and moved quickly on. If I could not practise my Chinese, I would shop elsewhere.
(The author
from