This is a short, but funny story. I discovered the show Ni hao, Kai-lan on the TV channel Noggin while babysitting my friend’s five year old.
Now I’ve decided that it would be fun to learn Chinese a couple words at a time. Why I decided watching a preschool TV show was going to be the way to do it, I have no idea. Maybe I’m craving the moral education and cutesy songs.
Either way, I was Twittering with @alphador because he speaks some Chinese. When I learn a new word, I tweet it to him. Then he tweets me stuff I don’t understand and I feel bad about not knowing what it means, which makes me watch more Ni hao, Kai-lan. It’s a vicious circle.
Today I decided to google what he said to me and I came across a site that teaches you how to communicate with WoW goldfarmers (Oh, I’m going to regret it when the spambots arrive. I, for one, welcome our new Spam Overlords.)
I started texting my friend that she was an idiot and that I wished her a slow death and a quick trip to Hell. This is way more fun than learning from Kai-lan!!
About e
Congrats!
It’s great you’re up to learning Chinese. It’s pretty damn sweet, and for a fantasy geek, being able to write in ‘runes’ is pretty cool. ( I unabashedly use my knowledge in this fashion)
Just a word of warning, Chinese is way way way hard. I am a so called “Native Speaker”, (ethnically american-born Chinese), hold a bachelors degree in Chinese, and still am not at all fluent. (IE, pass the official fluency test fluent) My co-workers from china regularly talk circles around me.
But don’t let that dissuade you! Chinese is quite valuble, especially when bargaining with someone (In Chinese.)
@ messerole – Yeah, I have no desire to be fluent. It would just be fun to understand enough words to communicate like the average Chinese 2 year old.
My guy isn’t fluent in Chinese, but he took all the classes available when he was in college. Compared to languages he IS proficient in, like German, he tells me that speaking and understanding Chinese, and the grammar structure, isn’t bad at all. Writing is difficult, and I think it was difficult hearing the different pronunciations at first. Sadly, most of his Chinese knowledge has gone out that same mystical window as all my French and German.
Lol, more or less. Writing is the hardest part. It’s pure memorization, so if you’re not using it regularly, you’ll forget it all forever…
Speaking is really easy though, the grammer is mostly similar to english (No funky constructs like Japanese)
@e – you aren’t going to learn enough Mandarin from Ni Hao – Kai Lan to be able to communicate with a 2 year old.
The missus says that she was perfectly fluent at 2, so, maybe a 1 year old…
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@ Anubis – Stop crushing my dreams, willya?
Ni-hao E! My 3 and 6 year old girls love Kai-Lan, and my 6 year old walks around babbling from time to time and calls it “Chinese”. It is a cute show and I think it’s good that they can show the lil ones a bit about the Chinese culture. I’ve seen the DS “games” where you can learn some words and phrases of other languages, I’ve been wanting to get the Japanese one (I’ve always wanted to go there).
Way back in college my room-mate and I fell asleep watching CCTV4 (which was on our college’s cable setup). We were watching some wushu movie and then realized it went to a chinese kid’s show. Apparently in marathon. The next day we both knew all the words to the theme song, in chinese. No idea what they meant, but they were stuck in our head for about a month. One of us could start the song and the other could finish it. I’ve long since forgotten it, but kid’s shows are the way to go to learn languages. Anyone remember muzzy?
@ Kathy – I should really just give up Chinese and start re-learning French. I took 8 years of French and was practically fluent before quitting. Hybban’s been trying to convince me to talk with him (since he’s from France) but I’m too shy!
@ John – Songs are a great way to pick up words. I still remember French Christmas carols and some stupid song about birds dancing. I learned them in middle school!!
E de gwo yue yi dian dough boo hao. Ta jua dwei kan boo dong wo tsai shea tse mo!
Hai tse tsian shuea tsao chai ba!
@Fruit of Ambrosia
Mai guan chi!
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@ Fruit Wo bu dong ni. ni hui shuo hanyu ma? Wo bu hui shuo guang dong, ke shi wo hai hui shuo yidianr hanyu.
E! it’s really not hard, just may need to immerse yourself in it. if you’re gonna watch crouching tiger hidden dragon, watch in chinese with subs, that is actually how i got the tones down
@Alphador- I’ll respond in English so that you understand me. I speak Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiwanese. What you refer to as Han Yu is just the proper or formal Mandarin that is spoken by Chinese people mostly in Shanghai or Beijing. Outside of those two areas, we do not speak with such a strong curl (that strong “r” sound in words). Perhaps you could not make out what I said because of that.
To clarify, I basically said her Mandarin is so poor she definitely doesn’t know what I am talking about. Better learn to rry cook first!
Sorry for taking so long to respond. I can be bad about that.