Monday, June 8, 2009

Learning Chinese 北方話 官話

(Post by Alisha)

Up to this point in our journey in Taiwan, Bacon and I have found three ways to communicate:

1. Hand gesturing/miming the intent
2. Our limited vocabulary of Chinese words and phrases we've acquired since our arrival in Taiwan
3. Relying on the abundance of Taiwanese that can speak English- this ranges from small conversation phrases to fluency.

As we're tired of all three, (especially the third item- we feel ignorant living in a country and "expecting" them to speak our language just to be able to converse), we have decided to get a Chinese tutor so we can at least learn enough for basic conversation and speaking.

We met with Twinsen on Sunday night, and it was a success! He offered the first hour as a trial period to see if we liked his style of tutoring, and we both decided that he was a great teacher. He provided us with a clear introduction to the Chinese language, includingㄅbo ㄆpo ㄇmo ㄈ fo and pinyin (slightly akin to learning the abc's in English), pronunciation and blending of sounds, explanation and examples of the four tones, and basics like pronouns and "be" verbs. Some sounds are extremely hard to pronounce because we never use those sounds in English, and the tones mean that one word can have four different meanings. Chinese is rated as one of the top three hardest languages to learn as a second language, but we are hoping that with weekly lessons and practice, we will slowly be able to break the communication barrier. As of now, we are going to meet at a tea house in Taipei, Ximen area, Sunday nights at 7:00 for an hour and a half. He charges $500 NT/hr ($15 American dollars), so it will work out to be less than $10 each a week- awesome. We are also buying the book he teaches with: "Practical Audio-Visual Chinese," (實(shí) 用(yòng) 視(shì) 聽(tīng) 華(huá) 語(yǔ), so that we will be able to do homework during the week and practice with each other.

Wish us luck!

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