It\u2019s time for yet another installment of an ongoing theme in the Pacific: Mandarin Chinese. Or, more specifically, learning it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve known a grand total of one American who has become fluent in it. That\u2019s \u201cknow\u201d as opposed to \u201cknow of,\u201d since I know of several Americans who have earned the distinction, mostly because of books they wrote or instructional videos they made. But as far as flesh-and-blood, eyeball-to-eyeball let\u2019s-have-a-cuppa-coffee goes, my tally remains at one.<\/p>\n
This guy, an attorney, writes legal documents in Chinese, so with that much going for him, I asked him for any advice he\u2019d care to pass on to a student. Not that I\u2019m much of a student, I just dabble in it as a hobby. Still, he passed along his wisdom, which I will, in turn, pass along to you.<\/p>\n
He suggested a goal of learning 3,000 words of the most essential vocabulary along with a roughly commensurate level of grammar and such. He said that when he hit that point, things begin to click at a basic, but workable, level for street-level interaction. From there he could practice enough to improve.<\/p>\n
Reciprocally, he noted that before he hit that point nothing seemed to click at all. He was always discouraged and on the cusp of quitting.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not trying to sell you, or anyone else, on the advice, but I was grateful for it.<\/p>\n
My related contemplations run like so: First of all, I can\u2019t test out the theory yet, because words keep slipping out of my brain just as fast as I put them into my brain. Getting to 3,000 words is like walking on roller skates; I can get close, but then I slide back. The situation is aggravated by the fact that these days I\u2019m not willing to invest much time in it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, getting a little bit philosophical about things, I regard the term \u201cconversation\u201d as a murky one. If I say \u201chello\u201d to you, and you say \u201chello\u201d back, and then we both say \u201cgoodbye,\u201d is that really a conversation? I don\u2019t have an answer to that, but it\u2019s not really the type of conversation I have in mind when I contemplate a conversation.<\/p>\n
If we bump up a rung or two on the ladder, we find that there\u2019s an asymmetry involved: It is often easier to speak than it is to listen. When we want to say something, we can strategically cast our words to steer around our weak points. But when we\u2019re being told something, we have to catch things as they hit us.<\/p>\n
The situation is really sticky in Mandarin, since it always seems to have 20 ways of expressing the same basic thing. When you\u2019re transmitting, you only have to know one way. But when you\u2019re receiving, you don\u2019t have this luxury.<\/p>\n
It is useful, then, to be able to ask people to speak slower, to repeat themselves, to explain what a certain word means, or to write things down.<\/p>\n
As pushy as this is sometimes, I\u2019ll submit that it\u2019s genuine interaction, a feedback process that\u2019s more than an exchange of canned pleasantries. It\u2019s nudging us closer to a real conversation. Having field-tested this approach high and low, I can report that some people will acknowledge the situation and will downshift to accommodate a struggling counterparty (namely, me). Some won\u2019t. That\u2019s just how it is, so there\u2019s no point in worrying about it.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re looking for a bright spot, I\u2019ll note that for Saipan\u2019s context, using a foreign language for tourism is easier than having to free-form everything in a more comprehensive context. Much of what we have to say to tourists is simple, predictable, and well-defined. No, that\u2019s not conversational, but it\u2019s often enough to hold things together until you can, if necessary, call in better-equipped reinforcements. Even a scant inventory of 100 words or so, if pronounced intelligibly, can pay dividends. A long time ago I compiled cheat sheets in various languages for this sort of tourism communications, but I never managed to polish them into a high gloss.<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s the latest installment in this ongoing saga. The topic isn\u2019t going away, so it will bob into view from time to time in this space, just as it has for years now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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