"Wo ting bu dong" vs. "Wo bu zhidao"

One of the main reasons I did pick this particular contract that I currently have in China was because of the benefits.  One of these benefits is Chinese classes for twelve hours a week.  In fact the name of my contract here is known as the study contract and includes the twelve hours of teaching with one-on-one classes with a Chinese teacher.  Luckily I don’t have the same Chinese teacher but instead do have different teachers.  So far I have had class with nine out of the eleven different Chinese teachers that have worked at the school.  These Chinese teachers are also English teachers and so at the beginning this was good for me to be able to understand them and easier for them to teach me.  Having the different teachers throughout my time here is because of schedule changes and I think is great for me.  It gives me the chance to hear the Chinese from different accents and this is pretty important with how Chinese works. 

    

Chinese is broken down into the oral, reading, and writing with the oral being the easiest part of the language to learn.  Luckily they have somewhat Romanized the words so that makes it a lot easier to learn the speaking part of the language.  This is especially nice because it seems like the endless amount of Chinese characters.  This Romanization is known as pinyin and is what I first started learning.  Of course this can only go so far and eventually learning to read the characters is necessary to keep getting better.  The neat thing with the pinyin is it does present a great foundation and excellent way to learn oral Chinese. 

To go along with the pinyin and overall Chinese is something known as tones.  In Chinese there are four different tones and these tones can make a big difference in the meaning of a word.  A good example of this would be the word “ma.” So “ma” with the first tone (neutral) pronunciation means mother; “ma” with the second tone (rising) pronunciation means fibrous crops; “ma” with the third tone (quick falling and rising {like a V}) pronunciation means horse; and “ma” with the fourth tone (falling) pronunciation means to scold.  So if you aren’t familiar with the markings for the tone in pinyin then it would seem like those four words are pronounced the same when in fact they have different meanings.  Of course the Chinese character for all of these words are different but when starting off with pinyin it is necessary to know the difference in the tones. After a little practice with the tones it does come pretty easy and in fact can almost be inferred by the sentence being spoken.  Also an interesting thing to this pinyin and oral speech is that there are some words that have the same exact pronunciation and tone, so in that case knowing the context of the word is necessary.  This does make for some interesting tongue twisters as well. 

After some time here I started studying to read the actual characters as well.  This is important in restaurants and a few other places where no pinyin is used.  I found a good website that does help out a lot to study the characters and now my books for my Chinese classes have started introducing the characters as part of the chapters.  Writing I haven’t really worked on that and this could be because of how pinyin is used when typing.  So now when sending messages you type the pinyin and choose the correct character which means it is better to be able to read.

 

So you may be wondering exactly what I do know and how well I get around on my own.  Orally I am perfectly fine to do pretty much everything on my own.  This includes ordering food, haggling in the market, basic conversations, directions, buying train/ bus tickets, booking hotels, asking for information, and just about anything you would need in your everyday actions. It isn’t just the basic conversations but I am able to understand full blown conversations on more extensive topics.  Just last night at dinner the owner of the restaurant sat down with us (two foreign friends and I) and went into great details about different Chinese cuisine.  Sure I didn’t know every single word but I was able to grasp the main meaning of every sentence.  Overall my listening is a lot better than my speaking and this is a comfort level and normal for any learner of a new language.  When I first was here I would use the first phrase in the title a lot more often, “Wo ting bu dong”.  This means I don’t understand.  Now I am at a level where I use “Wo bu zhidao” (I don’t know) more often.  Simply put I understand what is being asked I just don’t know the answer or I will explain I forgot the particular word I am looking to answer.   

    

Here in my town it is very easy to impress the locals with very basic Chinese.  Usually there are the same set of questions that are always asked and so not that complicated.  The trick here though is the local dialect can be heavy and harder to understand.  When I travel it is a lot easier to listen and understand people because there pronunciation is a lot easier and so when back home at times it is fun. Now I am used to most of the local dialect and there are times when I start using it, of course to people’s surprise.  Every location does have a unique dialect but with the local dialect here so guttural when I travel it isn’t that hard to pick up on other locations pronunciations. 

A little story of how my local understanding and use of Chinese gave me a little bit of a discount.  A couple weeks ago I was in a local market (think of an open air street market where things are cheaper than in the stores).  I was in search of a new bottle, very common to have a refillable bottle for water.  I walk in a little store and right away they ask a couple basic questions using some of the local words and I respond quite easily.  Then I proceed to ask how much one bottle is and I say it is too expensive for me.  The very next bottle she told me it was 20 kuai (RMB) but she will give it to me for 10 kuai (RMB).  I didn’t even have to bargain down she did it before I could try.  I say that sounds great and I asked why she lowered it so quick.  She said because my Chinese is really good and she thinks it is neat that I know so much. Later that afternoon I shared this story with some of the Chinese teachers and they were pretty impressed.

      

At school when we aren’t teaching or practicing English for class, Chinese is the first language used.  It always has been like this and I remember when I was first was there I thought that it will be interesting to see if I ever will be able to keep up with them.  Now I am glad to say that I can.  Again my listening is a lot better and so sometimes they don’t believe that I understand but then I respond or explain it back to them in another fashion and they are happy.  Not that they would talk about me but some of them have said they have to be careful what they say around me.  I simply say it is your own fault for being good teachers.  

That has been a basic introduction of Chinese and my use with it.  Having lived in different countries I think it is very important to get out and lean some of the language.  I would have to say my Chinese is at a higher level than what my Korean was like.  Right now I would still have to say my Spanish and Arabic are at an overall higher level and this is because I can read and write in both of those languages while that isn't the case with Chinese.  There always is more to learn and I enjoy studying.  Currently I have started tackling Chinese grammar which overall Chinese is very literal and not that hard to learn grammatically.  

This week I  was supposed to travel but I had to cancel it in order get in touch with some people.  After the weekend classes three friends and I will be heading over to Shanghai.  It will be my first time to this well known city and so it will be neat have others to help show me around. Now I need to start doing a lesson plan for my high level class on Saturday.  I will write later.