If you have been reading my blog well, I am currently learning Chinese and boy is it hard.
It seems I am the least articulate person learning Chinese in the class when in comparison to everyone else. I try to revise and study. I have got used to some of the words, but the characters can become very confusing.
Currently I have learned ba-pa-ma-pha… but I'm not very good at memorizing these symbols or characters. The one thing I have learned is counting. I can say my whole mobile phone number in Mandarin. However because there are 4 different tones in Mandarin, one slip up of the tone can either mean you are talking gibberish (i.e. it doesn't make sense) or it means something else. I'm pretty sure in my head on the tones, but it memorizing the symbols that gets me. I am also depressed at the fact that it seems everyone can remember the symbols, while I can't. I usually get laughed at, at the way I say the words or when I get uneasy and don't know what to say at-all.
Don't get me wrong, learning the language is fun, but when it feels like you are lower than everyone else, then it makes you feel bad, especially when you come in 5 days a week. It is basically your life for a year like this if it continues this way.
Today I just bought 2 books, which are pretty decent in explaining things. I bought an illustrated Chinese dictionary, which comes with a CD and it obviously has English and pying (sp?) and the ba-pa-ma-pha 'techniques' as well.
I am hoping to do a lot of revision today with these books and hopefully I will learn something from it. 🙂
