Miscellaneous culture shock part 2 of 100 000 - The Chinese language

Since my arrival in this country, I've constantly made an honest effort to learn the local language. It is far from being easy, as there is virtually no similarity between French/English and 普通话 (Pǔtōnghuà, or standard Mandarin).

Just like everything in life, some aspects are harder and some are easier. Some particularities are also damn funny, but I'll come back to it later.

First, as even the dumbasses among you know, Chinese language use characters, each character being a syllable, often a word itself, and some words have different characters which correspond to them (not the opposite, thank fuck). To be able to read a newspaper and understand 90% of the stuff, you need to know 3000-4000 characters. As shown by some of my buddies who have majored in Chinese in University and thus can read and write pretty well, learning Chinese as a second language is not impossible, although the characters obviously makes things a bit complicated.

So far, I know about 100 characters... but I don't study them very much, as it is damn frustrating and not a priority I have set. I study with pinyin mostly, which is the standardized romanization of chinese characters. The system was initially created (if I'm not mistaken) to allow computer use... just imagine what a keyboard with all tens of thousands of chinese characters would look like! Instead, Chineses (hihihi) just type in roman letters and the computer converts it in characters. The good point of this system is the fact that it is universal and standardized, with tones and everything (unlike the Thai language, which has an alphabet of its own and therefore seldom uses the romanization system).

That leads to my next point: the goddamn tones, the single biggest challenge in learning this language. You see, in Chinese (and in most Asian languages except Japanese), a vowel can be a whole different sound when pronounced at a different pitch. That's a bitch. In non-tonal languages (like, let's say, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Norwegian...), vowels are absolute and that simplifies the pronunciation. In Chinese, if you say ā á ǎ à or a it's not the same thing. At all. Therefore, if you mispronounce a word, you don't just make it hard to understand, but you say a completely different word (mā being mother, mǎ being horse for example). You have to change your pitch while you speak, which is why Chinese people speaking fast sound like they were singing.

Some things make learning Chinese learning quite easy though, well easier than I thought it would be. First, I have an awesome tutor :) Also, apart from the tones, most chinese phonems (sounds) exist also in English. No rolled R, no guttural sounds, no funny-ass click sounds like in Southern African languages. The only sound that Anglos have problems with in Chinese is the French u (ü). Hahaha! Like in the following sentence "Hahaha, maudit Angla, tu suces, t'es pas capable de prononcer ü".

Also, the grammar is pretty damn simple. There is only one word for "he, she, it, him, her, it" and it is tā (which is also the reason why Chinese students always mess up the he and she). Most words are very simple, for example a traffic light is hong lu deng (right green light). The numbers are a joke, it takes one hour to learn how to count to 999.

The most encouraging aspect would be that no matter how bad you are, if you try, Chinese people will support you, smile and give you the thumbs up. Sometimes, in my classes, all I need is to write a character on the board or blabber a few words and even my vegetal, usually unresponsive students will burst into applause. That's pretty cool. I mean, the sight of an unusually white, brown haired, handsome, muscular man is already quite special that when the said white man opens his mouth and Chinese comes out, it is overwhelming. Anyway, Chinese people are more supportive that speakers of other languages if you want my opinion.

So far, my post seems a bit too didactic... Now I am gonna talk about an hilarious aspect of the Chinese language: the word 那个. Well, immaturely funny it is, but I assume it fully. It basically means "that" or "that one", and is used widely as a filler word in informal spoken language (just like "like" in English or "genre" in Quebecois). Therefore, when Chineseses speak informally to each other, you hear 那个... 那个... all the time. They also use this word profusely when they speak in English... when they hesitate or when they want to point something out. The only thing is... 那个 is pronounced Nà ge, which sounds EXACTLY like "nigga". I wish I was making this up.
I don't even flinch now when I hear this kind of exhange:
Teacher: Where is the foreign language department?
Student: Nigga... this building!

However, on my first week of teaching, I wasn't fully aware of this. During an in-class activity about famous people, one student wrote "Micle Jodan" on the board (Michael Jordan). When I asked him who this person is, he replied: "He is a nigga... a famurs basketball player". I wish I could see the face I had after I've heard that!