My Chinese Journey
LIFESTYLEPERSONAL
9/29/20225 min read
How?
My learning journey began inadvertently. Like a child, I listened and observed the characters on the screen - taking mental notes of how they used expressions. Not just the words, but the manner in which they conveyed their emotions. One thing I've learnt about languages is that every language is a vibe, an inseparable part of the culture and not just a set of grammatical rules. I would say, I learnt first the emotions or vibe conveyed by Mandarin and when I needed to learn to convey that in words, I consulted Duolingo.
Duolingo is an app that allows you to learn languages for free. It's been more than instrumental in my Chinese journey. I had used it previously in practicing French and attempting to learn Spanish, but for some reason (probably my own lassitude), I haven't pursued either language too far. However, over two years later, I'm still learning Chinese. I think the repetitive nature of the Duolingo exercises per topic are perfect for learning Chinese characters since they need to be memorised. Applied to languages like Spanish and French, that learning structure was much less useful.
For months, I practice my Chinese writing taking the characters that I have covered in Duolingo and training on how to write them. I checked their written (not typed) form on the Train Chinese Youtube Channel and try writing them a few times. After this, I would practice writing whole sentences from the lesson. I still do this now, but with less frequency. Occasionally, I follow a course from Peking University on Youtube with lessons from HSK1-6. It's quite useful, but not ideal as a stand-alone source in my opinion.
Music
Music is an important part of my life so, naturally, it has played a huge role in my Chinese journey as well. I searched for popular worship songs in English and tried to find Chinese versions. This led me to discover two amazing worship groups based in Taiwan, "Stream of Praise ministries" and "Joshua Band". I love their original songs as well and did a cover of "Let me stay / 能不能" by Stream of Praise. I also enjoy watching Chinese singing competitions such as "Supervocal" and "I am a Singer".
Speaking
Most of my speaking practice was done with myself initially. Like a lot of us, I happen to be a phenomenal actress when I'm alone. I may even occasionally act out all the roles of a short film in broken Chinese. My brain occasionally switches to Russian in an attempt to find the nearest non-English word that fits.
For a short period, I used "Tandem" - a language exchange app. It helps you find people who wish to learn the language you know and know the language you wish to learn. There, I met some really nice people - the best of which was a 40 year old lecturer named Kang Kang and who, by the way, didn't look a day over 30. I received a lot of help and guidance from him, which I'm grateful for. It was more of teaching than an exchange since his English was great and my Chinese was well....in its infancy. The greatest compliment I got was about my pronunciation - I took that to mean the ridiculous amount of Chinese content I was surrounded by, ranging from podcasts to lessons to drama to music, was somewhat paying off. Now, I'm also lucky to have some Chinese friends who push me to speak more Chinese than I would on a normal day and for this I’m grateful. I hope to visit China someday and it's probably going to differ in many ways from what I may have imagined, but will hopefully be an exciting experience.
Yes, I'm learning Chinese - Mandarin to be precise, and I absolutely love it! When I tell people I'm learning Chinese, the most common reaction I get is a look of surprise, followed by a ‘why?’. The question is fine, until you realise that you hardly ever get asked that when you say you're learning French or Spanish…haha. I suppose it’s because Chinese is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn, especially since it has very little similarity with languages of Latin origin. But then, back to the question, "why?".
Why am I learning Chinese? Honestly, I don't know. If I were to give a straightforward and somewhat shallow answer, I would say, "Because I like it." I do like it, love it to be precise, but I also really liked French, but I never invested as much attention. With Chinese, I'm still discovering my ‘why’, but maybe we can discover it together if we answer some other questions - when and how?
When?
My first spark for Chinese came at the beginning of the year 2019 when I heard a Chinese gospel song by City Harvest Church, Singapore. It's called “耶稣我要爱慕你 / Jesus I'm in love with You”. It was originally a Japanese song written by Pst Tagafumi Nagasawa. I did a cover of it in English and Japanese. Japanese pronunciations were much easier for me at the time due to my years of experience gathered from watching anime - 'Naruto' to be precise. I was too scared of messing up the pronunciations to even try Chinese. Nonetheless, something about the language kept appealing to me.
In the last quarter of 2019, I stumbled on a Chinese drama on Youtube - still can't remember how since the only asian dramas I had watched before then were Korean and not even on Youtube. I was intrigued by the characters, the set - everything. It was a historical drama and the costumes were fascinating. The language was certainly different; sounding nothing like Korean or Japanese or anything else my ears were previously well acquainted with. At some point, I realised I was often able to make sense of the grammatical structure. I hadn't yet decided to learn Chinese, but I enjoyed watching dramas about the royal family: set in ancient times, especially in the Song, Tang and Qin dynasties. It was fun to observe the interplay of power and wit. After what I think was a couple of months, I realised I knew some words and understood more grammatical structures as time went on. Finally, sometime in December 2019, I thought I'd give learning Chinese a try.
Concerning the ‘why?’, I have developed different reasons in my mind over time - business purposes, the rich ancient literature, the beautiful idiomatic expressions, and whatnot. The most appropriate answer I can think of presently is that “I’ve been around Chinese as a language long enough and worked on it hard enough to truly fall in love with it”.
I still have a very long way to go, but my desire to learn Chinese isn't fading anytime soon. I'll just keep going one Chinese character at a time. When I think of my relationship with Chinese, I don't imagine a young, passionate couple, but an older, loving and time-tested couple who know they'll slowly grow old together.
Wish you all the best in whatever endeavours you're pursuing! Thanks for reading.