News from Bill

Hey, 恭喜恭喜你婚礼快乐 ^_^

Congratulations! May you share the wonders of life together in great happiness. As changye says, 不管怎么样，我还是羡慕你的！！祝贺你们！

Wow. Congratulations!

Bill, you are the man! Congratulations. I got chills when I read your blog....truly fantastic.

恭喜你! What a lovely, romantic way to do it. I wish you both many, many years of happiness (and Mandarin-learning) together.

Bill, 祝你们百年好合，幸福美满！zhu4ni3men bai3nian3 hao3he2 xing4fu2mei3man3. ^_^

Congratulations!

Congratulations! I wish you many, many years of happiness together.

> But, not to worry, I now have a lifetime of > practice ahead of me CONGRATULATIONS! It won’t hurt you to listen to grumbling (or advice) of a tipsy old guy once in a while. One of my friends, whose wife is a pretty native Chinese woman, once told me that having a Chinese wife doesn’t necessarily automatically improve your Chinese. Firstly, in general, your Chinese wife is often smarter than you, and she masters YOUR language much faster than you learn Chinese, therefore you are highly likely to end up speaking in English all day long, or whole life long, at your home, and at a supermarket. Secondly, your wife is often too tender and pure-hearted to point out minor (or major) errors in your Chinese, although you are always busy indicating grammatical errors in her English, which would eventually enable her to make progress in learning English. Lastly, as time goes by, your wife, and your children, would get accustomed to (or comfortable with) your somewhat clumsy Chinese. Then, someday your family would be filled with pidgin Mandarin spoken by you and real English spoken by your wife. Good luck. 不管怎么样，我还是羡慕你的！！祝贺你们！

Congratulations! What an exciting time! Here's wishing you and Alicia all the best life has to offer!

Thanks a lot guys. I'll share all of your comments with Alicia sometime soon. Alicia and I didn't get together because she was Chinese or I was English, that was just a happy coincidence. We've already experienced many of the challenges of a relationship that spans cultural, political, linguistic and ideological boundaries and are under no illusions that many further challenges lay ahead. But despite those challenges we are both sure of one thing we are going to face them together. As with learning the language, she is always ready to remind me that my Chinese is worse than that of a 3 year old and I'm all to aware that her parents are learning English much faster than I'm learning Chinese. To be greeted by her 93 year old grandmother in perfect English (not even an American accent), "Happy New Year" puts my Chinese ability to shame. That said, in my own on-and-off (more off than on) approach to learning Chinese I have come a long way from the first time I heard Ken and Jenny introducing the words, 你好吗. We often don't appreciate just how far we have come until we look back and try and remember the beginning. Once again, thanks guys :) You all brought a smile to my face at the end of a long day.

Bill, It's not only your wife who grows accustomed to your bad Mandarin habits. All your friends, relatives, classmates, etc. also do so. On a linguistic level this sounds not-so-good. However, on a personal level, you create a wonderful language that only you and she know. Also, there's no need to despair linguistically. When you desperately need that grammar correction, there's always your mother-in-law... Seriously, best of luck.

Congratulations. :)