Why are you learning Chinese?

shiqiangdan

August 14, 2008, 06:05 AM

Hmm. I never thought about it like that. I think I am going to stop learning Chinese now... KIDDING! No, I really am kidding. This is a difficult question to answer. I had first been asked this question 6 months into the learning process. A simple, one word question and I had no answer. I was shocked. It took me a while to find the real reasons within myself. They are as follows:

1) I am good at it (for reasons I can't explain) and so I am taking advantage of a talent that I have. Why let this opportunity go by when I have an advantage?

2) I get this rush from actually using the language the likes of which I can barely put into words. All I can really say is that I feel...important(?). Whether or not this actually makes me important, I don't know. Just the feeling of importance I get, be I any more important or not because of it, is enough to motivate me quite a bit. This reason is sort of strange sounding but this is the best I can put it into words.

3) A sense of enlightenment and awakening. I feel less blind to the world outside my own (U.S.A.). Chinese and English are two different languages altogether. Not linked by the same mother language as are English, French, Spanish, etc... For that reason, I feel as though I am looking at the world from a whole new perspective when I am learning Chinese. It's a whole new way of thinking.

I have more reasons but they are extremely hard to put into words. The ones I wrote were difficult but the rest I could not even begin to explain. Sounds sort of strange, doesnt it? If some of these don't make too much sense or they just seem akward, I'm sorry. When answering this question, I almost have to dig into a part of my mind that I don't really visit much and to draw information out is a sort of daunting task. Hope this satisfies your curiosity!

Jordan

alexmikos

August 16, 2008, 03:49 AM

I am chinese. for us English is difficulty too,

the grammar is very hard to understand..

as when you started to learn chinese grammar.

now,i am still a beginner of English.

if you want to learn..just try your best.

whatever easy or difficulty..

kencarroll

August 14, 2008, 07:33 AM

Jordan,This really does help offer some insights in to the thinking. I appreciate it.

Xiaohu,What an amazing story, and told with tremendous intensity. I love the part about the teacher coming to the restaurant. I think that also says a lot about the traditional approach to teaching: many traditional teachers think that westenrers cannot learn Chinese. And indeed they are right if they use traditional methods - it's way too painful.The reason ChinesePod came into existence was because we believed we could present Chinese in a way that anyone could learn it.

But I don't want to change the subject. I'm hoping to hear more from the community about why people choose to learn Mandarin.

Great stuff!

 

 

changye

August 14, 2008, 08:06 AM

Hi xiaohu,

Every time I read your story, I always feel sorry that you are not compatible with Japanese people. By the way, just out of curiosity, what language are you going to learn next after China begins to decline in the future?

derek

August 14, 2008, 08:24 AM

I have been interested in Chinese history and culture since I was a teenager when I read a book called "The Good Earth" by Pearl S Buck. After that I read numerous books about China, but only began studying the language many years later for business purposes, but now I only study for enjoyment.

Becoming fluent in a foriegn language is a very difficult thing to do, but it gives me a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

auntie68

August 14, 2008, 08:41 AM

I, too, feel a bit sorry that xiaohu didn't manage to connect with Japanese people. I treasure my Japanese friends, some of whom have been my friends for many years. We've laughed and cried together, just like it is with all my other close friends. 

Well, as to why I am studying Chinese: I am an overseas Chinese (6th generation). Although I don't feel any emotional ties with China or Chinese culture, it's nice to be in a position to know, first-hand, what my distant cousins -- the real Chinese ! -- are thinking.

I am also studying Chinese because I am the only person in my entire family who knows any Mandarin, and my nephew the Stunt Toddler, aged 3, is required by law to study "Chinese as a Second Language" in school. So I can help him with his Chinese homework one day! But culturally, we would like him to embrace his own culture -- Peranakan + Filipino -- and learn Malay and Filipino.

If there is room for a third reason, I am studying Chinese because there is a really good resource available, in the form of CPOD. I've never been able to resist that reason! I would even say that the availability of really good learning resources has always been the biggest factor for me, where learning languages is concerned.

Eg. Three of the languages I am studying these days, apart from Chinese, were not on my agenda, but I am studying them simply because there happens to be a good "-POD" out there and I can't possibly resist...

auntie68

August 14, 2008, 09:03 AM

P/s: Having said what I just posted, above, I may be a bit strange in not being motivated by the "economic power" of languages. Before I grow old and grey, I'd love to study Finnish, Welsh, and Tamil, because I consider them to be "bardic" languages with particularly rich literary and "bardic" traditions. And the fact that they are considered to be opaque (by non-native speakers) is a very big bonus for me!

changye

August 14, 2008, 01:47 PM

Hi auntie68,

Hehe, I don’t believe that you already have hair speckled with gray. As for Chinese, I personally think that it’s a very attractive language even without considering the economic power of the PRC, and I’m sure that you also readily agree with me on this point, thanks in advance!

As you know, I’ve long been an elementary learner of Indonesian. I love the language because it is very concise/rational grammatically and easy to pronounce. I always wonder why Zamenhof didn’t select Indonesian/Malay as a world language, instead of inventing Esperanto.

shiqiangdan

August 14, 2008, 03:50 PM

Xiao Hu,

Amazing story. Makes mine look more horrible than it already is. For me, the reasons aren't as straight forward. I like Chinese for reasons that I don't question. I know what I feel and so naturally, I pursue what I enjoy. I think you and I are quite similar in our love of language and maybe even our aptitude for it. When you wrote that you didn't have an American accent, immediately those words jumped off the page. I am exactly the same way. From the very beginning, I only had to hear the sounds once and I could repeat them just about perfectly. Chinese people tell me all the time that I have no accent, just as they tell you. What intrigues me is why. I don't really know why. Do you have any idea as to why you are able to do this? Maybe if we talked this out, we could figure out what gives us that strange ability to imitate sounds so well. I am quite curious about that.

Also, you said you spoke to Japanese people who seemed as though they didn't want you to talk to them, or that you were bothering them? I have had the same sorts of experiences with some Chinese people. Of course, you can't just walk up to an East Asian person and assume they are Chinese (and even if they are, they may not speak Mandarin). At my job, I occasionally see Chinese people and I know they are Chinese right off the bat because they are speaking. I usually go up to them and say just something small like Ni hao, nin men shi zhong guo ren, bu dui ma? They say dui and then they will usually look at me with this look of confusion as if to say, "why can this white boy speak our language?" After that, I think the confusion goes away and they just plain don't care to talk to me, no matter what language I speak. Probably not because they are cold hearted or rude, but I think there must be some cultural difference that I am missing. If anybody has any ideas, please share them if you don't mind.

Alright, well I hope to speak with you soon. Great story, Xiao Hu.

Jordan

jamestheron

August 15, 2008, 03:24 AM

Ken, I hope you are not encouraging the idea that Mandarin is a "difficult" language.  Sure, learning to write characters is very time consuming, but it's not hard.

It basically comes down to always wanting to speak a second language.  I know I can live my entire life and have a successful career without learning any language other than English.  But why limit myself at all.  I just did not want to become someone who always says, "I always wanted to learn a foreign language," but never did.

It's just a life goal I will reach, not much more complicated than that.  Why Chinese instead of a more useful language (like Spanish here in California)?  Only because of China's enormous population and out of fairness because so many Chinese people learn English.  

 

xiaohu

August 14, 2008, 07:17 AM

Ken,

Originally I started studying because I felt I had a connection with the culture of Asia.  I see Asian people being more focused on education, self-improvement, and community than white people.  I knew that China was quickly becoming a very powerful nation, they were buying more computers and electronics than us here in America, and everything on the news was leading me to believe that China may just be the country of the 21st century.

I also had always wanted to learn a foreign language.  I greatly admired people who would make the commitment to spend years of their life dedicated to learning the tongue of another people. At the time I wanted more than anything to learn French. Besides that, I would see white people speaking Spanish with Mexican people here in Los Angeles, effortlessly transitioning between English and Spanish and it was almost like magic!

I wanted to be one of those people who could at any time pull that proverbial Rabbit out of a Hat!

Back then I was working very hard to become an actor, and in my acting class there was fellow actor who I became fast friends with (a talented and brilliant Jewish guy who has since gone on to found a Manga company called Go Manga).  One of our other friend from class would often go with us to Cantors Deli here in L.A., and one night there was a group of Japanese girls sitting at the booth next to us.  He sauntered over to the table and introduced himself in fluent Japanese, the girls invited him to sit down and eat with them and he proceeded to have an hour long conversation with them!

I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY!

I wanted to be that guy!

This also coincided with a personal addiction to gaming, and the best games come out in Japan while never being imported here to the US, I wanted to learn to read Japanese to be better able to enjoy the Japanese games I had.  This series of events lead me to believe that Japanese was the language for me so I went to Borders and bought  several systems to learn Japanese.

After a few days of study I was HOOKED on language!

Learning language just seemed to set off some kind of pleasure receptors in my brain, I just couldn't get enough.  It was like I was Dorothy catching her first glimpse of the Yellow Brick Road and seeing the great land of Oz off in the distance, shining like a welcoming beacon!

I wanted to know everything I could get my hands on about Japanese culture to help deepen my understanding of the language.

I made regular trips to Little Tokyo in downtown to practice my Japanese, and I would go online to Japanese chat-rooms to practice my Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji skills.  This was great practice but through this contact with the Japanese people I found them to be very COLD and detached, very difficult to make a personal connection with.  The Japanese people I interacted with always seemed to be very annoyed and bothered by my advances to speak Japanese with them.

Because of this I felt kind of afraid to have face to face conversations with so I concentrated my efforts on my online chats.  I wanted to chat completely in Japanese and not in Romaji (Roman characters used to represent the sounds of Japanese, basically Japanese Pinyin). At that time Kanji was extremely difficult for me.  Hiragana and Katakana were a piece of cake, I could read and write every Hiragana and Katakana in the Japanese "alphabet" but KANJI...ah ha ha...KANJI was a thorn in my side!

A friend told me about a book called "Remembering the Kanji" and that book changed the course of my existence.

Throughout the book, it always refers to how the ancient Chinese conceived of the character and the story behind it.  It all seemed so fascinating, otherworldly, too much for me to grasp!  It felt so far away, yet so close, there was somehow this kind of deep connection with the characters that I couldn't explain!  I'd stare at some characters for hours pondering the story and history behind it...it literally gave me chills to think about it!  I don't know why the characters excited me so much, but I found them to be the perfect blend of form and function, right brain and left brain, Art and Science...dare I say Yin and Yang?

The book always talked about the different readings of the Characters, and how they have a Japanese reading and a "Chinese reading".  I became more and more curious about the origins of the Chinese Characters and how the sounds derived into Japanese so I decided to do a little investigation into the origins of the Characters in an effort to help broaden my knowledge of Japanese.

I printed out a few Chinese lessons from the CSULB website and tried to teach myself some of the basics.  During my study I started becoming more and more excited about the possibility of becoming tri-lingual, English, Japanese and Chinese, but that seemed like a bit of a pipe dream and I felt like it would be better to just focus on my Japanese.

Still the seeds of interest were beginning to sprout in my mind. 

I'm very much a perfectionist about everything I do and if I were going to learn any Chinese at all (even just the basics which was all I wanted to learn at the time) I needed for my pronunciation to be as perfect as I could make it. I tried and tried to understand the pronunciations from "pinyin" and the pronunciation guides, but I was afraid that without hearing a NATIVE speak it that I would never be able to figure out the right way to pronounce these extremely difficult sounds.

I got an idea, I took my study materials to a Chinese restaurant in the Chinese community of Los Angeles, found a restaurant (which happened to be Sichuan, my favorite!) and asked a waitress how to say these words I was having trouble with.

She immediately got very excited, she asked me, "You want learn Chinese?"

"Yeah, I want to learn some Chinese" I answered.

"Okay, wait here, don't move I call a teacher for you!"

She zipped off to go make her phone call.

I was scared to death!  What had I suddenly gotten myself into?  I wasn't looking for a private teacher, just a little help and guidance! 

As I drank my Jasmine Tea, I sat there contemplating what to do.  The teacher would arrive at any minute!  A part of me wanted to duck out when the waitress wasn't looking.  The other part of me (not only told me that would be unacceptably impolite) had this deep, all encompassing fascination with Chinese!  I finally decided to at least give it a TRY!

The teacher arrived, he was very lively, animated and extremely witty!  He immediately gave me a great impression.

During the course of our conversation he challenged me to examine my own motives about learning Chinese, if it was "just for fun" he said..."then forget it".

What was my motivation for learning Chinese?

I couldn't answer that question with anything other than, "I'm utterly fascinated by it".

I began studying privately with him, and to be perfectly honest, my initial impression of the Chinese language was that it was kind of WEIRD.  The language is TONAL?  That's unfathomable!  There are ROLLED TONGUE sounds?  That's unpronounceable!  Words are noninflected?  That's inconceivable!

But something inside drove me to continue.  This overwhelming fascination.  I'd say a word in Chinese and almost be transported to ancient China, in my minds eye almost visualizing myself at the precipice of a great lotus covered cliff in Guilin playing out a folk song on an Erhu.  I'd say another word and in my minds eye see myself in a Buddhist temple sitting cross-legged meditating with my brothers.  The feelings were that intense!

Chinese felt more and more like home.

This teacher would tell me stories of when he was a boy growing up in China, stories about his Mother back in Sichuan and his life when he lived in Beijing.  I needed to see that country.

Gradually I gave up on my Japanese.  Not only was the interest just not there anymore but I saw the handwriting on the wall.  China is the country of the future, and Japan is gradually fading into the past.  Certainly right now Japan is the more advanced and wealthy society, but the Japan we see today is the highest it will ever go.  China on the other hand, has a world of undiscovered heights, and I was excited about the prospect of growing with it! 

After a couple of years with the language I made the decision to move to the Chinese area of Los Angeles, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Chinese (and Taiwanese) people, thousands of wonderful Chinese Restaurants, giving me the ability to sample a life somewhat like that in China.  To walk out my door and feel like I'm part of a community. 

We Caucasians can be so damn self-isolated!  We don't know the names of the people who live around us, and frankly would never even want to meet them!  We in America don't even know what it means to live in a community anymore.

I hate that attitude!

I grew to love the Chinese people's strong sense of community and sharing.  I find most of the Chinese people to be very warm and open.  Chinese people walk unannounced into each others homes, which at first was unnerving but I grew to love that sense of closeness!  I love eating together as a community, sharing the same dishes, refilling each others Tea-cups, toasting together at mealtimes!

Now I can't go a single day without studying Chinese.  I can't imagine a my world without it!

To say 我爱中国 would be an understatement! 

Xiao Hu

pinkjeans

August 15, 2008, 09:13 AM

Wow, it's great to be back online. I've been deprived of Chinesepod and learning Chinese for more than 2 weeks now, as I'm in Singapore for hols and don't have regular access to the internet (Auntie, I've thought about you too). Back to the question, why am I learning Chinese? When I was living in Singapore and was surrounded by Chinese language and had easy access to learning materials, I was never interested. I only got interested after moving to the UK and started attending classes just to have a useful activity during my kids' weekly Chinese classes. I also felt useless that I was unable to help my kids with their  Chinese. As I progressed, I developed a really keen interest to know the language and I found I was advancing at a surprising rate. I'm also the sort of person not to give up on something I've committed to do...and I do like languages. Discovering Chinesepod has helped plenty and I know I will have to put in extra hours to catch up when I get back home and can use my computer regularly again.

MuampHeadphones

August 15, 2008, 09:53 AM

 

I work in a university which has many 'overseas' students including over 800 Chinese. Back in 2001 the Chinese society started a Chinese language class free to students and staff, so I attended. I had an interest since I had to communicate with many new students, some having very poor English, who were studying English for one year before starting their degree. The Chinese language classes were well attended for the first few weeks but the numbers fell back to about 4 or 5 people who had a real interest.

I decided to travel China the following November, intending to back-pack as an independent traveller. Whilst talking to various Chinese students about my travel plan, many Chinese insisted that I meet their friends / family / colleagues at various locations, where they would meet me at the station and show me around. No matter how much I tried to say ‘no need, and do not put yourselves to so much trouble’, they always insisted on helping.

Whilst in China, I was met and helped considerably, being shown around, taken to restaurants and their hospitality was second to none.

They also wanted to pay for everything,… saying I was their guest, and they would pay. No matter how much I tried to pay, they just would not allow it.

Since then, I have travelled China about ten more times and continued to learn Chinese language, culture and history.

The Chinese seem to be very friendly, surprised when a westerner is trying to learn their language, and even more surprised in rural locations to see a westerner who is 6’8” in height.

I now have a Chinese wife and spend a lot of time in Zhangzhou, Fujian with my wife’s family. A lovely place which is still like real China, un-commercialised. At my last count there are only 8 non-Chinese in a city of over 200,000! It is still possible to take a 三轮车 (san1lun2che1) 3 wheeled pedal taxi in Zhangzhou.

nelfie

August 15, 2008, 11:32 AM

Da jia hao.

I originally started learning Cantonese so that I could communicate with my fellow Taiji students in the UK. Then I changed teacher and shifted to Mandarin so that I could communicate with her. That was three years ago. Now I want to reach fluency so that I can chat to all my new Chinese friends and possibly travel to China one day.

This might be impossible as I am disabled and unable to travel at the moment. Learning Chinese and talking with friends on the internet lets me feel like I can travel. I can't explain why I'm drawn to China as opposed to any other country. I feel a resonance. Whenever I'm in a Chinese environment, for example the olympic opening ceremony with the local Chinese population of Derby (not many) or singing kareoki in a Chinese restaurant, I feel more at home than I do in a purely western environment.

I regularly chat with a Chinese man on-line who is also disabled and stuck in his town. We both feel we are seeing the world by sharing language and photos of our neighbourhood.

Ultimately I want to learn cantonese as well as I love hong kong films : )

qiren

August 15, 2008, 12:57 PM

salut

désolée de poster mes commentaires un peu partout mais je suis en train de zapper sur les comments et je voudrais bien répondre à celle là

je ne sais pas si l'emplacement est approprié pour le faire mais comme je ne sais pas ou le poster je le fait ici même!

moi, j'apprend le mandarin pour donner exemple à mes enfants qui ont tous abandonnés car ils trouvaient que c'était barbant ou trop dur

j'ai mon petit dernier qui voudrait apprendre le japonais

je ne le décourage pas sur cela car du moment qu'il apprend une langue étrangère, je ne suis pas contre.

Sur tous les sites qui donnent des leçons de mandarin c'est chinesepod que j'ai trouvé le mieux!

c'est vraiment bien conçu, j'apprécie bien jenny pour le bon entrain de ses explications et sa voix est claire et distincte

mais comme mon anglais est basique je ne peux aller très vite ni trop loin.

pourtant j'aime bien aller sur ce site tous les jours

j'aime bien les écouter et essayer de lire les comments

un jour je parviendrais peut être à comprendre les explications en anglais qui sait, à force d'écouter, on ne sait jamais!

tiaopidepi

August 15, 2008, 03:52 PM

- Chinese is a significantly different from Germanic and Romantic languages. Some aspects of the language don't match my strengths. For example, I'm not good at memorizing things. My memory is much better now, though, then it was when I started learning Chinese. Chinese grammar is fascinating and frustrating. Chinese offers a great intellectual challenge.

- Chinese strongly carry their culture with them when they relocate. Chinese assimilate differently than other immigrants to America. We have strong communities of all cultures in America but Chinatown is a familiar, distinct entity in most American cities. If you want to eat the good dishes in Chinese restaurants you have to order off the Hanzi menu.

- Many countries use the same Chinese language or the same Chinese characters. (This also applies to Arabic.) Besides broad utility, an advantage is that there is no "perfect" pronunication of Chinese. A trip to Paris convinced me that French people don't want to hear me speaking French even after 10 years of casual study. You're better off speaking English than trying out your less-than-perfect French. But after only a year of studying Chinese people in Shanghai were happy to hear me butcher their language. 

- People at work use Chinese. Sure, some people use German, French, Romanian, Indian languages, Russian, etc. But almost every day I hear a conversation in Chinese. Plus, in my industry (and my company) there's a good working relationship between the two countries. I could move to China tomorrow if I wanted to.

- There are strong resources available for Chinese learning. I knew about Chinesepod before I started learning Chinese. Also, we have classes at work. And I have a lot of Chinese coworkers who will sometimes humor me.

- I have some family ties to China: my sister lives in Nanjing. I don't have a Chinese wife, however, which seems to be both the biggest benefit for Chinese students and the biggest motivator. I find that most people I know who are learning Chinese fall asleep every night night lying next to a native Chinese speaker.

- One day I might meet Maggie Cheung and I've already established that my French won't be good enough to impress her.

goulnik

August 15, 2008, 04:09 PM

I take the liberty to translate what qiren says

I hope she doesn't mind :-)

sorry to post my comments all over the place, but I am surfing over and I would like to reply to that one.

I don't know if this the right place but since I don't know where else to post I'm doing it here!

I personally learn Mandarin to show the way to my kids who all have given up as they found it too boring or too hard.

my youngest one would like to learn Japanese, I'm not discouraging him, provided he learns a foreign language I have nothing against.

from all websites offering Mandarin lessons, chinesepod is the best I found!

it's really well thought out, I do enjoy jenny for the enthousiasm of her explanations, her voice is clear and crisp, but I really can't go fast or too far as my English is really basic.

Still I quite like coming to this site every day, I like to listen to them (podcasts) and try to read the comments

one day, if I listen long enough, I may be able to understand explanations in English, who knows

 

chanelle77

August 15, 2008, 05:15 PM

Hi all,

My husband and I are expats and we moved from Amsterdam to China jan. 08. The reason for me to learn Chinese is a bit of a control issue :-). Chinese always seemed so unfathomable and mystical and thought I could never learn it, but i liked the challenge.
For me it is important to get around in a city like Nanjing by myself and without depending on others. So, you need to learn the language.
Besides that, I cannot imagine living in a country and not being able to communicate with the people around you, that would make me feel very lonely.
Also, I believe that it is only possible to fully understand a different culture (if you like to do so like me) if you speak the language.
After 7 months I returned to Holland and now I can speak Chinese with the Chinese waitress in the Japanese restaurant and chat about shopping with the lady from Shanghai sitting next to me in a restaurant! I realized what I had learnt the past half year and that made me really happy and motivates me to continue. Learning a language opens a new world I think. Wish you all happy and successful (Chinese) studies.

changye

August 16, 2008, 01:49 AM

Hi goulniky,

Thanks for your translation. Just out of curiosity, I've translated the French text into English, Chinese and Japanese by use of Google translation tool.

Not surprisingly, the English translation is the best among them, and Japanese one is just disastrous. To my surprise, Chinese one is not so bad.

You can manage to understand the whole idea of the text in Chinese, at least. Needless to say, your English translation is by far the best among them!

chris

August 15, 2008, 06:41 AM

Interesting posts.  I have to be brutally honest and admit that my initial motivation to learn Chinese was financial.  Having been seconded to Shanghai over 18 months ago for a 2 year period (now extended to 4 years (great!)), I assumed that my job would be easier and I'd network better if I could speak the local language.  However, whilst this is certainly true, I do take Ken's point above that foreigners, particularly if they're primarily based in Shanghai, really have no need whatsoever to speak Chinese.  Particularly if you are quite senior in your organisation and you deal with senior people at your clients - English is simply accepted.

 

So, I now find myself learning the language more because I simply enjoy it - rather than any financial motivation.  I also love the feeling of achievement you get from each of the learning milestones - e.g. the first time you say something more than "yao4 qu4 ........" to a taxi-driver and are understood, or the first time you can have a conversation of more than a sentence with the Ayi in your office or the waitress/waiter at the bar.  It's these little things that make it worthwhile.

The final thing I'll say for now is that languages were always my achilles heel.  I was somewhat of an over-achiever at school, but French and German always brought me down to earth with a bump.  In the 14 years since I think the fact that I could never quite "get" foreign languages has always eaten away at me, so I'm now determined to prove I can do it.  Living in Shanghai just made the choice of which language easier!

Chris

PS - Ken, great question.  I'm enjoying the responses.