It's all Chinese to me!

The title of the previous post is in Chinese. Not the neat symbolly kind, the kind you read. If it is spelled right or not, I don't actually know. Why? Because Mandarin is SO HARD. I've had two Chinese classes so far and I have left both with headaches. Not only is there a lot to memorize as far as vocab goes, but there are also tones. Yes, tones. Let me give you a brief tour.

Tone one: Straight tone, does not fluctuate up or down. Hum a G or an F or an Eb and you got it.

Tone two: The "Up" tone. Sounds like a question. Think," Huh?" and you pretty much nailed it.

Tone three: The tone that I hate. It starts at a certain pitch, goes lower and starts back where you started. I think. I swear every time it is demonstrated for me I hear something different.

Tone four: The "down" tone. When you say, "Yeah!" when you're really happy so it's a little pointy, that's what it sounds like.

(and I guess tone five: soft tone. You get to just say this one, no special tricks or anything Novel idea, I know!)

So if you get the tones wrong it's over. Words using different tones have completely different meanings. For example, " shi" in the title of last post (pronounced like "sure") means "am" when spoken in fourth tone (I think it is) but when you say it with tone 2 it means the number 10. Help? And you have to stay in the same "key", so to speak, if you hope to have anyone understand what the heck you are talking about. And the letter x sounds like 'sh' and 'zh' sounds like j and that's not even bring the the tens of thousands of symbols that represent all this!!! Gah! If this is how my kindergartners feel when I try to teach them English, no wonder they are ignoring me completely, more content with eating their fists, poking their neighbor, cutting up their paper into little pieces and pulling the fur off the next kid's furry coat....

I'm going to keep trying but wow this is hard!

Today as we left Chinese class we told the guard at the school "Wan an" which supposedly means 'goodnight'. We met our foreign coordinator outside and excitedly told her how happy we were to be able to say something new to the guard ('hello' and 'goodbye' get old). She asked what we said and we told her. She informed us that that can also be used for 'I love you very very much'.......um.....okay??? No idea how we messed that one up but you can bet we found a way. This language is nuts. Now we have a guard to avoid. Lovely.



And yet my knee-jerk reaction to people speaking to me in Mandarin and expecting me to understand is STILL 'no comprendo.'