Everyday Chinese 1

It has been almost 20 months since Ju came along, and sometimes I lose track of how old he is when people ask. It's now easier to go with years - one and a half!

Now that Ju can understand almost everything we say to him (I would say 80% because he catches key phrases and words, rather than the entire sentence), I find myself at a loss every day on one Chinese word or another! This morning, as he picked up Daniel's belt and gestured to me "what is this!", I started my response with: "Yeah! 这是爸爸的....."And I trailed off because I couldn't for the world find the right word for "belt". 

Good grief. So I made a list of all the words I have had to look up so far, words that I found I had to use almost every day when we encountered these things and Ju wanted to know what they were.

Belt                皮带 (pi dai)

Fountain         喷泉 (pen quan)

Watering can   喷壶 (pen hu) or 喷水壶 (pen shui hu)

Kettle             水壶 (shui hu) it seems every contraption that stores or spurts water is a 壶 of some sort.

Fire hydrant    消防栓 (xiao fang quan)

Paramedic       护理员 or 护士 (nurse) I have lots of trouble with this one because we simply to not use this word on a regular basis, but there's always the paramedic in Ju's picture books....

Crane             吊车 (diao che) Took me a long time to look this one up, but there's a godawful construction site next to our building and every day as we get out or into the car, he sees the crane.

Drums            鼓 (gu)

Xylophone      木琴 (mu qin) Didn't know this one because modern day xylophones aren't made of wood! (木)

Corn              玉米(yu mi) We never eat this, so I was stumped when I tried to describe Ju's toy corn on the corb!

Stove / oven   炉子 (lu zi) or 火炉 (huo lu - gas stove) Ju spent an hour on the wooden stove at the play area at a restaurant on Sunday. We have ordered his very own from Amazon and I shall have to beef up the next few months on Chinese kitchen/cooking nouns.

Shovel/spade   铲 (chan)

Mop         拖把 (tuo ba) I should buy him a mini-mop since I can never remember this one.

Bucket           桶 (tong)

Pot / Pan        锅 (guo) Don't ask me why we don't differentiate pots and pans. Frying pan could also be called 炒锅 (chao guo, chao3 means to fry)

Sink               洗涤槽 (xi di cao) or 水槽 No way on earth I would have ever known this word!

Jay Chou for Beginners #3: 一路向北

词 (lyrics)：方文山 Fang Wen Shan
曲 (music)：周杰伦 Zhou Jie Lun (Jay Chou)

This video has Pinyin and English translation too, which is great for beginners who want to sing along =) I've added the Simplified characters below for those who are stumped by the Fan ti zi. The title, 一路向北 literally translates to "The entire road northwards". Figuratively, it means driving all the way north. The last two words, 向北 (xiang4 bei3) also sound like the words 伤悲 (shang1 bei1), which inverted, means hurt and sorrow. So the play on words gives the title the meaning of one who is going in the sole direction of hurt and sorrow. The MV shows scenes from the movie, Initial D, where Jay Chou played the lead character, who, of course, had his heart broken by the duplicity of the sweet Japanese girl whom he catches with her sugar daddy. This is the b-plot to the main drifting action, the movie's unlikely hero being Jay Chou. 

后视镜里的世界 越来越远的道别
你转身向背 侧脸还是很美
我用眼光去追 竟听见你的泪

在车窗外面排徊 是我错失的机会
你站的方位 跟我中间隔著泪
街景一直在后退 你的崩溃在窗外零碎

我一路向北 离开有你的季节
你说你好累 已无法再爱上谁
风在山路吹 过往的画面全都是我不对
细数惭愧 我伤你几回

后视镜里的世界 越来越远的道别
你转身向背 侧脸还是很美
我用眼光去追 竟听见你的泪

在车窗外面排徊 是我错失的机会
你站的方位 跟我中间隔著泪
街景一直在后退 你的崩溃在窗外零碎

我一路向北 离开有你的季节
你说你好累 已无法再爱上谁
风在山路吹 过往的画面全都是我不对
细数惭愧 我伤你几回

我一路向北 离开有你的季节
方向盘周围 回转著我的后悔
我加速超越 却甩不掉紧紧跟随的伤悲
细数惭愧我 伤你几回
停止狼狈就 让错纯粹

Jay Chou for Beginners #2: 搁浅 Run Aground

搁浅 (ge1 qian3), describes a ship that is stranded or run aground, is one of Jay Chou's emotive ballads. Full of recrimination and remorse, Jay's character recounts the hurt he had wrought on his sweetheart (due to a misunderstanding, as seen in the MV) and proceeds, in characteristic Jay Chou style, to beat himself up emotionally for what he has done. Composed by Jay Chou, the song hits its depth of meaning with the lyrics and Jay's vocals, which is undeniably powerful, even with his garbled mumbling. Beginner to intermediate ability required for this one.

搁浅

久未放晴的天空   jiu wei fang qing de tian kong
依旧留着你的笑容 yi jiu liu ni de xiao rong
哭过却无法掩埋歉疚 ku guo que wu fa yan mai qian jiu
风筝在阴天搁浅 feng zhen zai yin tian ge qian
想念还在等待救援 xiang nian hai zai deng dai jiu yuan
我拉着线复习你给的温柔 wo la zhe xian fu xi ni gei de wen rou
暴晒在一旁的寂寞 bao shai zai yi pang de ji mo
笑我给不起承诺 xiao wo gei bu qi cheng nuo
怎么会怎么会你竟原谅了我 zen me hui zen me hui ni jing yuan liang le wo
我只能永远读着对白 wo zhi neng yong yuan du zhe dui bai
读到我给你的伤害 du dao wo gei ni de shang hai
我原谅不了我 wo yuan liang bu liao wo
就请你当作我已不在 jiu qing ni dang zuo wo yi bu zai
我睁开双眼看着空白 wo zheng kau shuang yan kan zhe kong bai
忘记你对我的期待 wang ji ni dui wo de qi dai
读完了依赖 du wan le yi lai
我很快就离开 wo hen kuai jiu li kai

(Repeat)
The sky that hasn't cleared up for a while
As usual retains your smile
(I have) Cried, yet no way to bury the guilt
The kite has run aground in the overcast sky
Missing (you), still waiting to be saved
I'm pulling the string
Reviewing the tenderness you gave
Loneliness that is scorching
Laughing at me for not being able to give a promise
Why is it, why is it
That you unexpectedly forgave me

I can only forever be reading the lines
Reading the hurt I caused you
I cannot forgive myself
So please treat me as if I am no longer here
I open both my eyes, looking at the empty space
Forgetting your expectations of me
(Once I have) Finished reading dependency
I will leave very soon

Jay Chou for Beginners #1: 七里香

While talking to a good friend in Czech Republic who is struggling to recapture the lost Chinese words from her years of Chinese classes, I sent her a song by Jay Chou, only one of the most successful and prolific young Taiwanese singer-composers of contemporary times. Jay (Zhou Jie Lun), who shot to fame in the late 90s with his unique hybrid of western rap/R&B and Mandopop is also notoriously garbled in his enunciation. Not a good start for those of you just beginning Chinese lessons, but a fun way to learn a couple of songs. Jay Chou's music is oddly haunting for me, perhaps because I listened to him during some of my most significant milestones during my 20s.

I have included the Chinese lyrics, pinyin and the English translation below. Because Jay Chou is from Taiwan, the lyrics you find online and in the MTV would be in traditional script. I have changed it all to simplified for the benefit of those of us who didn't learn Fan Ti Zi!
 
七里香 (qi li xiang), the song title, means "Common Jasmine Orange", a fruit that gives off a fragrance from as far as 7 Chinese miles, therefore the literal translation, "Seven Mile Fragrance", qi li xiang. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

* * * * *

七里香

窗外的麻雀 在电线杆上多嘴  chuang wai de ma que zai dian xian gan shang duo zui

妳说这一句 很有夏天的感觉   ni shuo zhe yi ju hen you xia tian de gan jue

手中的铅笔 在纸上來來回回  shou zhong de qian bi zai shi shang lai lai hui hui

我用几行字形容妳是我的谁  wo yong ji hang zi xing rong ni shi wo de shei

秋刀鱼的滋味 猫跟妳都想了解  qiu dao yu de zi wei mao he ni dou xiang liao jie

初恋的香味就这样被我们寻回 chu lian de xiang wei jiu zhe yang bei wo men xun hui

那溫暖 的阳光  na wen nuan de yang guang

像刚摘的鲜艳草莓  xiang gang zhai de xian yan cao mei

你说妳舍不得吃掉这一种感觉  ni shuo ni she bu de chi diao zhe zhong gan jue

雨下整夜 我的愛溢出就像雨水  yu xia zheng ye, wo de ai yi chu jiu xiang yu shui

院子落叶 跟我的思念厚厚一叠 yuan zi luo ye, gen wo de si nian hou hou yi die

几句是非 也無法將我的热情冷却 ji ju shi fei, ye wu fa jiang wo de re qing leng que

妳出现在我诗的每一页  ni chu xian zai wo shi de mei yi ye

雨下整夜 我的愛溢出就像雨水 yu xia zhen ye, wo de ai yi chu jiu xiang yu shui

窗台蝴蝶像诗裡纷飞的美丽章节chuang tai hu die xiang shi li fen fei de mei li zhang jie

我接著写 把永远爱妳写这诗的结尾  wo jie zhe xie, ba yong yuan ai ni zhe shi de jie wei

妳是我唯一想要的了解 ni shi wo wei yi xiang yao de liao jie

那饱满 的稻穗 幸福了这个季节  na bao man de dao sui, xing fu le zhe ge ji jie

而妳的脸颊像田裡熟透的蕃茄  er ni de lian jia xiang tian li shu tou de fan qie

妳突然 对我说 七里香的名字很美 ni tu ran dui wo shuo, qi li xiang de ming zi hen mei

我此刻却只想亲吻妳倔強的嘴  wo ci ke que zhi xiang qin wen ni jue jiang de zui

The sparrow outside the window chatters on the telegraph pole

You say that this sentence has very much the feeling of summer

The pencil in my hand moves back and forth on the paper

I use a few lines of words to describe who you are to me

The taste of saury (a kind of fish), that both the cat and you wish to understand

The scent of first love is hence retrieved by us both

That warm sunshine, like a freshly-picked bright strawberry (strawberry also refers to a hickey in Taiwan)

You say you can’t bring yourself to eat up this feeling

Rain falls the entire night, my love overflows just like the rain
Leaves fall in the courtyard, like my thoughts in a thick pile
A few words of gossip, are unable to dampen my passion
You appear in every page of my poem

Rain falls the entire night, my love overflows just like the rain
The butterfly on the windowsill, like the beautiful chapters fluttering about in the poem
I then write, that I would always love you, at the end of this poem
You are the only understanding I want

The plump ears of the rice plant, has blessed this season
And your cheeks are like the ripe tomatoes in the field
You suddenly say to me
That the name Common Jasmin Orange is very beautiful
Yet at this moment I want only to kiss your stubborn lips

Absurdly Hard Chinese Characters #1

Today's absurdly difficult Chinese word is

邋 遢

lā       ta

 邋 遢 is the adjective "sloppy". 

Let's first look at 邋 which has a whopping 19 strokes to the word. I saw so many radicals (parts) that I had to blow up the word to actually figure out how it is written. On its own, the word is an enigma, I couldn't find the etymology so I will try to break it down into its component radicals so it makes more sense than a mass of squiggles.

You would first recognise the 巛 (chuān) radical on top because you would have learnt or come across the word 巡 (xún), to patrol or tour. 巡 is made up of radicals 巛 (chuān) and of course 辶 (chuò) which means "road" or "to walk". 

Incidentally, 巛 is an archaic variant of the radical 川 (chuān) which means stream or river.

Next, you would recognise the bottom part that looks like the legs of a cockroach lined up in a row. It occurs in the word for "mouse" or "rat", 鼠 (shǔ). Notice how this word has no component radicals, I checked the etymology and the seal character looks like this:

It is the remnant of the primitive ideograph of a mouse with legs and whiskers!

You of course write the mass on the right first, then the 辶(chuò) radical last. Much like the icing that goes on at the end of making that big cake.

_____________________

Next, the word 遢 (ta) which is in the neutral tone. 遢 which itself has 14 strokes, means "careless" and "slipshod". It's pretty easy to write as it has three fairly common component radicals: 日, 羽 and 辶.

日(rì) is the word for "sun" and it does look like a sun doesn't it? The bronze and oracle characters in fact were circles with a dot or little dash in the middle.

羽 (yǔ) , a feather, goes commonly with the word "shuttlecock": 羽毛球

Finally, we've already talked about  辶 (chuò), which is written last.

So there you have it. Two absurdly hard to write Chinese words which most Singaporeans probably would never use on a normal day even though they are common enough in our standard vocabulary.

Julien's Chinese Name

After Ju was born, I was asked often what his Chinese name meant. It was really hard to explain it, because Chinese names are nothing like English, Germanic, French or Latin names that have one standard meaning like "hope" or "strength" or whatever. Chinese names partner a surname (family name), usually in two characters unless you're of Manchu descent (ethnic Manchus originated from Manchuria who established the last dynasty of China, the Qing) and you only have one given name (for example, Chinese NBA basketballer Yao Ming).

Chinese characters, especially root words often do not have very comprehensible meanings unless they are paired with another character to form a noun, adverb or adjective. Julien's 伦 is usually paired with 理 to mean "ethics" (伦理), otherwise, explaining just 伦 alone would take all day. 

So anyway, most Singaporean Chinese have three-character names: the surname and two names. Julien's is

云惟伦

yún  wéi  lún

The etymology of the characters also tells you a wonderful story as to what the character signifies. First, I have to explain that the modern simplified script tells you very little about the meaning of the word unless you know the traditional script. Here it goes:

云 or 雲 (traditional) means "clouds".

 雲 is made up of the radicals 雨 (rain) and 云

雨 is the pictograph of raindrops falling through a cloud and 云 means vapour that rises. Today, the simplified character replaces the traditional one since vapour rising pretty much forms clouds!

惟 is made up of the radicals 忄(心)and 隹,and it means "unique" and "the only".

忄is the same as 心 which means "heart" and is an actual pictogram of a heart.  

隹(zhui) is a pictograph of a bird with a short tail.

伦 or 倫 (traditional) means ethics, order or the proper relationships between people.

倫 comprises the radicals 人 which means "person" or "man" and 侖 which means self-examination and soul-searching. So 伦(倫)-- social order (伦常)and proper relationships (伦理) are made up of people who are self-examining and do soul-searching!

Hence, Julien's name, if you want to play with the three words together, means the Cloud of the Unique and Ethical, which really doesn't make any sense at all, since unique seems to be oxymoronic to the ethics that governs proper social relationships. 

That's why it's Chinese and not English!

Learning Chinese: A Reality Check

According to the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, Mandarin is one of the five most difficult languages in the world for native English speakers to learn. The Institute quotes 2,200 hours as the minimum number of class hours required for attaining fluency in Mandarin (that's over 2 years if you put in 3 hours a day, 6 days a week and do that without a break for 2 years) but I do not know their exact definition of "fluency" since most students who clock those hours report being completely lost when they get to China. The other four languages are Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Cantonese. (Yay, I have limited proficiency in two of the world's 5 hardest languages!)

A disclaimer before proceeding: I studied Chinese (writing, reading, speaking) for all 12 years of my formal schooling (the last 2 years are what the British call college, what is junior college in Singapore and is not mandatory) and have a Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK5) Intermediate certification. While this might qualify me as proficient in the language, I do not claim to be a native speaker as I am more proficient and comfortable in English. In fact I have lost maybe half my 3000 or so characters along with 80% of my academic proficiency at age 18. I am, however, able to converse with a native speaker from China and have had prolonged conversations with my Taiwanese friend whose patience outstrips my Mandarin vocabulary. Those of you who already know me would know that I am ethnically Chinese, my grandparents were born in China and I use informal Chinese on a daily basis in a predominantly English-speaking environment although Singapore is a multicultural society with an ethnic Chinese majority.

To begin, I'm not putting anyone off from learning the language. As a new parent whose single biggest challenge is to bring her child up in 3 languages (including Chinese), I think I am entitled to say that this is not a walk in the park. It's closer to a swim across the Pacific with your hands tied behind your back. You're more likely to drown before you get to Hawaii. Many westerners who have put in their hard yards to seriously learn the language have paid their dues and pretty much all of them agree that Chinese is pretty damn hard to learn (read a great tongue-in-cheek piece from American scholar David Moser or input "Chinese is hard to learn" in Google and find all of these people easily). There are plenty of good blogs out there which explain in great detail the difficulty in achieving minimal proficiency in this beautiful yet exasperating language -- David Moser's is a must-read for all beginners, Hacking Chinese gives good and practical advice -- but what else can I add to the conversation? 

Well, as an almost-native speaker,  I can comment on the difficulty of learning the language and the claims about what strategies work best, since I spent a good 12 years at it and during this time, I have been in the shoes of Western students who have never learnt a tonal language.Yes, I have wanted to tear my hair out staring at a list of words I had to memorize (we learn writing and reading at the same time) before a test and wishing to God and The Cosmos that I could quit Chinese was a weekly -- sometimes daily -- prayer. Ask any Chinese student or student of Chinese who didn't do it voluntarily. This is my version of a reality check for anyone who's deciding whether to embark on this journey. Oh, I'm not saying it isn't worth every bit of effort you're going to put in, it's damn well worth it after the 5 or 6 years you've been at it; but for those of us who like to live life without the blinkers of delusion, painful as it may be, here are a few things that some of you might find helpful if you are thinking about taking Chinese on, or wondering whether to call it a day.

1) Your Chinese-speaking husband/wife/girlfriend ain't gonna be much use

From first-hand experience, I can tell those of you who are thinking of or who recently acquired a partner who speaks Mandarin to forget it. If you think he/she is going to be your free tutor, conversation partner, you're better off speaking Mandarin to your dog. Your dog would be more interested. As others can attest to this, spouses and lovers are in your life for other reasons -- communication, getting intimate and the other half of the chores -- and they don't have the time or patience to be your teacher. 

My husband Daniel is German and in our 4 years together, he has not picked up enough Chinese from me to have a conversation beyond two sentences at the coffee shop. I, on the other hand, have enough German (from being self-taught) to have a protracted conversation with his relatives: me in broken German is a lot more comprehensible than Daniel with any Mandarin. A big reason for the disparity in our ability is the requirement for me to speak German in order to communicate with his parents (they don't speak anything else). You may think that's a real pain, but it's like a little accelerator for any student of any language. That's why you always hear about immersion and people advising you to go to China or Taiwan to really accelerate your proficiency. It's the deep end of the pool. Do or die. And most of the time, when you have no choice but to use the language, you do almost what any baby does naturally in language acquisition: you soak it up. 

But what if you don't want to spend 6 months in Beijing (in the smog) stuttering to locals and ending up having a conversation with them in English? There's plenty out there. Watch movies or TV from the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong (here we get Taiwanese and Hong Kong stuff dubbed in standard Mandarin, putonghua) online. Lots of Chinese pop music available, Jay Chou has atrocious enunciation, but he's a good starter kit to Chinese pop culture. Youtube will give you hours and hours of Chinese lessons (only helpful for students who already have some foundation and need practice), Chinese programs, and pop culture. Or you could just come to Singapore, aka "Asia For Beginners". There's enough Chinese resources here you can get on the cheap (books, libraries, media and the people) while having the safety of falling back on English when you feel like you're going crazy.

2) You can't escape rote memorizing
Many have commented that the learning curve at the beginning is steepest and it gradually gets easier as you ease into the grammar and gain traction with the tones. I would say the first year is akin to jumping off a cliff into a black abyss and then climbing back up again and repeating this another 5 times with every new word. Alright, I'm exaggerating it, but people who hate memorising and got by learning their French and German and Spanish relying on the alphabet system and cognates should take me seriously. The steep curve at the beginning for all novices is due to the fact that you must learn to recognise and pronounce enough individual words to have a basic conversation about the weather. Many students think it's sufficient to speak Mandarin and they choose to be illiterate. This is well and good if your aim is simply to have a couple weeks holiday in Taiwan or Shanghai. My view: Chinese is the hardest thing you're ever going to attempt to learn, may as well go the whole hog.

Native speakers have the advantage of having been exposed to the language since birth, so that syntax and all that grammar stuff becomes second nature. You instinctively know how to form sentences and express yourself in the native lingo. This might take the non-Sino learner maybe a year or two, depending on how much practice, interest and determination you have. But if you are doing this at the same time as you're learning new vocabulary (and this is the labour intensive part), it really feels like you're heavy-lifting all the time because you are consciously acquiring the entire system of word recognition, memorization, pronunciation and sentence formation all at once. It can be really daunting and I get it. I've given up learning German grammar because it's too hard. German isn't my passion and neither is cracking the magician's code that is their grammar. Hell, thinking about the genders in German is enough to make me take a sleeping pill. I need enough German to be understood and to understand and nobody has any problem with that. So if you're bent on becoming fluent and proficient in Chinese, make sure you're doing it because you have nothing else in your life that's more important than devoting the next 3 years of your life to this project. Because it WILL take that long, at the very least.

3) Give it up if you're tone-deaf

I'm serious.  Daniel is as close to tone deaf as one can be, but to his credit, the man tries hard. He gets by being understood even with his atrocious tones, but he can't really understand someone who's speaking in Mandarin because he can't tell the difference. This is crucial. I've had many conversations with Daniel that went like this:

Me (speaking to Juju): 帮妈妈把垃圾丢掉 bang Ma Ma ba la ji diu diao (Help Mummy throw away the garbage)


Daniel: Why did you ask Ju to throw away the spicy chicken? (辣鸡 la ji)

Me: It's 垃圾 (la1 ji1) not 辣鸡 (la4 ji1) ! 

But to Daniel, all the la ji sound the same. Here's a fun sentence to demonstrate tones: Lao3 shi1 lao3 shi lao1 dao1. If you know that Lao3 shi1 means "teacher" and lao1 dao1 means "nag", you could figure out that lao3 shi is probably "always" = "Teacher is always nagging". Western learners make a big deal of the tones, but I always tell people there are only 4 plus one neutral tone, it's not so hard, as long as you figure out those 4. It's really like singing in only 4 or 5 notes. Which brings me to my next point:

4) Learn to read

Yes, we have tones and it's a real pain to have to memorize every word with its exact tone. That's why you need to learn to READ THE CHARACTERS. Hanyu pinyin is a romanised form of the language which makes it really convenient to type on the keyboard, look up a word in the dictionary and figure out how to pronounce the word, but only if you already know how to read and write! It's really not a solution for learners who can't read. I'll tell you why: learning solely with Pinyin is like playing the piano without seeing the notes on the score. You're half blind. Think of the piano keyboard: it has several octaves but only 8 white keys and 5 black keys representing a note in each octave. There are 8 possible C keys and 7 possible C sharps. You can't possibly know which C sharp to press unless you can read the note on the scale. It's the same for Chinese. My previous pinyin example, la1 ji1 on paper doesn't make any sense unless you read it together with "ba3 la1 ji1 diu1 diao4" and you figure out that diu1 diao4 means "to throw away", by which you understand that I meant 垃圾 the garbage and not spicy chicken. But if you could read the characters, you would have no doubt about what I meant. In fact, when I learnt French, I would make it a point to look up every new word I heard to make sure I knew the spelling. I am a highly visual person and seeing the French or German word in my head reinforces my memory of it so I can pull it up again in future. If you can see the word in your head, you can remember it a lot better, and this is even more critical in a tonal language with pictograms in place of an alphabet.

Take the word 老 which on its own is an adjective which means "old". If you heard someone say 老百姓 (lao3 bai3 xing4) you would naturally guess they were referring to someone old or something which was old. In fact, you would need to know that the three words go together to make another word: commoner or common folk, which has nothing to do with being old. Again, 老板 lao3 ban3 (the boss) has very little in common with being elderly (although some bosses could be aged) nor a wooden plank which is what 板 is. Wait till you get to 4 word proverbs like 老当益壮 lao3 dang1 yi4 zhuang4（to gain vigour with age). So you need to learn individual characters and words that are composed of 2 or 3 characters and then proverbs and idioms (there are more but I won't go there). 

5) Context is everything

The Chinese don't like to get to the point. Even after they've finished the sentence, you still have to figure out what they meant because there are not tenses that resemble the Germanic or Romantic languages. It's worse than the Germans making you wait for the verb at the end of the sentence. When you're deciphering Mandarin, you need to replay the entire sentence in a split-second to work out the meaning because the context sets the meaning. Take this example: "Wo3 qu4 de2 guo2" and "Wo3 qu4 le de2 guo2".

Context A:
Question: Ni qu na li du jia? (Where are you going on holiday?)
Answer: Wo qu de guo (I am going to Germany).


Context B:
Question: Ni qu le na li du jia? (Where did you go on holiday?)
Answer: Wo qu de guo (I went to Germany).


Context C:
Question: Ni qu guo na xie guo jia? (Which countries have you been to?)
Answer: Wo qu le de guo (I've been to Germany).


Context D:
Question: Shang ge xing qi, ni qu le na li? (Where did you go last week?)
Answer Wo qu le de guo (I went to Germany).


Without the question (which sets the context), you would not have any idea if I was going to Germany or I had gone to Germany; whether I've been to only Germany on holiday or if I went to Germany last week. But then again, some people find the lack of tenses totally refreshing, since there are fewer arbitrary rules to learn. There isn't any better or worse here, it's just a completely different way of orienting your comprehension of what is being said. Instead of relying on tenses, you rely on an intuitive reading of the context.


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If you aren't put off already, I'll throw in two more cents on the arduous learning of Chinese. It's true what they all say about immersing yourself in an all-Chinese environment and memorizing every single word. But if you can see yourself making this commitment, the other reasons for learning Chinese is just as compelling as the challenges I've just listed. That's why I love the language, it's like the Tao of Ying and Yang: what is black is also white, and what is agonizing is also beautiful. Learning to write is a wonderful skill and the journey can be an endless puzzle of discovery for those who love puzzles or a perpetual endeavor of frustration. I've written elsewhere in this blog about how to write Chinese characters. In school, it was typical for students to write pages and pages of "xi2 zi4" (Writing Practice) for every new lesson. This was anything from 100 to 1000 repetitions (we would write 10 repetitions per new word) a week, sometimes twice a week. It does get easier because once you learn enough, you can use what you've got and this reinforces your long term memory. Your "core" 2000 word vocabulary will get you by in most situations. 

As students, we also read a lot (out loud), what is called "lang3 du2" (recitation) to practice our enunciation and pronunciation. In Primary school, our teacher would get the entire class to recite the entire essay (sometimes 3 pages) three or four times per lesson. If we didn't recite with quite enough expressiveness or if our tones were too flat, we'd have to do it from the top. There is only one word for this: arduous. At times you wanted to bash your 10 year old head on the cement floor you were sitting on. But I must say the 6 years of reciting ensured that I have perfect tones. This is the shit of Chinese poetry reciting, it's an actual art form. To become fluent, you'll need to do this a lot, and the best part is you can actually practice lang3 du2 on your own. Of course, having feedback is a lot better, so you'll need to attend class or get a tutor. It's like playing music, you really need someone to correct and encourage you. 

Finally, if you can get through all of that, you get the satisfaction of connecting with any Chinese speaker in the world (and there are many), discovering the magnificence of a 5000-year-old culture and just taking simple pleasure in being able to read stuff that, to any other person, looks like hieroglyphics. You do need a certain amount of proficiency to be able to do this, but like the circle of Tao, if you love the language, you'll master it eventually, and then you'll love it all over again.