Learning Chinese Language

This is a photo of a part of a page from my daughter's Chinese textbook. She is really learning the language well, probably because I learned from all of my mistakes how to learn another language. Make it fun and use it, use it, use it.

I hear so many people whine about how hard both spoken and written Chinese is. For example, this rant by Moser, an academic who should know better, is in my opinion absolute nonsense. I for one did not do well in French and never learned it, but I can communicate in spoken and written Chinese very well. I regularly read novels, newspapers and magazines in the language.

Many of the people who voice these opinions are the ones who when they were in China hung out with the other expats in the expat bar as much as they could in their spare time. They like Chinese as something esoteric to study but not as a living, breathing culture and people.

I saw these mostly Americans and Western Europeans when I was in Taiwan. About once a month I would go to the expat bar to blow off some steam with my classmates and hear about their wild exploits together. They went to this obscure corner of the island, surfing, dipping in mud springs, raving in the moonlight. It sounded like lots of fun. These people also did quite well in their Chinese classes. One such precocious classmate went from introductory to advanced Chinese in 8 months...but she couldn't communicate in the language. It was useless. Most of these people (there were some pinheads and goofoffs) knew how to study a language, but they didn't know how to learn it...especially one that was so different from their own.

Tune in to my next post to hear why I believe written Chinese is easier than written English to learn.