In this blogpost I like to record events and experiences which have left a lasting impression. It is for that reason that most posts are on important books I’ve read and on places I’ve travelled to. I have occasionally written on experiences unrelated to those topics, such as the passing of a good friend, or the excitement of learning how to start and tend a fire. In this blogpost, I’ll write about my experiences of learning Chinese. It is my 5th language—Italian and English my first, and I learned French and Spanish later in life—and learning Chinese has been unlike the others for reasons I will now try to articulate.
While living in France and Spain, learning was accelerated by forming friendships with locals, many of whom could not speak English, and so in those countries, I never had to pay for language lessons. In contrast, learning Chinese while living in China’s economic capital, Shanghai, takes a great degree of conscious effort and investment because it is an international city where most can speak at least some English. For these reasons, it would be possible for me to live comfortably in the city without ever learning the local language (which is often the case among foreigners I meet). Of course, this would be unacceptable and something I would later regret.
I started learning on an app in November 2022, which involved 1 hour per day of listening to, and repeating, words and short sentences. Then, from late February to early May of 2023, I took a course at the university which entailed two 90-minute classes per week. During July and August of 2023, I paid for four 1-hour private lessons per week, a decision made because I spent that entire summer in Shanghai and had some extra time from not having to teach classes. And starting in September of 2023, I reduced the number of weekly classes to two, while practising several times a week with language exchange partners. At the time of this writing (November 2023), I am at the HSK 3 level, which roughly corresponds with beginner-intermediate; I can now structure full sentences, and have conversations, about daily life—for example work, food, friends, weather, travel (while often making copious amounts errors in pronunciation and grammar).
As learners will inevitably discover, a unique feature of Chinese is the importance of tone. There are four, which roughly correspond with high, low, rising and falling. A change in tone of the same syllable produces a whole new meaning. This is one of the biggest hurdles for students because this structure is absent in other languages. Consequently, foreigners and especially Westerners must train their listening to spot patterns in shifts of tone, and developing this skill involves a lot of laser-focused listening and deciphering of the same sentences over and over again until the shifts can be detected.
It is also essential to train the tongue to pronounce sequences of sounds which do not exist in the other languages I speak. For example, 我们 可以从 中间这会条路, which translates to “ we can start from the middle of this road and go up,” is pronounced "wo men kè yi cóng zhöng jiän zhe tiao lu shang qu.” Try saying that very fast! These kinds of sentences are tongue twisters because the phonetic sequences are alien to foreign vocal chords.
Another important feature is that Chinese is a very context-based language which means that meaning is often derived equally from the specific situations rather than from the sounds emanating from the speakers mouth. For example, 差不多 is pronounced "cha bu duo", and in one context means “similar,” in another this same pronunciation means “ending.”
It is essential to learn the Chinese characters. This is something I wanted to avoid because of the extra work and difficulty. There are around 50 thousand, and so it would be impossible at this stage in my life to learn them all. I’ve been told that 1500 are used in 90% of text, and memorizing them is in principle doable, but still: I have a busy schedule and so there are limits to the amount of time I can devote to studying Chinese. Nonetheless, it eventually became unavoidable, for several reasons. One is that I sometimes need to type and receive text messages in Chinese. Of course, I can use the translator, and I often do, but I also would like to read and type Chinese without the aid of technology. Additionally, learning the characters allows for a deeper understanding of the language, which of course has value in its own right. As of this writing, I’ve memorized several dozen, and so can type and read simple messages like “where shall we meet?”, “at what time?”, “let’s meet at the library.” By next year, I hope, I’ll be able to read full paragraphs.
It is a very metaphorical and hence poetic language, which accounts for the countless axioms and pearls of wisdom often expressed in pithy form. An example is 一叶知秋, pronounced "yí yè zhi giù," which translates to "the falling of one leaf heralds the coming of autumn," but which means "a small sign can indicate a great trend."
Moreover, so many words I’ve learned seem to be creative combinations of several separate concepts. One of my favourites is “enthusiasm” 热情 which combines the characters for "hot" and "emotion."
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