Class 1: Crazy Noises...

My head feels like a radio tuner randomly scanning an all Chinese bandwidth. Class number one was three hours of making sounds. There were some words thrown in for spice, but me and my seven class mates largely just did our best to wrap our lips around the consonant and vowel sounds that fit together to make up Mandarin. Now they are all whirling around in my head like the white plastic bits in a snow globe.

Part of the challenge is imaginary. The noises the teacher modeled for us are just so different that it’s hard to imagine that they are really the ones that I am supposed to be making. The word for hungry sounds just like someone getting poked in the stomach – “uurgh” – maybe that makes some king of metaphorical sense but it takes a while to trust your ears and believe that that is really what you are expected to say.

I wonder if there are noises that Asian people make when you poke them that sound like English?

The extra-easy version is called Pinyin. It’s a phonetic substitute for Chinese characters and uses the standard roman alphabet. The only problem is that it is a romanized, not anglicized system; so even though the letters look familiar the sounds they are supposed to make are a real surprise. “Q” for example sounds like “tchi”, “C” sounds like “tse” and “Zh” sounds like “gue.” Rumour has it that some of these pronunciations come from the fact that the first developers of Pinyin were Russian.

So, I’m learning Mandarin via a Russian phonetic system presumably put together to facilitate Cold War exchanges between the two Communist Super Powers. It hardly seems like the most direct route – still it sure beats having to start straight off with characters. That would be a completely different world. It already is actually.

I’ve never had this feeling learning a language before. If you are an English speaker, or a French speaker then learning Italian or Spanish, or German is basically just becoming a more complete part of the culture you have been in for your whole life. It’s fine tuning. Learning Mandarin is like building a whole other machine.

A seeing machine.

There’s a huge Chinese population in Vancouver (17%). Suddenly, practicing Mandarin with a friend on the bus, I start to really see them, and they start to see me too. (I got quite a few funny looks)

I think there is something that makes you look for similarity at home, maybe the flip-side of the way you hunt out difference when you are abroad. Well now I’m doing the opposite. My teacher asked me if I was learning because I wanted to travel to China – I’d rather just go to Richmond.

~@~