On a whim I acted on a longtime aspiration and signed up for Mandarin Chinese class. The language of my ancestors and of the looming economic/cultural change of our times, Mandarin is supposed to be "hard" to learn. To be honest I thirsted for a challenge and hadn't been finding it at work. Why not throw myself against the great wall of a pictographic language with few connections to English? Why not have a chance at saying things like "i'm not a student" to the large portion of the world that lives in China?
Stretching my mind with this new class has really lifted my spirits, renewed motivation, and by requiring my full attention, it abruptly shuts down the work-mind soon after I leave the office. The best part is picking out simple words like "is not" or "big" out of kung fu movies or overheard conversations in the city. And just for the record, it's true that Mandarin is "hard" but I try to remember that little kids in China are growing up and learning this stuff right now, so hopefully I can too.
Suiran wo bu shi zhong guo ren danshi wo shi zhong wen xue sheng. Though I'm not really Chinese, I'm a Chinese student.
2 comments:
Chinese is not hard unless you makle yourself believe it is hard.
I know the following language:
1. Malay
2. Chinese (All Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka.)
3. English
4. Thai
5. A little japanese
6. A Little Korean
Especially thai, I just took 6 month to learn how to speak.
zhi yao ni xiang xin bu nan jiu bu hui nan.
Alex Liu
How To Become A Millionaire
http://secretsofunlimitedwealth.com
Hi there,
I’m a loonie too, just thought I’d kick off to a good start. I’ve been a service user since my 20’s – now in the my 30’s I’m ready to give something back.
I live in the UK, London and I’m no good as a writer, but I’m a planner and organiser. I get things done and I like to move things forward especially when it comes to mental health.
For this reason I’m thinking of setting up a project (yes another) to help people with mental health concerns and psychological difficulties. The project will include a podcast and I already have a team together to host it. We’ll be meeting on the 26th March to discuss how we can work together and the objectives and ideas behind the whole thing.
Although not concrete yet – the idea is to produce a show that is not just informative but rather entertaining. Very similar to the BBC OUCH broadcast. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast/ ).
I’d like to impress you with a few names that are getting involved but it’s all whispers at the moment and so is three different channels of funding. I’d rather spill the beans when the deals done but to say that there are some people on board that have been active in the survivor movement for a good while. One of the influential supporters of this project is magazine One in Four http://www.socialspider.com/1in4.pdf. We’ll be taking a lot of leads from these guys as they’re keen to help me along – i hope it’s a style and voice you approve of.
My reason for writing to you is firstly this. On the show we wanted to contact bloggers from all over the world to ask them for an update and a round-up of life re:mental health at their end. Just a very friendly news piece. I’m thinking of getting a team of you together so no one person is committed to the show.
The podcast will be a monthly event rotated by around 4-5 different presenters. All keen to speak to you all.
Logistically – we all have access to the net and technology - although I’ve yet to find out i will have the answer as to how we all can communicate across the waters if need be. My friend runs beercast and hopefully will be able to shed some light.
Does this sound interesting to you and your fellow bloggers? Would you perhaps be able to drop me a line? If you’re on skype we can talk away if you need to find out more. My skype details are : nutan.modha.
I really look forward to hearing from you and thank you for reading.
kind regards
Nutan Modha
MOBILE: 07853 344 033
TEL: 0208 968 0695
EMAIL: nutan.pc@tiscali.co.uk
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