<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Chinese Lesson – Live The Language Part 1. by Joy McKenzie</strong></span>

<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3618" title="Tianjin Expat Magazine reports about LTL" src="http://ltl-chinois.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/DSC00423-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />When I first arrived in China, learning the language seemed like an impossible task. Forgive me, but everything sounded like, ‘ching chong’, ‘ping pong’, ting tong’ and as for the characters, they just looked frightening and meant as much to me as looking at the lines on the palms of my hands………….yes, exactly ‘absolutely nothing!’ Pretty soon after my arrival I found that virtually every man, woman and child wanted to be my friend! They were all offering to help me with my Chinese, this was essentially to improve their English – which incidentally is nearly always better than our Chinese.

Within my first month not only did I have a full address book of Chinese friends, but I found that I had picked up some key words and phrases, just by hearing them repeatably said by the locals, namely, nǐ  hǎo (hello), zài jiàn (goodbye), xiè  xiè (thanks), méi  wèn  tí (no problem), méi  guān  xi (it doesn’t matter) and hǎo de (OK). I also picked up a host of other phrases from taxi drivers, the most popular being, nǐ  qù  nǎ er lǐ? (where are you going?), màn  zǒu (mind how you go) and bù kè qi (you’re welcome). Although I still had to carry little bits of paper with me to show taxi drivers my destination, which was either hand written or typed in Chinese by one of my Chinese colleagues, I found that I could now have a simple conversation or at least have some answers ready for questions which would come up time and time again such as, ’měi  guó rén?’ (American?) - for some unbeknown reason most taxi drivers thought that I was an American! I think that is because I’m black and if I wasn’t African, they assumed that I was American. I don’t think that many of them realise that there are black people in Britain!! My set answer to this question was, bù  shì , wǒ  shì  yīng  guó  rén (no, I’m English). Other  questions included, Q. nǐ lái  zhōng  guō  duō  cháng  shí  jiān  le (How long have you been in China?) A. liǎng  nián  bàn (two and a half years) and Q. nǐ  zuò  shén  me gōng  zuò (What work do you do?) A. wǒ  shì  yīng  wén  lǎo  shī (I am an English teacher). One very important question that I learnt was, duō  shǎo  qián? (How much is it?), as well as, yī èr  sān  sì  wǔ  liù  qī  bā  jiǔ  shí, (numbers one to ten).

Having mastered the numbers one to ten and then eleven and twelve, I found that that stood me in good stead for the next three months – there was a natural progression learning the time, days of the week and the months of the year, as they are all denoted using numbers, yī  diǎn  (1, o, clock), liǎng  diǎn  (2, o, clock), sān  diǎn (3, o,clock) etc, xīng  qī  yī  (Monday), xīng qī  èr  (Tuesday), xīng  qī  sān (Wednesday) etc and yī  yuè  (January), èr  yuè  (February), sān  yuè  (March) etc. One thing that confused me was the number two, as there’s two ways of saying this number with ‘èr ‘or ‘liǎng ‘. èr is used when counting and liǎng is used for everything else, which is not counting e.g. telling the time or for saying two of something,etc.

By twelve months, I was on my third teacher and as the saying goes, ‘third time lucky’ and was I lucky, because I bumped into a representative of ‘Live The Language’ at a networking event which I was attending. I was immediately attracted to the name, <a href="http://ltl-chinois.fr/">‘Live The Language’</a> and instantly wanted to find out more – so I enrolled for their three hour free trail. One of their teachers came to my home and discussed my goals, tested me and together we developed a tailored structure for my lessons to suit my learning style. We then started again, from the beginning (reviewing pinyin) and filling in all the gaps in my knowledge, covering topic by topic thoroughly, as outlined in my customised lesson structure.

<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3617" title="Chuan" src="http://ltl-chinois.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Chuan-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" />I am convinced that the best way to learn Chinese is to totally immerse oneself in the language as much as possible. Those of us lao wei (foreigners), already living here have a natural advantage, in that we can hear and practice the language 24/7, if we choose to. Apart from living in the country, the things which I found helpful were placing sticky notes all over my apartment, (labelling house-hold goods in Chinese characters, pinyin and English). Asking a Chinese friend (a different one) every day to come around to my apartment to practice conversation face-to-face. Carrying an A7 police-sized pocket note book around in my handbag, so whenever I hear a new word, I can write it down either using pinyin or phonetically and then I can ask my Chinese teacher later. A voice recorder (one on a smart phone is handy), for your Chinese teacher to record any words that you find difficult to pronounce – this way, you can play back the recording and listen to the words not only the ones which you had difficulty in pronouncing, but also the ones you forgot how to say.

‘Sogo’ is also a good programme to download on to your computer, as you can practise writing in pinyin and it will translate it into Chinese characters for you! A good way to impress your Chinese friends and of course to learn the characters too. A really radical idea (for those of you who love your privacy and space, like myself), but are really determined to learn the language is to get a Chinese flatmate, (I mean some one who only speaks Chinese and not a word of English). This way, you’ll be forced to communicate in Chinese and there’s no way you can revert to English, because you simply won’t be understood. I’m seriously thinking about this option, as I feel it will accelerate my Chinese ten-fold! Finally, you could always get a Chinese boyfriend or girlfriend, so I’m told, but I haven’t explored that option yet!! To compliment all of these options are a host of dictionaries which you can choose from, from the good old-fashioned printed hard copy to those which you can find on-line, as well as apps for your phone. There are a lot out there, so there’s no excuse not to learn Chinese, if you really want to! What you need to do is to simply, ‘<a title="Testimonials" href="http://ltl-chinois.fr/testimonials/">live the language’</a>!