My Experience Studying Mandarin for 3 Semesters
My interest in learning Mandarin sprouted from my close relationship with my very first dorm mate, Yan, who was an international student from China. Although I was born in Thailand, my grandparents immigrated from China to Thailand, and so I am genetically half Chinese. Since I met her, I was fascinated by her unique perspectives and mannerisms, which I attributed to having grown up in a vastly different culture from mine. The chance to learn more about my family’s history through Yan in some way piqued my interest in the language. The university that I attend, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, attracts many international students, especially from China. Unsurprisingly, they make up a sizable portion of my discussion groups. I quickly noticed that they were not very vocal during group discussions. I would try to spark up conversation but I could tell they weren’t comfortable making small talk with American students.
The following spring semester, I enrolled in a beginner’s Mandarin course. The class met every single day and was a lot of work, but also extremely satisfying because I quickly made progress. Although the sheer amount of characters to memorize was no joke, my knowledge of another tonal language, Thai, combined with Mandarin’s minimal grammatical rules, made learning Mandarin much easier than I was led to believe. With my newfound linguistics skills, I took every opportunity I could to introduce myself in Chinese to international students.
The conversation rarely continues in Mandarin for long but it often continues in English.
It takes a lot of courage to communicate in a language where you are not 100% able to express yourself. When I introduce myself in Mandarin to an international student, it shows that I am not afraid to show vulnerability and can relate (partially) to their communication struggles due to studying in a different country than the one they were raised in. The result of this is they are friendlier to me. I get to learned more about their culture, and they get to practice their English without feeling as self-conscious. A double win!
An “aha” moment I had while studying Mandarin was understanding why the typical native Chinese speaker’s English accent sounds the way it sounds.
- There is little use of past and future tenses in Chinese. Often, Chinese people will have difficulty using the correct tenses in English.
- The character 她 can be used for boys, girls, or even objects. Because of this, it became apparent why Chinese speakers might frequently misuse pronouns like “he”, “she”, and “it” in English.
- Plenty of native speakers have difficulty remembering how to write characters on pen and paper. This is because many rely on pinyin keyboards to translate pinyin to characters. How many cultures do you know of where the same is true for such a large fraction of the population?
In the process of translating Chinese to English in their head, aspects of the English language that don’t naturally exist in Mandarin get lost in translation, leading to the characteristic accent. You can choose to see this as a mistake, but in my perspective, they are just being efficient with their communication. Who needs infinitives anyway?
After 3 semesters of intensive study, am I fluent ?
Absolutely not. Yes, despite all that work I struggle to write the two characters that make up my Chinese name. However, I don’t believe my inability to speak or write hardly any characters to be a failure at all. To this day, I can still introduce myself in Chinese and say a few things other than “ni hao.” This skill continues to be a doorway to many new friendships. Most importantly, showing respect and interest in others of a different cultural background than mine and making a strong effort to connect with them has given me an additional set of lenses to look at the world with.
If you are interested in learning a new language, don’t hesitate. Go for it! And when you finally start learning it, don’t be afraid to speak to native speakers. They will be delighted that you are taking an interest in their culture.
If you are looking for language partners to improve your foreign language skills you can find it on swaplanguage.com.
