Update 3: Outside It's Cold (But Not as Cold as My Heart)

...Snow Day!

I feel you, bud

I'm currently ensconced in about forty feet of snow, and I'll have two tests tomorrow. So I'm writing this blog post. I'm also feeling very anxious because I'm expecting at least one package in the mail today, and it's probably sitting right in my mailbox...but I can't get to it.

Behind the Scenes
As you may know, the culmination of this project will be a live TEDtalk in front of our gifted classmates. I'm happy to report that I'm on schedule, and I've finished with my script and prezi. Now I'm just off to practice, practice, practice....and practice some more. I've also confused myself a little bit because it seems I planned out about six or seven weeks' worth of learning and blog posts, even though we have a little less than that. Because I'm stubborn as always and determined to get stuff done, I'll probably just do some extra blog posts to make up for it.

Additionally, I said at the beginning of my project that my end goal would be to write a recipe for scallion pancakes in Chinese. I know many of you were looking forward to that (mainly because there was a possibility of scallion pancakes...), but I think I might have to change that :( I really apologize for that, and as you may be able to tell, I like to stick with the goals I set for myself. However, after considering my motivations for this project, I decided it would be best to change my goal. My grandparents are currently staying with me and my father, but they'll be leaving around spring break. They've done a lot for me and my dad while they've been here by cooking and cleaning around the house. I mentioned that I wanted to learn Chinese in order to connect with my family members, so I thought it would be appropriate to write a thank you card for them in Chinese.

My flashcards so far

Auf Deutsch, Bitte!
Business as usual on the Chinese-learning front - still going through tons of practice sheets and flashcards. I've used up literally all the 3x5 flashcards I have, but luckily, my dad bought me three hundred 5x8 flashcards last year, so I'll use my paper cutter on those.

This past weekend, my family went to Chinatown. I was half-asleep, but then I remembered I could actually read more than three characters in Chinese. I took a look at the signs around the restaurants and shops and...nope. I could recognize a few new characters, but most of them were just unintelligible to me. I said at the beginning of my project that, even by the end, 300 characters would be too little to be "literate" in Chinese. Nevertheless, I'm not discouraged. Below is a shot of one of my practice sheets from this week.

Practice sheet - I'm up to 22 now!

My practice paragraph

For my practice sentences this week, I decided to change it up. In previous weeks, I've written separate, unrelated sentences. Because my end goal is to actually write something cohesive in Chinese, I thought I would try to write a short paragraph this week. It was definitely out of my comfort zone; it took me a lot longer to write these than in previous weeks. I also mentioned last week that I had trouble with the proportions of my characters. I tried graph paper, but concluded the grid was too small. I decided to create my own lines this week, and I'm happier with the results. The translation is as follows:

I speak English. I want to learn Chinese. I use a pen to write words. My Chinese is okay. My friends and my dad all speak Chinese. I love learning. I don't recognize many words.

As you can tell, the sentences are a bit awkward and choppy (and that's not just because of the translation). This is partly because I'm limited in vocabulary, but also because I haven't learned some of the conjunctions that would link sentences together. Next week, I'm going to try the same kind of exercise, but I'm going to push myself to try different sentence structures. If you didn't notice, all my sentences were subject-verb-whatever comes after that. As I was writing these, my brain started getting mixed up and I started saying the sentences in German! (It is much easier for me to use German than it is to use Chinese at this point.)

You Call My Mother Cow??
This week's info on Chinese is gonna be a doozy. I have three things planned, which means I'll probably end up talking about fifteen. You've seen on my blog that I write the phonetic versions of all my Chinese characters. This is called pinyin in Chinese. Pinyin can be useful because it's a bit easier for people to understand, if they don't see Chinese characters often (like me). However, Chinese speakers would almost never use pinyin to write. With smartphones, people often type the pinyin they want to use, but then select the character. That being said, Chinese people will still recognize pinyin. Like any other languages, there are rules for how to pronounce each vowel, consonant, and different combinations. Because it's fairly complex, I won't explain how everything about pinyin. You can check out this site, if you want to learn more.

Also on this site, you'll find different tones. Chinese is a tonal language; English is not. In tonal languages, the pitch of a speaker's voice can change what word they're saying. (The word for mother (mā) is pretty similar to the word for horse (mǎ). So it's possible a learner would mix up the two!) Consider the following sentence:

I never said she stole my money.

If you put the emphasis on a different word each time you say the sentence, you change the meaning of the sentence. Emphasis and tonality are not the same thing, but I think it's an easy way to understand how changing the sound of your voice could change the meaning of something. 

There are five tones in Chinese; one of these is "neutral". The image below does a good job of demonstrating how tones work: you change both the pitch of your voice, but (this is subtler) you also alter the amount of time you pronounce the word.

• Tone 1
• High pitch
• Level
• Nearly monotone
• Tone 2
• Slight rise in pitch at the end
• Similar to the pitch an English speaker would use to ask a question
• Tone 3
• Pitch falls, then rises again
• The falling-rising sound should be distinctive
• Tone 4
• Pitch starts high, then drops
• Similar to a command in English
• Tone 5/Neutral tone
• Pronounced quickly
• Little regard for pitch

Visit this website to listen to some examples of the tones.

Tones can be written with the marks (shown in the image) above vowels. Sometimes, they're also written with a number after the pinyin. For example, mā can be ma1. There are also three tone rules that can change the tone of a character. These rules may not always be reflected in writing, but you will hear them in speaking. The website above also has audio examples of these.

• 3-3 to 2-3
• If there are two third-tone words in a row, the first word becomes a second-tone word
• 不
• 不 (bù) is a negation word
• Fun fact: Chinese has no direct translation for the word "no" - there are just various words we use to negate certain ideas (kind of like the way English speakers may use "not")
• As you can see above, 不 is typically a fourth-tone word
• If  不 precedes a fourth tone word, it changes to second tone
• 一
• 一 (yī) means "one"
• Typically a first-tone word
• Becomes second-tone when followed by fourth-tone
• Becomes fourth-tone when followed by any other tone

Lastly, I wanted to talk about measure words. In English, when we talk about number quantities, we use number + word. For example, three books. This direct translation does not work in Chinese. Measure words are kind of like "units" that are used in between the number and the word. There are different kinds of measure words for different kinds of nouns. For example, three books in Chinese is 三本书 (sān běn shū); běn is the measure word. However, three horses is 三匹马 (sān pǐ mǎ); pǐ is the measure word. I tried to find an image with all the measure words, but I couldn't find one. This website has a list of all the measure words. Like last week's radicals, they can be overwhelming. Unfortunately, for foreign language learners, this would probably be something necessary to memorize. Obviously, you wouldn't memorize all of these, but it would be necessary to know the most common words. The word 个 (ge) is kind of a general classifier word. If you're really stuck, you can just use 个 (like I do), and Chinese speakers would understand you.

Thanks for reading through this monstrosity. I have two presents for you this week: firstly, check out the YouTube series Adult Wednesday Addams. Every Wednesday, Melissa Hunter uploads a short vignette about Wednesday Addams in typical, adult life. 

#me

And the one you've been waiting for (get on this level, Josh):

- Jess

Resources

• Centre for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language
• chinesepod