Mandarin lessons

We have finally started our Chinese lessons.

Our teacher is called Zhang Min - or should I say - 我们 的 老师 是 张旼 - (wŏmen de lǎoshī shì zhāng mín). Those letters to the left are called Pinyin. Pinyin is a way of writing Chinese words using Arabic characters and it’s how everyone, including Chinese children, is taught to speak. The squiggles on top of the letters are tones. There are four tones and each tone changes the meaning of the word, but more of that later. Mastering the tones is the first step down the road to speaking Chinese.

And it looks like it’s going to be a long, hard road for me. Especially since I lack two critical ingredients for success. Firstly, I am tone deaf – so I think I am saying the words correctly but I get blank stares from Lucy (Zhang Min’s English name) and everyone else I speak to. Secondly, my memory isn’t so hot anymore so memorising vocabulary is a major problem. Literally minutes after a lesson I have forgotten all the words I have just learned...

At the moment we are practicing introducing our family - where they are from and what they do. I’m pretty good at this because, as far as Lucy is concerned, my wife, parents, brothers and children are all from yīng guó (England) and are all lǎoshī (teachers). I’ll break the news to her later when my vocabulary has improved.

So, back to these tones. The first tone is a flat, high sound and is shown by a horizontal line, as in: bā. The second tone is an increasing sound and is shown by a rising line, as in: bá. The third tone is a decreasing then increasing sound, shown as: bǎ. The fourth tone is a decreasing sound shown as a descending line, as in: bà

Sounds easy. Now watch and listen to someone pronouncing them.

Not so easy, eh? What’s worse is that the each tone represents one or more different words – and I mean different. Bā means ‘dumb’ or ‘eight’; bá means ‘to walk’ or ‘to travel’; bǎ means ‘to hold’ or ‘to grasp’ and bà means ‘embankment’ or ‘stop’.

Is it any wonder that people have no idea what I am talking about?