Thursday, March 04, 2010

Chinese language lessons

I started taking a Chinese class at the end of January. I'm not learning very fast, but that's my own fault. I'm not practicing much out of class. We have a main instructor and a sort of TA. I call her the teacher in training because she'll be doing it next semester. Our instructor is Fred, who happens to be one of my favorite international students of all time. He'll be at my wedding, so everyone will have the opportunity to meet this amazing young man. Fred is the first international student I met when I started my job here. If I could adopt a Chinese adult, it would be Fred. Once you meet him, you'll see why.

Anyways, I'm not progressing very fast, but I know I will. The class is an interested group of people. All from students to professors to grad students and local people from the community. Chinese is grammatically easier than Japanese. The grammar is very similar to English. However, pronunciation and memorizing words has been difficult for me. There are four different tones which changes the word meaning. It also seems that the word 'shi' is used constantly.

So, until mid- May, you can expect me to be learning Chinese :)

1 comment:

グリー said...

今年のクリスマスも後少しですね。グリー内でもクリスマスに備えて異性と交流を持つコミュニティが活発で、自分も今年のクリスマスにお陰で間に合いました!!みなさんもイブを一人で過ごさなくても良いように、グリーで異性をGETしよう