How I learned a foreign language

So, there I was in China back in 2002, fresh off the plane from Australia, surrounded by a gazillion Chinese people speaking Chinese (who’da thunk?) and me not even realising I wasn’t pronouncing “Beijing” properly, let alone knowing how to speak, read or write Mandarin.

I’ve always made a point of at least learning the words ‘please, thank you, hello and goodbye’ everywhere I go, but I couldn’t get my head or tongue around Chinese without hearing it spoken, so I arrived – on a 12-month teaching contract with a school in a city about two hour’s drive south of Beijing – with no way to communicate properly!

My first clue that it was mutual, was the big, badly hand-printed cardboard sign being held up by a bloke in a cheap suit in the Arrivals Hall in Beijing International Airport. I discovered later of course, that surnames come first in China, which explained why it read “Miss Glenys”. Not that he needed a sign – I was the only Western foreigner in the whole airport! The bloke, it turned out, was the dean at the school I was about to work in for the next 12 months. He spoke no English (at first), but they’d had the foresight to send their most proficient Chinese English teacher along to translate. Phew! She and I ended up sharing an office at the school, and spent a lot of time laughing our heads off.

An off-campus apartment was arranged for me as part of the deal and, at first, the school arranged for their car and driver to pick me up and deliver me to and from school.

I had to improvise with the driver or else sit in silence, so I started – and learnt my first two Chinese words in the process. I pointed to a donkey in the street (common back then – they hauled drays of coal bricks), said: “donkey” and kept saying it until the driver said it. At first he thought I’d lost my marbles, but eventually caught on and told me the word in Chinese, and made me repeat it till I got it right. Such a useful word! Then he pointed to the big police station (Public Security Bureau) we passed every day, and pronounced it in Chinese, which took me forever to get right and which I’ve never forgotten. Might come in handy one day! We spent every day laughing at each other, but once I realised the school’s principal was asking everyone to ‘spy’ on me and report my every move back to her, I gave the chauffeured trips a miss and told the school I’d rather ride a pushbike. It shocked the life out of them, but when I promised them I wouldn’t get lost, they bought me one! Freedom!

I managed to pick up a few words and little phrases here and there on that trip, but when everyone around you wants to practice their English (and I was there to teach it!), it’s a bit hard to learn their language. I couldn’t even go for a swim in the local pool without a stranger swimming up beside me, begging me to let them practice on me! True!

A couple of years later, back to China I went – to a different area. And there I learnt passable Chinese. How? Phonetically! It was brilliant!

Chinese has five ‘tones’, so if you get it wrong, you’re stuffed. For example, if your voice goes up instead of down in a certain word, it could mean something completely different and you wouldn’t have a clue. So the only way I figured I was ever going to learn, was to listen really carefully, write down (in English) what I heard in the tiny notebook I learned to carry everywhere with me (and still have!), and repeat it back to Chinese friends till they gave me the thumbs up. That’s it. That’s how I learnt Chinese. All of a sudden I was speaking Chinese words and simple phrases, and being understood! Amazing! I’ve shocked a lot of Chinese people over the years by speaking simple Chinese to them. “But you’re a foreigner! How do you know Chinese?” 🙂

Nowadays, I have a few free Chinese lesson apps on my phone, so that makes it easy to do anywhere, anytime.

A funny story to end – if I needed to make myself understood really clearly for something important, I’d ask a Chinese friend to write my questions on a piece of paper in Chinese and English (so I’d know too), and I’d fold it and just show the Chinese writing to whoever I needed to deal with. (It also stated that I didn’t read or write Chinese). The first time I did it at the bank, the teller read it, wrote her reply on it in Chinese and handed it back with an expectant look on her face. I cracked up, because it was so bizarre. At first she was really shocked, then all of a sudden I saw it dawn on her what she’d just done, and she burst out laughing too. Gotta love the craziness of learning foreign languages in foreign countries! 🙂