Trying to be more local

One of the ways I have always wanted to be more local is in my Chinese signature. Whenever I have to sign it, I feel like it must look like a kindergartner wrote it. When Chinese people write characters, it's very fluid and flowing. When I write them, I am conscious that one wrong stroke can change the meaning, and that when a Chinese person is watching me do it, he or she knows if I write it out of order (yes, the order in which you write the character is important to them), so it's very precise.

Our extreme dependence on Taobao deliveries means I am often called on to sign my Chinese name. In light of that, about a week ago, I decided I needed to master a more Chinese looking signature. I spent some time yesterday signing my name over and over. Today at the hair salon after a much needed head massage, I took a risk and signed it as casually as I could. The girl who was helping me said, "Wow! You sign just like a Chinese person!"

Victory!

The tones

I'm going to make a bold statement. I don't think Chinese is really all that hard. Sure, it can be hard to pronounce, and the characters just look like chicken scratching, but there are other aspects that make it quite easy to learn. I mean grammatically speaking it doesn't get much easier - there is no conjugation of verbs, no articles. And things just make sense here. Like when I was looking for a treadmill, which I didn't know how to say, so I asked for, "The machine you can run on," and they replied, "Oh, run machine." Literally, treadmill in Chinese is "run machine." So often while searching for a word you don't know, you'll actually say it.

But the tones. Ah, the tones. The tones can bring a man to his knees. My first summer here, I was talking with a friend in Chinese and she said, "They should teach you to use the tones." Uh, yeah, they do. Many painful minutes were spent in Chinese class listening to the teacher drill a tone into someone's head (sometimes my own).

It is my responsibility these days to help my kids review Chinese between classes. This primarily consists of helping them memorize the characters (because their teacher says they are lousy at reading. Personally, I think they're stellar - I know a lot of adults who can't read a lick), and pronouncing things correcting. To their credit, they are trying to make the words have tones, and often they are correct. But if they don't know, especially when there are two characters together, they say the first word as 1st tone, and the 2nd word as 2nd tone. So I have to correct them. Sometimes more than once. And then I tell them that I know it's frustrating, because I've been there. We ALL have. (and when I say ALL I'm referring to the people I know who've tackled studying this language). But it will get easier. And once they've conquered the tones and the characters, everything else should be a breeze!

Adventures in teeth

You would think that a family trip to the dentist would not be categorized under "adventure." But when a simple teeth cleaning must be navigated in a second language, let the adventures begin.

We wandered around our neighborhood, looking for a dentist some friends had visited. I don't think we found that one, but we did find A dentist. I was really hoping that there would be nothing wrong with any of our teeth beyond cleaning, because that's all I know how to say, "Please clean our teeth." Also, I understand the word "problem." (as you can imagine, that word will become quite relevant later in my story).

First, we experienced the new and exciting opportunity to view our teeth on a computer screen in front of us. Wow - my teeth look really nice from the front thanks to years of braces and a commitment to personal hygiene, but my top back teeth have been running feral back there, like it's some 1980's back alley. I say 1980's because there are still a few teeth with lingering silver fillings. She pointed out that these must be more than 20 years old. Yes, thank you.

And then she said, "Let me show you a few problems with your teeth" after which the conversation took a tricky turn. She kept using a few phrases like "bu ya" (which I believe must mean "filling") and "qian ti" which I'm a little afraid means, "root canal" but more likely means "cap." Often she'd say a word several times and then tell me, "You can check what that means later."

The gist of what she told me was, "You've got some nasty old fillings back here that are making your teeth gray. I suspect that means inside there's all kinds of wrong stuff going on. I'm going to have to go in and see what it is. Also, that tooth you had redone in Singapore is pure crap. I'm going to have to redo that too. Then I'll recover them with white, you will praise me as an amazing dentist, and you will hand over large stacks of renminbi to our office."

Erik's got one of those ancient fillings too. Is it normal to want to eradicate these? Are they really so toxic? This is the problem with dentistry in another language - I'm trying so hard to understand, I can't begin to question whether or not it's legit.

Next Monday I go in for phase 1 of "bring Gina's back teeth into the 21st century." Should be another great adventure.

Felt Needs

Necessity is the mother of invention. It's also the mother of "kick you in the butt to learn more language." Nothing makes you realize you need to study more than staring blankly at someone who is talking to you, knowing they will expect you to respond with something intelligent, and you've got nothin'.

I've felt this butt kicking a few times this week. The piano tuner came to fix our piano which had not merely fallen out of tune, but plummeted out of tune as though pushed off a 12 story building. The extent of my piano vocabulary includes, "piano, sounds bad, fix." The winter months of dry, cold China air had caused various things to happen to our piano. She spent several minutes after her work describing, I can only assume, how she was able to resuscitate it. All I understood was, "Call me in August and I'll come again." Sigh.

Here's the problem - how do I possibly obtain this vocabulary? Invite a Chinese friend over and say, "If you were a piano tuner, what would you say about my piano?" There was no lesson on piano tuning in our classes. There was one on how to yell at someone who hits you on your bike, but not this. (I still don't have the guts to pull out the "Haven't you grown eyes?!?" phrase we learned. Let's hope I never do).

The other need I feel every month or so when I restock my shampoo. Normally I choose Herbal Essences, the light blue bottle, because that's what I bought in Singapore where it was in English. I'm trusting it's the same here. But today they were out, so I decided to try something else. How about Pantene? Well, I could read that it was Pantene (because it very nicely says it in English) and I could read the characters for shampoo, but beyond that it was a mystery. There were probably 7 kinds, several of which promised to fix something (important to know the character for "fix") but fix what? There was a woman at a counter nearby who watched me stare at the bottles for a full 5 minutes. I debated asking her about some of them, but suspected that I wouldn't understand her explanations. I kept hoping if I stared long enough, the characters would whisper their meanings to me. No such luck. In the end, I chose a Chinese brand that seemed "normal."

Now again, how do I learn this? I guess I could take a Chinese friend with me and have her read all the characters, then write them down. I hate using my friends for things like that. I did borrow the woman's pen to write down several of the common characters. Maybe Erik will know some of them.

I did redeem myself at the flower market. After buying flowers for a friend's baby shower today, I decided I needed the green sponge stuff that goes in the bottom of vases (see, I don't even know how to say it in English!). Because I am the queen of talking around something in Chinese, I asked for "the stuff that you can put flowers in to make them stand up" clarified with hand gestures. She said, "Ni yao hua ni ma?" I don't know. Maybe I do want hua ni. Can you show me the hua ni? Sure enough, I do want the hua ni! Erik and I have discerned that it must mean "flower cement."

The great thing about learning something in a moment of need is that chances are, you're not going to forget how to say it. So yay for learning a new word today.

Language thoughts

My kids are really into secret codes right now. They have a code book, and have actually made up their own code that is a combination of as many of the different codes in the book as possible. Yeah, it's complicated. I'm not even sure the CIA could crack this one. But hopefully the neighborhood kids will understand - that's the point.

Sometimes when I speak in Chinese, I feel like I am speaking in code. And that the person I'm speaking with has learned the same weird code, only better. Then I remember that the other person is just talking, without really having to think about it. And that I probably sound really funny to them.

Why do I sound funny? I sound funny for several reasons (I did a very Chinese thing just then - make a statement, question the statement, answer the question. If I can't speak the language at least I can be culturally relevant). First of all, although I try to use correct grammar, I'm sure I'm probably on par with a preschooler or so. I realize this when people say things back to me like, "So what you're saying is . . . ?" then proceed to repeat back to me what I've just said but in a more complex way. I'm sure my words come out all out of order, with random words stuck in like "snake" instead of "snack."

Second, my vocabulary is limited, so many times I am talking around my subject. Like this morning at the pharmacy, when I said, "I'm not sure how to say it but I need medicine for when you have little insects in your stomach" and wiggled my finger for emphasis. It would have been easier to say, "I need pinworm medicine." I am the master of talking around.

And I think I sound funny because after nearly 10 years of hearing and speaking Mandarin at least sometimes, I've been told I have a decent accent. A few times I've tricked my Chinese friends (unintentionally) when I called them, and they thought I was Chinese. Not hard to do when all you say is, "Hi, is Cindy there?" I've learned things like how to say "How much does it cost?" in a very colloquial way (saying the "sh" of shao like an "h" instead) that conceal my lack of vocabulary beyond it. Now imagine someone you know from another country who has lived in the US for a long time. When they speak English, they have a decent American accent, but their vocabulary is similar to a child's. You'd keep thinking that they should know more than they do. Imagine the frustrating conversations that would ensue. You're imagining many of my conversations. I once had a taxi driver say to me, "Your Chinese is so good!" then launch into a long monologue during which I tuned out because I couldn't not possibly follow him. He ended with a question about what he'd said. I'd been faking that I understood, and in response to my blank expression he said, "I don't think your Chinese is as good as I thought it was." Yeah, that I understood.

Ah, language. It's a funny thing.

My first language lesson

They say the first thing you learn in a new language is something bad, like how to swear. I'm not the kind of person for whom that would normally be true, but in the case of Chinese, it kind of is.

I was 12 years old when I learned my first phrase in Chinese. You see, my best friend then was Chinese American, and she and her mom would often converse in Mandarin in my presence. Once, in an effort to join in, I spoke some random gibberish, and accidentally said, "Ni you mei you" which means, "Do you have . . . ?" or "Have you . . . ?" So my friend decided it was high time I learned something, and springing off that she taught me, "Ni you mei you fan guo pi?" Which means, "Have you farted?" She also taught me how to ask someone if they pooped their pants. I asked those two questions of every Chinese person I encountered thereafter. No, I'm kidding.

But learning that did come in handy yesterday in the swimming pool locker room. There was a woman, her daughter, and her friend dressing next to me. While trying to avoid the woman's naked and freely moving near me body, I overheard a little noise escape from her daughter. The friend then teased her saying, "Hey, who farted? Was that you?? Did you fart? It was like a little song!" and so on. I think she was a little surprised when I started giggling into my locker. I'm usually more mature than that, but it amused me that I understand what she was saying.

So thank you Vicki Chia, for my first launch into Chinese language. Thankfully I've gone beyond my auspicious beginnings, but they are still helpful from time to time.

The Ph sound in Thai

I don't speak much Thai. In fact, I can only say "Sawadeeka" (hello) "Kapkumka" (thank you) and "baht" (which is what they call their money). Yep, that's it. But I am getting a little better at understanding how to pronounce what I can read. Thai has a different alphabet, but many things are written in Romanized characters. Still, it isn't always pronounced how it looks. The most striking example is the "ph" sound. We would say it like an F. If this were the case, "Phuket island" would be a bit awkward to say. Thankfully, it's just a "P" sound, so Phuket is pronounced "Poo-KET." On the other hand, Phi Phi island, is "Pee Pee island." And up on the mountain on Sunday Erik saw a building called the "PhuPhing Palace." Use your new knowledge of Thai pronunciation and figure that one out.

code 46

I recently saw a movie called Code 46 (not to be confused with Ladder 49). I don't recommend the movie. Although from a purely amoral standpoint it was well-done, it was extremely disturbing.

But the point is, in the movie, which is futuristic, English is the common language of the world but other languages have become mixed in, as greetings or other common words.

This morning as we were out, I noticed that my children are also forming their own world language between the two of them. When jumping, they say, "ready, steady, jump!" which they picked up from Australian friends. They speak of the "lift" instead of the elevator, like they do here. Older women are all "ayi" as they are in China. "Ai-yo!" is their exclamation of choice. And at Sunday school this week, Ethan (and this saddens me greatly) learned how to play "duck, duck, GOOSE." I feel as though a part of my childhood has died. For those of you outside of Minnesota, USA, we grew up playing "duck, duck, grey duck." Yes, that's right. Infinitely more fun.

But I'm happy to have my little globe trotting kids and I hope they continue to pick up bits and pieces from other cultures along the way.