Language Barrier - Tips for Survival

[Hypiereon]

Surviving the language barrier in China is a matter of finding a way to communicate in such a way that both parties have an understanding of what the other is trying to say. The methods of accomplishing this are varied and numerous, some are easy, and some are humerous.

There's nothing that can really prepare you for it unless you can find someone to give you lessons. A book simply won't do because there is no way of actually knowing how the words will be pronounced. Chinese characters all look like chicken scratches at first. There is no way to really prepare for this problem.

However, there are things you can do to help you survive once you get here. Keeping an open ear is one thing. Chinese people will use the same phrases over and over, and these are very easy to pick up and use when you know the meaning. Also, Chinese people speak English differently, and so nothing should be taken at face value - especially if it doesn't make sense. Unless their English is just really good, you have to interpret their English. Example: "Where is Mr. Li?" "Uh . . he is broken." Translation: Mr. Li is sick.

That's one of the funnier ones I came across, but try to understand that if a sentence they speak in English doesn't make a lot of sense, you have to try and figure it out.

As for Chinese, bring a lot of white blank business cards and a small wallet to hold them in. You can use these white cards to get Chinese people to write things on, and use them when you need them. On one side should be the Chinese characters, on the other should be the meaning in English, and the pronunciation written in PinYin. As you use the cards, sometimes you will hear people say the characters out loud, then look at the PinYin and try to pronounce the words yourself. Ask for help - they'll be very willing to help you learn. In this way, you learn to speak like the locals, and even pick up on a few characters.

If you're really gung-ho about trying to learn the meanings of characters, the best website I use is this one --> http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html

If you can learn to read, speak and use correctly, and even write the first 300 characters (not all 3,000 mind you) then you will find that you can usually function quite well. You won't be able to express yourself very clearly, but you will find that you are able to understand something of what others are saying, and it's a good foundation for launching into learning Chinese. If you eventually get all 3,000 characters, you should be able to function as well as 80% of the population of China.

Back to the white blank business cards - they're called "ming pian" in Chinese, so if you want to ask for someone's business card, just say "ming pain" and make a little business-card type square with your hands with a question on your face and they'll usually get the idea pretty quick.. The little wallet you use to carry around the cards can also be used for your home address to show to a taxi driver, and used to put in the business cards of places you like to go. If you can't get a business card of a place you like to go, then try to find a business nearby who does have business cards, and you can just use the card to get to that business and walk from there. The little white blank business cards can be bought in China - 3x5 notecards cannot and are bigger and harder to carry around. Anything you want to learn - a word, a charcater, an often used phrase, can be put on the cards, carried for study, and used when you forget what you want to say.

If you're going to use a travel dictionary, make sure you get one with Chinese characters, English, and PinYin all on the same line. Dictionaries in China mostly only have the character and English and so are not good when you're trying to study the language.

Those suggestions are for when you are on your own, but the easiest way by far to handle the language barrier is to recruit a local who speaks English fairly well. A student, someone who comes up to you and just starts asking questions, anyone who wants to "practice their English with you" are all good candidates for taking with you into town. However, finding someone adequate is really hard - though better than nothing. If the person you choose has poor translation skills or their English isn't good enough, they'll never tell you.

Instead, you'll get into a situation where they have difficulty, and they'll try to figure out what you want, and if it doesn't come out right they'll leave the blame on the shoulders of the person you're trying to communicate with and not tell you anything of their inability to translate. Using a local has been both very useful at times, and extremely frustrating at others. So, if you get a really good one, get their phone number and try to keep them close. In a pinch, you can always call them up and ask them if they would translate over the phone.

[worldtour]

That's a great piece of advise. It's somewhat mind boggling, Chinese. Even with a little study and all the tips you give, you still may have a hard time communicating. The cards are a great idea.

The four tones make it really difficult. If you don't get it right, many will not be able to make the leap to identify what you are saying. I find that about 25 per cent of the taxi drivers will not be able to understand me when I give my address.

As esl teachers we deal with many variations in pronounciation, and you get pretty good at cyphering what is trying to be said. The frustrating part is you feel you have come very close to saying it right and yet what do you get? Ting bu dou, now I may have butchered Pinyin.

I find the language itself is one of the hardest areas of cultural tolerance for me. It just seems so dang silly, makes me want to slap the person that thought it up. Depending on your work you may not have a lot of time for learning either as everything else you must do takes you 3 times as long as it would back home. Finding a friend is so important. Many schools can provide you with an eager assistant or you will surely find a few good prospects.

I read that Chinese uses a completely different area of the brain, the area which is responsible for symbols. The characters that are picturegrams make the most sense to most lau wei.

worldtour

[gogo]

I think Chinese has to be one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. Why it is hard is because:

1. Chinese characters are used
2. Impossible to ever remember how to write these Chinese characters
3. Intonation is very hard. Ma, ma ma ma.... has 4 different meanings depending on your tone. One "ma" can mean horse, yet the other mean mother. So, better be careful which one you use when referring to your mum.

[Hypiereon]

Ma has 14 different characters that are used 2 different ways - as a word or part of a word, and as particles. Here's an example you can have fun telling people about back home.

妈妈骂马吗? ma ma ma ma ma? (Does mama curse the horse?)

Proper tones for each character are 1 0 4 3 0 in case you were wondering. There are technically 4 tones, but sometimes there is a 5th "no tone" which is indicated here by the zero.

[NorthSky]

For me, learning the language is an essential part of my China experience. In fact, I have decided that I will not leave China until I have mastered the language (by master I mean communicate with people on a variety of topics). It's true though, learning Chinese sometimes makes me want to throw myself from my 5th floor balcony.

I've found a great tool, very similar to the website posted by Hypiereon. It's a small simple flashcard program of the first 4500 most common characters. It contains both Traditional and Simplified data sets, English definitions and pinyin pronunciation. However, it does not have example phrases or words and frequently crashes (your computer will be fine but the program likes to freeze and must be restarted).

Unfortunately, I don't have any webspace available to post it (if anyone does I'd be happy to send it to them - it's about 312kb). But I'm more than willing to send it to anyone who wants a copy - just pm me.

Writing Chinese has to be the most daunting task imaginable. I've found a solution to the problem faced when looking at a 27 stroke character - "Where in God's name do I start?" The following website is very handy: Learning Chinese Online Page. It should take you to a site that shows animated Chinese characters - to help you with stroke order. If it doesn't just click on the link on the left that says 'Characters'. Many of the Characters are Traditional but it does contain many Simplified ones as well. Obviously this is not even close to all the characters in the Chinese language but it should give you the necessary tools to write any character - once you realize they're all made up of several different 'strokes' and the top to bottom, left to right (or is it left to right, top to bottom?) sequence. Then you can do as I've done and write pages and pages of characters hammering them into your brain.

Of course I also use Dict.CN. It takes English input and gives you the Chinese characters. If you then input the Chinese characters it returns English as well as the pinyin pronounciation. It's a bit of a task but it helps.

And now for my most recent Chinese learnings...

我是英语老师和我是汉语学生。

Oh god I hope I didn't make any mistakes...

[BBrian]

Looking at your above Chinese characters, all I could recognise was "English teacher" and "student", so I assume you are introducing yourself. Man, it's way too hard for me.

Good luck in mastering the language. I think you should be happy if you can just get to a conversational stage.

[NorthSky]

Haha, I guess maybe I should have done this earlier

我 是 英 语 老 师 和 我 是 汉 语 学 生
wo3 shi4 ying1 yu3 lao3 shi1 he2 wo3 shi4 han4 yu3 xue2 sheng0

I am English teacher and I am Chinese student.

(if I haven't made any mistakes...)

[Lorean]

I should comment on this as I have quite a bit of experience in this area. My reason for comming to China was to become fluent in Chinese. I am slowly but surely working my way into the advanced levels. Pretty much all my co-workers have started studying Chinese on some level, I have noticed two mistakes they make. The first is trying to learn to speak out of a phrase book and the second is signing up for courses at a school.

Phrase books are sold to make money for the publishers. They are useful if want to comunicate by pointing at translations. However, the pronounceation guides will make you incomprehensible at speaking. If you are multilingual, take a look at a phrase book comparing two languages you speak, you will see what I mean.

Pinyin is very useful, but very unintuitive at first. Furthermore, many sounds in Chinese do not have English equivalents, and are thus difficult to explain. Tones take practice to learn, and most learning materials do not accurately explain tones. You will need a good ear, or a teacher, or a combination of both to help you speak at a comprehensible level. I definitly recomend finding yourself a qualified private teacher. Beware of taking pronounceation advice from someone with no experience or qualifications. Native speakers of any language have their own ideas on how they produce sounds, these ideas often diverge from reality.

If you plan on taking classes at a school be very cautious. University and private school see dollar bills when they look at a foreigner. The quality to education will rest solely on the motivation and experience of your instructor. Moreover, a lot of courses are literature focused (reading/writing) and you will be given minimal time to work on your conversational Chinese. Whereas, if you hire a private tutor you can work on conversational skills as much or as little as you want.

Here are some useful resources. Note that due to the recent earthquake some may be difficult to access:
Learn Chinese (free high quality audio lessons)
Sinosplice: Try to understand China. Learn Chinese.

[mstapia]

thanks for the tips. i already bought a mandarin phrase book to help me. the globetrotter mandarin phrase book is a very good guide.

[kdavid]

Lots of good advice here. I agree with the above posters who have mentioned that finding a private tutor of attending classes is better. You get one-to-one attention, more speaking practice, immediate error correction, and tutors are almost always cheaper than a semester at xyz university.

To add to the long list of links for learning resources, check out Learn Chinese - ChinesePod. They're great, especially for learning characters.