I have to admit it… sometimes it’s a blow to the ego, talking in Chinese.
In English, I’m a fairly well-spoken kind of guy. I don’t trip over my words, I have a good delivery, and I’m confident in what I have to say. Enter Mandarin and I’m suddenly reduced back to a Neanderthal’s vocabulary.
“Fire bad. Girl pretty.”
Ugh.
Meanwhile, inside my head, I’m thinking, “Look, I’m really intelligent, okay?! I’m really smart! I have brain cells to spare! I’m not in Mensa or anything, but I’m not an idiot! I swear!”
It gives me a special appreciation for Charleton Heston in the original Planet of the Apes film. He gets his throat damaged early on in the film and he spends a torturous period of time utterly mute while the talking monkeys pat him on the head and say, “Aww… how cute! He’s pretending he can talk. It’s adorable. I shall call him Bright Eyes.”
Grrrr.
Anyway, hi. I’m just poking my head in to say that I was laid low by a bad stomach virus, but my fever finally broke the day before yesterday and I will have pictures of Tai Kang Lu up in the next day or so. Do stay tuned for that.
I’ll also have some pretty cool ChinesePod news to share, so start salivating. I might actually have an exclusive on this report, so this is the place to keep your peepers!
Zai hui!
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At least he understood what the ape was calling him.
Gadzooks! ChinesePod news! I simply cannot wait another moment to hear!
In fact, I shall cease all work and simply stare at your site until further notice.
Cheers, patiently yours,
Colleen
AuntySue - Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Colleen - You tickle me, you sexy thing, you.
I have the exact same problem. I’m at a fairly good level in listening, reading, and writing, but still lag behind significantly behind in speaking. The biggest part is not so much that I’m afraid of making mistakes, but rather that I very quickly get tired of talking about banal things, or of not being able to tell jokes. So I usually just give up, and have conversations where my friends speak all in Chinese and I reply all in English.
This is a bad habit to get into. I guess the best thing to do is just suck it up and wade through the childish simplicity of one’s personality in Chinese. I just hope moving from “childish simplicity” to “junior-high simplicity” doesn’t take too much longer.
Kmm,
Yes! I agree completely, I am fed up with being boring! Thats why language exchanges never work for me - I just cant stand to talk about nothing for hours on end.
I have no solution, I just wanted to co-rant:)
Colleen
At this point, I’d be happy if I could talk about anything in Chinese for hours on end! I’m still stuck at minutes!
My Chinese will probably end up clearer than my English.
I remember having the same problem. And it gets worse the more expressive you want to be, because you… WANT… to be able to express yourself making the same sorts of fine distinctions you do in your native tongue, but… but… but….
Dave, it’s exactly this sort of comment that gives me hope. It’s a problem you remember having. Past tense. Gotta love that.
kmm — How great to have the ability to listen to Chinese with little problem! I can speak only because I know what I’m trying to say! I have NO clue what the other person wants to say and struggle to just catch the gist of it! So, I’m rather great at carrying on a two-sided conversation with myself. So sad.
FRIENDS - how shall I say this, I’ve gone thru a lot, probably not enough, friends and language partners for exactly this reason.
It takes a special kind of person to put up with my ’simplified, ‘gibbberish Chinese and who yet is able to still respond in natural, at my level or just above Chinese (because I can tell when they ratchet down toooo much), and we still can enjoy each other’s company for the hours that are necessary to actually improve my Chinese. (My Chinese probably highly reflects my run-on English sentences!)
So don’t feel too bad if a language-partner or English/Chinese exchange doesn’t work out, keep looking and meeting new people till the shoes fit.
Actually, you newbies have it kinda easy. Almost every Chinese person will tell you your Chinese is good and they are very accommodating. When I was a newbie I was also fearless, I knew I stunk! Revel in your newness!
Lately my Chinese has gotten much better, and I’m wondering if a sign of being at an intermediate level is that everybody starts criticizing your Chinese, correcting minor transpositions, accent…I’m getting it all these days. And the trouble is I UNDERSTAND what they’re saying in Chinese, and it’s criticizing me! Body blow, body blow, upper-cut…I’m gasping.