Funniest Chinese Learning in Taiwan for foreign people. Intro

I'm Fredy Mauricio Cueva Bravo. I was studying an International Master Business Administration (IMBA) in the Technology Management Department at National Tsing Hua University, also known as NTHU or its full name in Chinese as國立清華大學, I’m alumni student now. My favorite hobbies are reading, photography and I have a wide experience to be a consultant on investment, international business, education, computer science, just everything related with numbers and the aforementioned.

Ecuador (厄瓜多尔), my mother country is literally located in the geographical middle of the world, in South America. It is a small but very beautiful and diverse, with many different kinds of ethnics, religions, wild life, regions, wonderful landscapes and full adventure.  http://ecuador.travel/

Note: In my next blog entry, I'll provide you more information about funny things of the chinese language.

I came to Taiwan last August 2009, and my first impression about this country was the variety of food that they have. Everything looks nice to try, but just nice to try, hehe, exception to the rule, tofu, kind of soy bean made food that smell as strong and bad so you can smell it as far away where you are. When I just came, I did not know chinese, point less for me, I recognize that, but it was fun after all, every time I felt hungry I said: “Well, let’s try it!”. I was so happy and of course, I ordered my food, but the only one thing I heard back was: “Wo ting bu dong(我听不懂)”. ohh! wtf!, What is going on?”, I said!. There was a small little detail: they spoke chinese(chino, chinese, mandarin, 中文) and I didn’t even know how to say “NǐHǎo (你好)”(hello in english).

At that time I had a counselor who was helping us with some questions I had. As you can guess, I asked her, “When are we going to start the mandarin training?” She replied me that after one day. Great!, I could not wait for that, so I was decided to order my food by myself. Well, the next day, when the class started, I also started to feel what most internationals students feel when they have to face a very tough language like Chinese. I think that the issue for us is the confusing four-tone system, the extensive system of measure words, and the whole lot of things to memorize. But even so, I think that it is less complicated to learn how to speak than how to read Chinese, and the things become worse when the teacher tells you that you have to memorize and follow the correct order to write every Chinese character; at that moment you just want to cry. I can say that the Chinese grammar is much simpler if we compare it with other languages. You can play with Chinese words and create your own sentences; but please, don’t go so far, haha!! I heard that native english speakers sometimes complain about our beautiful Spanish language has a complicated grammar (use of male and female gender, verb conjugation, etc.), whereas the Chinese language has little or no bound morphology and there are no grammatical paradigms to memorize. Each word has a fixed and single form: verbs do not take prefixes or suffixes showing the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject. Nouns do not take prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their case. I’m not trying to tell you that Chinese has no grammar, what I mean is that due to the lack of inflectional morphology, Chinese grammar is mainly concerned with how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Plus, each Chinese character is pronounced in one syllable, that’s why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle.

At the beginning it was difficult for me try to deal with the pronunciation of pinyin, especially with phonemes j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, b, p, m, f, chinese people use in their daily life, plus, plus!!!, the tones they have, 5 tones, it is like a sing every word you pronounce hehe. Really difficult to catch the tonality. For example, you want to say teacher, in chinese is Lǎoshī(老师), using tones should be "lao3shi1", it means you have to pronounce 3rd tone going down and  later up followed by 1st tone, that is a flat and continuos sound, like to pronounce cheeeeeeseeeee in english. Another funny example. You want to say. 我要看妳-wo3yao3kan4ni3- I want to see you, in this word 看(kan4), is you do not pronounce well, you will end saying (gan), and gan4 literally means, f..., hehe!, so be careful when you speak in chinese, you will have a lot of "fun" on it.

Chinese is a difficult language, but not impossible to learn, consider it as fundamental tool for making friends, eating well and of course, making some business contacts for the near future.

Myth 1: is it true chinese people can read in any directions?
Answer: For sure they can, but it's not a big deal to remark, cuz, the chinese character represent a word, not a simple vowel or consonant like in english or spanish, if that would be the case, we also can do it. Example, put some words in many different positions in a page in white and you will see you can read them. After all chinese words have some order too.

Myth 2: Is it a paradise for foreign?
Sure, for boys, yes, "it is the paradise", if you are open mind and understand what my words are saying, hehe, for girls came to Taiwan, many of them cry in here. But careful with the cultural shock.  For girls, they also can find more foreigns.

Myth 3: Can you eat crickets in Taiwan?
Sure you can, fried crickets are not but. but since almost everything you eat is fried, therefore, taiwanese food is not quite healthy, so be careful.

Any other question, please....

More related blogs:

• The end of 2009 is coming
• "Sharing experiences about Taiwan"- "Compartiendo experiencias acerca de Taiwán"
• Everything change by the time

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