Speak Chinese?? [Ask a Cross-Cultural Couple]

对不起，我中文不好。什么意思？

Duìbùqǐ, wǒ zhōngwén bù hǎo. Shénme yì si?

Sorry, my Chinese is bad. What do you mean?

I’ve been living in China for over 3.5 years and my husband is Chinese. It’s only natural that curious friends and strangers ask:

“Do you speak Chinese?”

中国梦 The Chinese Dream

This really isn’t a fair question, as grammatically I should answer yes or no, though the complex process of learning a language is not so clear-cut. What people usually mean is, “Can you speak Chinese fluently?” so I usually answer with, “No.”

Many people believe immersion is the best method for learning a language, and I do agree that living in China provides motivation for me to acquire simple sentences. From buying food and clothes to traveling and getting around on public transportation, I need and am able to use some basic Chinese. However, I can easily maintain my career and social life completely in English, so immersion motivation is limited in my context.

(Side note: I have friends that have soaked up Chinese incredibly well via living here. These friends usually love linguistics and have no fear of consistently putting themselves in Chinese-only situations. They are also ridiculously talented at oral acquisition; if they hear people around them say a word, they can remember it, like sponges! Personally, I’m not blessed with this ability. And am super jealous.)

Yes, my husband and I use English.

Yes, I teach children a foreign language entirely in that language.

“So how do you teach English without using the students’ first language?”

After a few years of teaching EFL, I now consider myself an expert at communicating via drawing simple pictures and using body language. The human brain in incredible! You would be surprised at how much language you can learn from an active teacher if you aren’t afraid to step out and try something new.

I’ve predominately worked with children, and kids are generally more comfortable with things that make adults feel silly, such as sticking out their tongues when learning to correctly pronounce “TH,” or laughing (rather than freezing up in embarrassment) when they mix up “chicken” and “kitchen.” I try to make my classroom a safe place for linguistic risks. I know from experience that confidence is often half the battle of learning a language.

But back to my pathetic Chinese! I’d like to explain a few basics of the language. Chinese is tonal; it has four tones (and a neutral non-tone) that make learners feel like they have to sing in order to speak correctly. Tones are incredibly important, as a word can have a completely different meaning depending on the tone. Memorizing Chinese means memorizing each word, its tone, and its character.

Chinese is written in beautiful, complex characters that do not coordinate with their sounds. Thus the first step of learning Chinese is to master Pinyin, a system using the Roman alphabet to represent the language. At the beginning of this post, I wrote in characters first, then Pinyin, then English. Reading and pronouncing Pinyin is somewhat similar to English, which helps learners like me, with exceptions. (Such as: Q sounds like ch, I is ee, ZH is j, etc.)

I’ve been referring to Mandarin Chinese here, not to be confused with Cantonese, which is the official language of Hong Kong and is spoken in many places in southern China. These two languages are closely related and used the same writing system, until Mainland China decided to simplify their characters. Now there are Simple and Traditional writing systems. The younger generation of Mainland Chinese (including my husband) can’t read traditional characters, as the new system has been taught in schools for a while now.

I’ve explicitly studied Chinese off-and-on primarily by hiring tutors. I learned Pinyin my first year and it saved my life. Since then, I’ve mostly struggled with finding a tutor that’s a good fit and having the time to commit to study. Some semesters I’ve been successful, others not so much. My husband occasionally has fun teaching me random words and phrases, but teaching is not his passion. (Not to mention my memory is terrible.) Our relationship is focused on, well, functioning as a healthy marriage as best we can, not me acquiring Chinese.

Call me crazy, but when I moved to China, I didn’t know any Chinese (besides 你好 nǐhǎo hello), and had never eaten a whole meal with chopsticks. I had a degree but minimal teaching experience. I had never been to Asia before. The last 3.5 years have been a constant growing experience of me striving to become a good teacher, learning the local culture and customs, building friendships, and acquiring a language. And I plan on spending the next several years of my life continuing to move forward in all those areas.

Q: “Can you speak Chinese?”

A: “一点点。我是美国人，我喜欢中国。你呢？”

[Ask a Cross-Cultural Couple]

I would like to do a series of posts answering people’s questions about cross-cultural relationships and/or expat life in Asia. Please leave your question in the comments!