My Chinese!

Only after you have eaten the original chinese noodles do you realise what we indians have done to the original.I am about to the do the same for chinese language-Indianise it!

Yes, my endeavour with chinese(Mandarin to be more specific) has begun last week and it almost feels even learning Chemistry in school (I used to get nightmares) was a piece of cake as compared to this.

I have joined a Mandarin speaking course and well...the good part of the course is that there are just three of us in the class , one funny german guy and one hot & cute british dude(full oogle material!)......the sad part is that there is no back bench funda here....EVERY word I say is clearly seen and heard and well...there is WAYY too much personal attention!

It almost feels like I am not learning to talk chinese but learning to talk itself!!!!!!...The teacher actually gets words written on paper banners and uses other "cute" teaching methods....hah!....even in kindergarden I didnt get to learn through such progressive teaching techniques!;-)

Some shockers about the language after my first two lessons:-

1) There is no concept of grammer in Mandarin!!!!!!!...(imagine how chill life would have been in school if english language didnt have grammer!)....Its all about tones and sounds!
2) The same word can be spoken in four different tones and each tone has a different meaning!--Go figure!
3) I realised why Chinese people ate soo much gum all the time--to get their mouths used to all the stretching and twisting thats required to speak this language!!!!!...After the first two lessons I actually had to not speak for a few hours to give my poor jaws some rest!
4) He and She or rather Man & woman are both called by the same word- ta!...err...how the hell is one supposed to differentiate what gender is one referring to??

There is no particular accent in the world(and my experience with the german and british colleagues) is good enough to learn this language--you just need to be born chinese to be a natural at it!

On that note my attempts to bell the cat continue for another 6 weeks....and I hope after that I atleast dont forget English if not learn chinese !

Till then...ziajian!(bye bye!:-)