Language Study

Thursday 13th March 2008

In our reading and writing class today, there were some oral exercises, and the teacher asked one student to read both parts A and B, and I asked Erin who was sitting next to me, 'How do you say schizophrenic in Chinese?', which made her crack up and the teacher looked over and said her name... but then I started laughing too, and when Erin tried to explain why she was laughing, it made her laugh more... and so I tried to explain through my laughter, but I'm not sure the teacher knew the word 'schizophrenic' (but by this point, some other students were laughing). So I looked it up in my dictionary during the break, so today, I've learnt the word: jing1shen3fen1lie4zheng4 精神分裂症!!!

Monday 24th March 2008

I arrived a bit early to class today and saw Jun reading a notice that had been up since last week, only I hadn't seen it. Amongst other things was a notice saying that there would be a Local Dialect class starting this afternoon. So after lunch with some of the class, and after we visited Inju's dorm, I headed back to the teaching building to look for the class accompanied by Lili who was also curious about this class. When we arrived at the room that was mentioned on the notice, the door was closed. We cautiously opened it to find two Chinese girls studying at their desks. In somewhat broken Mandarin, we asked if there was a Local Dialect class in the room, and they gave us puzzled looks and said they didn't think so (or at least I think that's what they said). We proceeded to walk down the corridor to see if it had moved to another room, and stumbled across what might have been a reprographics room (there were guys who seemed to be fixing photocopiers) and asked the guys in there the same question. Almost giving up, we walked back towards the classroom we'd been to first and re-read the notice. A Chinese student went towards the door of the class, and thinking he was looking for the same class, we asked him to help us with reading the notice and see if it was in that class (by then, we knew he wasn't looking for that lesson). After he left, a lady walked towards the same class, and she turned out to be the Local Dialect teacher. So we followed her into the room, and a few minutes later, a couple more students turned up. The class was fun even though I didn't follow it a hundred percent. I just think that it must have been quite funny for the people we'd asked for help... a couple of girls who could barely handle Mandarin wanting to learn yet another dialect of Chinese! Oh well...!

It turns out there are a few similarities with Cantonese... although in the Local Dialect the tones are different to Cantonese, you still say something that sounds like "guy" instead of "jie" for road, and "hi" instead of "xie" for shoe... towards the end of the lesson, we got to introducing ourselves - names, where we're from... I was trying not to laugh, because "wo shi" is pronounced "uo si" and along with the tones, it sounded ever so much like you're doing a number two in Cantonese!

Tuesday 1st April 2008

April Fool's Day. Who would have thought that Chinese people would take this more seriously than Brits?! So, the day before, we had a chat with Mrs Ying and she agreed to come in a bit early, and that we'd go and sit in a different class and start the lesson as though everything were normal and see what might happen when the students and teacher of that class turned up. However, the class we wanted to go to turned out to be Mrs Ling’s class, and she was there on time and had started her lesson. The room next door had people in it already, and the teacher was Mrs Ying’s tutor, so she didn't think it'd be a good idea for us to go in there...

Second lesson, and Mrs Ling turned up punctually. We tried to do things like hide her phone and then text or call it, but Petra (who was going to make the call) ran out of credit. Ffion put chalk in the board rubber, but when the teacher used it, it didn't really work, and when the chalk did go on the board, she didn't really seem to notice.

At one point in the class, or perhaps it was in the break, or one of those times when we were trying to stall the lesson... I forget... anyway, Petra suddenly noticed that her phone had gone missing. So we all helped her look for it... but a while later, she noticed that Mrs Ling wasn't helping, and accused her of taking and hiding her phone. Her suspicions were correct, and so Mrs Jie gave a few hints, and some time later, Ffion found the phone in her bag. Chaos over.

We started class again. But seconds later, Ffion realised she couldn't do the exercise, because her pencil had gone missing. This time, we immediately suspected the teacher, and Ffion soon found her pencil in Mrs Jie's bag.

Right - really getting on with class this time. Mrs Jie began to read out the next question... then her phone rang. She answered it, and had a short conversation with the person on the other end. After hanging up, she told us that we all had to go to the foreign students' office at 3pm, because there was a meeting about moving classes to the new building. But by then, none of us would believe what she told us! Man, I don't remember anyone making such a big thing out of April Fool's since junior school!!!!

Tuesday 10th June 2008

In the break between the two parts of our listening class today, we played Dutch Blitz. There were only three students in our listening class today, so four in total. The teacher learnt the game a week or two ago and seems to enjoy it quite a bit. When the bell went for the second half of the lesson, he said "Ok, last one", and we proceeded to play our last round. When it came to an end, he looked up with a cheeky grin on his face and got up, ran over to the door, shut the door, and said again, "Ok, one more". I forget how many rounds we ended up playing... near the beginning of one, his phone rang. He picked it up and explained to his friend that he was busy in a lesson and couldn't talk - he was teaching Chinese to foreign students. The three of us tried to stifle our laughter. After a brief conversation, he hung up, and on the word "Go", we continued that round. I think the second half of our lesson lasted thirty minutes. I like Dutch Blitz!

Monday 15th September 2008

Just had a phonecall from some lady who was speaking really fast. After asking her to slow down, I found out she was doing a survey. It wouldn't be telling the truth to say I had no time to spare today, so I said I'd answer her questions if I knew what she was talking about. She asked for my age and then asked lots of questions, which I assume was about what kind of places I've ever worked in. I made this assumption based on hearing her say something about lots of places, something not very intelligible, and then 'work'. So I said “no” to all those questions, seeing as I've never worked here before. Then she asked something about the brand of something, and if I could name all the brands I knew of this thing. I asked her what this thing was, repeating the word I'd just heard.

Perhaps thinking that I was used to speaking some other dialect (which I guess wouldn't be wrong), she said, 'In Mandarin, we call it this (whatever the word was), I don't know what you're used to calling it'. When I asked her again what this thing actually was, and that it was the meaning of the word I didn't get and not what something was called, she asked something that sounded to me like 'What do you use when you shower?'

At this point, I started wondering if it was some company doing market research for shower products or something. 'Shower' is the only word I've learnt that sounds like the word she used. Not wanting to give the impression that I never wash (although in hindsight, it's not even like I knew who I was talking to, so what did it matter), I finally gave in and told her that I didn't understand because I usually speak English.

Then came the usual, 'You're foreign?', 'Which country are you from?' type questions. I'm surprised the conversation carried on for as long as it did. She took the trouble of asking me whether I enjoyed being here, and that she had once done a phone survey with a French person in another province, but his/her speaking hadn't been as good as mine. How much of this would have been true, I don't know. She then wished me well, that I'd enjoy my time here and grow beautiful (?!?!?!), and said she hoped she might speak to me again (uh - does that mean you're going to be calling with another survey again?) ...ah...the joys of language learning...