There's an App for That

In addition to teaching everyday, I also take Chinese lessons so I can learn to say important things like, “the cat is on the chair” and “the monkey is on the branch.” I am finding that even though I didn’t really know how to say anything in Chinese, the fact that I grew up hearing it is very helpful. When I learn a new word or phrase, I can remember having heard it multiple times from either my dad or from one of the martial arts movies he always watches.  Chinese sentence structure is actually quite similar to English; the hard part is the tones. There are 4 different tones and if you try and say something and use the wrong one, you’re probably saying a completely different word. For example, the word ‘ma’ can mean all of the following: mother, trouble, horse, curse and locust. So if you wanted to say, “this is my mother,” but you accidentally use the wrong tone, you could be saying, “this is my curse.” So yeah, getting the tones right is very important. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. I downloaded an app for learning Mandarin before I left home that models the pronunciation of words and phrases so I can practice them at my leisure.  Hopefully when I get to China I don’t accidentally say something completely offensive…maybe I’ll just speak English for the first few months.