Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Dashan

Well, I gotta say this guys' post has been rattling around my brain for some time now. Not that I read his post a while ago, just that I have been trying to learn Chinese and what he says about Dashan (see link in the title) is so true. Chinese is an annoyingly difficult language to learn, and seeing someone, smug smile and all, spewing it out better than most mainlanders does nothing to assuage this. Top of the list of annoyances about learning Chinese is the underlying belief of Chinese people that white folk cannot really learn their language. If you do speak something to them that they understand their face lights up like you just did a magic trick. If I did that to someone learning English in Canada I would be roundly slapped in the head with a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms wrapped in a bow of multiculturalism, and left to bleed out my biases on the sidewalk.
Whew, glad I got that out. Anyway, now that I feel better I should get back to finding some materials for learning this Putonghua.


1 comment:

Amrita said...

Chinese is a very difficult language.