My Mandarin is sad...embarrasingly pitiful when you know that I have 2 Chinese children...soon to be 3.
In fact- their English after only a few weeks was better than my Mandarin after a total of 5 weeks in country as well as a college level class.
SO I have a new friend who is a linguistics major working on her masters and we were discussing languages and how it is more difficult for some than others to pick up foreign languages...
Before you go thinking, WOW- what a heady conversation- we were standing in front of the jumpy thing at a preschooler's 4th bday party!
She recommended this book because she said it would help me better understand the makeup and evolution of the Chinese language...and it would make me feel better about not speaking it better...
SOLD!
I went home and ordered it from half.com (LOVE that site) for $.75. Wohooo--delivered to my door 3 days later and now I am 2/3 of the way thru it.
I love this book! It explains all the quaint idiosynchracies of Mandarin through stories and examples from an American woman who has lived there off and on for several years. Even Adams- who will take Chinese in school next year can't wait to get his hands on it after hearing my howling in laughter at this woman's linguistic misfortunes while trying to order noodles!
A very entertaining read for anyone interested in Chinese culture and language.
And then I stumbled across this song on YouTube...I love these guys and now can't get the song out of my head.
Enjoy!
1 comment:
Hilarious!! I will have to check out the book. We did some adoption travel Chinese before traveling and or three year old taught us quite a bit in China :-)
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