My 20th Chineseversary
A couple of days ago, I suddenly realized that 2022 marks 20 years since I started studying Chinese.
First thought: Has it really been that long?
Second thought: Now I’ve spent a longer part of my lifetime knowing Chinese than not knowing it!
Third thought: Boy, I’m so old!
I don’t remember if I’ve ever said here that I started studying Chinese completely by chance. It had not occurred to me that “Chinese is the language of the future” and I wasn’t “fascinated by Chinese culture since I was a child” nor was I “a fan of manga and anime but my grade didn’t allow me to study Japanese so I chose Chinese instead” (to mention three of the most common reasons for studying Chinese that I’ve heard). I didn’t have any previous interest in studying Chinese, and I simply chose it because I needed a third foreign language in my translation studies and the faculty secretary told me that the Chinese teacher was very nice and everybody passed the exams. So Chinese was it! If it wasn’t for that comment, I would have probably just chosen French or Portuguese, which I had studied briefly in school. Hey, I should track down that woman and send her a thank you gift!
It seems that, when I started studying Chinese, there weren’t many schools in Spain teaching it. My university was one of only three offering this language. There weren’t many available teaching materials either, and none of them were specifically for Spanish speaking students. We used a textbook published in China and with explanations in English. Back then, buying things from the other side of the world wasn’t very common either, so our textbook was photocopied and bound like a notebook.
The first year teacher was very nice indeed. He was a middle-aged man from Xi’an who played the violin and sometimes played in class. I think he tried to make lessons fun and not too difficult so people would continue studying Mandarin. In the second year, for one semester we had a female teacher who came from China on exchange. I don’t remember her lessons, just that one day she invited us over to her place to make dumplings. The other semester it was a Spanish man who had lived in China for many years. He spent the whole 2 hour class speaking Chinese. It was exhausting!
In the first year, there were 60 students or so; by the fourth year, only 7 or 8 remained. People that only chose the subject for the credits obviously didn’t stay long. We didn’t study Chinese language per se in the last two years, but rather translation. Many of the texts we translated for practice were stories about the meaning of chengyu or Chinese proverbs (such as drawing a snake and adding feet).
A few days ago, a friend asked me how people find characters in the dictionary, and it is indeed a very good question. In those times (I sound like a grandma), the internet was not as widely used as it is now and we all had paper dictionaries (the Chinese-English one that I had was very heavy). We dedicated a couple of lessons to learn how to use it, because it was quite complicated. First you have to deduce which part of the character is the radical, then count the strokes in the radical, then go to the list where all radicals are arranged by stroke count, and finally go to the page indicated in that list and find the word you are looking for. Phew! Online dictionaries are way faster and more convenient!
Have you ever learned another language? What made you choose it?
Yes, decisions you make and their consequences in life. I first went to China in 1986. I had a gap between block courses as an undergraduate and with a friend decided to go to China on a whim for 3 months. We debated China, Indian and Indonesia and decided on China since it just recently opened up for foreign tourist. And here I am in 2022 now living in China for the last 4 years.
China in 1986 must have been a very different country! I’m currently reading a book about a Colombian film director who lived in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. I didn’t even know there were foreigners there at that time!! And now this guy has just been appointed as Colombian Ambassador to China, hehe.
I don’t think my choice to learn Spanish as a foreign language led to anything nearly as fateful as your decision to study Chinese! But it sometimes comes in handy in Los Angeles (mainly when soccer referees try and cheat me).
Hahaha, languages are always useful!
Wow, I never thought about how complicated it would be to look up Chinese characters. Thanks for taking us down memory lane and congrats on your milestone. xo
Now with computers and the internet it’s easier… you can just “draw” it on the screen!
Wow.
It’s so interesting that the direction of your life was decided because someone said the professor was “very nice.” I’m also impressed that you’ve been speaking Chinese for 20 years. Wow!
My husband also had one of those dictionaries. It seemed so impossibly difficult.
If, at that time, someone had told me that I would end up living in China for 13 years, I wouldn’t have believed it, hahaha.
wowza..and i thought Cherokee was tough!
Haha, I’m sure it is! It must be very different.
That is such a wonderful achievement, Marta. 20 years speaking Chinese is a long time. It sounded like an interesting learning journey in Spain. The Spanish man who spoke Chinese and taught for two hours in class must have been really fluent. I haven’t meant any Spanish people or Spanish-speaking people who speak Chinese (apart from you!) and I’m guessing it’s not the top popular language to learn over there.
I’m fluent in Bahasa Melayu and studied it for ten years in Singapore and Malaysia. I chose it because it was a requirement to learn a second language in school. I remember I was as good as the native speakers and they were really nice about it, quite impressed 😄
Way to go for speaking Bahasa Melayu as a native speaker! Do you still use the language now? I’m sure that even if you’re rusty, it would come back after a short time if you were in Singapore or Malaysia.
Chinese is getting more and more popular in Spain, but of course it still lags far behind English, French and other European languages. Chinese is just too hard and it takes too long to master it, haha. Chinese people are also very impressed when I speak, but I am well aware that my tones are often not right, haha.
Yes I still speak Bahasa Melayu now, though a bit rusty! I think it’s the way with most languages that you learn fluently – it will come back to you after some practice.
Chinese can be a hard language with all those tones. But you speak it and I am sure many Chinese people aren’t too fussed about your tones 😄
Happy Chineseversary!
I started learning Spanish too in the days before the internet had apps too. I’m older than you! A dictionary was my friend for all noun translations. I got lost so many times exploring before google maps as I checked a paper map before leaving noting how many blocks from the landmarks I knew. I’m not fluent but I’m understood and can handle most things in Spanish. When the level gets too high ,google translate is my best friend when I can’t explain something or don’t know it’s called! I never knew years ago I’d be speaking everyday another language either!
Paper maps, right?? We are so last century, hahaha.
So last century. Hybrid analog and digital 😂