When I watch movies and shows or even read books that take place in other countries, I’m always left with this feeling of wanderlust. I want to go visit these places, eat the food, and experience the culture there. I want to meet people who call these countries their home and learn more about their history and traditions too. Sadly, I don’t even have a passport. Still, a girl can dream, right? Anyway, with this wanderlust comes a desire to understand a little bit about the language in each of these countries. And my recent obsession has landed with Asian countries.
During the week that I was taken out by a sinus infection, I fell down the Asian Entertainment rabbit hole. I have since watched a ton of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai shows. I watched "F4: Thailand," "Meteor Garden," "Nevertheless," "Love Between Fairy and Devil," and "Business Proposal" - just to name a handful. I recently finished “The Smile Has Left Your Eyes,” and I’m currently on “Lighter and Princess.” However, this entire time, I’ve kept questioning the accuracy of the translations that I see with subtitles. Knowing firsthand that they could be wrong, from watching Spanish shows/films, I told myself that I wanted to learn Mandarin. I sat in bed one night as I started yet another show and I told Corey, “I want to be able to watch these without needing the subtitles.” He gave me a look and said, “Whatever you want babe.”
He and Emery both think I’m crazy, and maybe I am, but I wanted to give it a shot. Little did I know that I was picking one of the hardest languages on earth. I tried Coursera, but I wasn’t able to hear the pronunciations clearly in the recordings so it was super frustrating for me. And well, it’s been difficult finding a class - the closest one is about 2 hours away. There’s not a very large Asian community in our town either, so finding someone local that I could practice with has proven to be very difficult. In the end, I decided to give Duolingo a shot. I had previously used it for Spanish, as I was trying to build on what I already knew at the time. So, I decided to go ahead with starting the Mandarin Chinese lessons through the app.
It’s been a bit of a slow start for me, but I’ve learned some phrases and numbers. I’ve just been repeating UNIT 1 LESSONS 1 & 2, until things stick in my brain. But y’all, this language is a whole other ballgame. They use tones, and their language is technically just sounds. They do not use an alphabet but rather characters that represent meaning. Then Pinyin is used to translate those characters for people who are learning to speak it. But the little I have learned, I’ve been able to pick out if I hear it in a C-drama. I’m hoping to dedicate some more time to it and put things down on paper once Emery switches over to off-season. If that goes well, I’ll consider the in-person class 2 hours away.
For now, I’ll keep trucking along with my app. Maybe next year I’ll invest in Rosetta Stone or something similar. And while it’s been difficult/challenging, it’s also been really fun! We’ve started branching out on some of our food choices - hoping to incorporate and modify Asian dishes to fit my current dietary restrictions. I’ve followed a few Mandarin-teaching Instagram accounts to help with pronunciation. And taking this on has allowed me to keep learning without the huge price tag or stressors that come with college courses.
When a friend asked me why I wanted to learn Mandarin my answer was, “So I can understand my shows without needing subtitles. Or at least not needing to rely on them so much.” She said, “Maybe you’re just not done learning. Once you get Mandarin down, you’ll want to learn others.” And she’s not wrong. I’d love to learn a little bit of a handful of others - French, Finnish, Korean, and Portuguese. For now, I plan to stick with Mandarin for at least a year - see where it takes me. Worst case, I learned a few things. Best case, I can actually communicate with someone who speaks it fluently. Either way, it's a win! Until the next post, zàijiàn. ✌
