Learning Chinese in Taiwan

Why do I need to learn how to speak Chinese in Taiwan when I teach in English at an American School? Well, if you've read any of my posts, you know that a small percentage of people speak English in Kaohsiung and you need to know some Chinese in order to navigate your life here. Funny thing is that many of the people who teach here and have lived here a while don't speak much Chinese and they live here very comfortably and get along quite well without learning but, man, I want to make my life just a little less complicated. Also, how cool would that be if I could speak a bit of Chinese by the time I left Taiwan.

Sounds easy right? Chinese is a crazy hard language to learn. I had my first Chinese class on Monday and we covered SO much in that 90 minutes....and I've forgotten pretty much all of it. There are 4 different tones in Mandarin - flat and high pitched, rising (which sounds like how we end a question in English), dropping then rising tone (scoop down then up) and finally the dropping tone. Using a different tone is what lends meaning to the word. For example, mā means mother but mà means scold. Crazy right?

The first class was looking at the pinyin sounds of Chinese. Pinyin is how you write Chinese phonetically so you can learn it. You write the tone marks on the vowels to help learn the correct tone.

I learned how to say "Hello, my name is Nancy and you?"  Nǐhǎo, wǒ jiào Nancy, nǐ ne?

Kěyǐ hē jiǔ ma? - That's - can I have a beer? (Very important phrase don't you think?)

And...

Wǒ hē cha, bù hē kāfēi. - I drink tea, don't drink coffee.

I have so much to learn and I truly need to practice each and every day for it to stick. Wish me luck!