I start my Mandarin lessons today, with Trina. Language lessons come as part of my assignment, and I get 52 hours of whatever language I want to do. I did toy with the idea of Bahasa Malaysia, which would have been useful had I started months ago, so I decided that Mandarin would be more useful, even after I'd finished the assignment over here.
Trina’s great – and we start off really easy – ni hao (你好, hello), ni zao (你早, good morning), nin hao (您好, hello respectfuly), ni hao ma? (你好吗? how are you?) wo ye hen hao (我也很好, I am also very well), hai ke yi (还可也, OK), zai jian (再见, see you again), xie xie (谢谢 , thanks) etc. The hardest part is writing the characters, and it’s all really precise – I get corrected a LOT about starting from the top, then going left to right. It’s enough that I can actually write some characters that even resemble anything Chinese, let alone if I write the line from left to right, or if there is a little hook on the bottom!
After an hour, she asks if I want to have a cigarette – I must have looked really stressed! Well, it is quite stressful learning anything new, particularly a new language, especially Mandarin Chinese!
After the hour and half, my brain is frazzled and the lesson is over. Trina bids me 'zai jian' and I reply “bye”. She glares at me and repeats slowly ZAI JIAN, so I reply, rather sheepishly ‘zai jian”
That told me.
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