Learning Chinese

One of the most difficult things to overcome when living in China is the language. Although many Chinese people can speak English these tend to not be the people you’ll find yourself dealing with on a daily basis i.e. waiters, shop assistants and taxi drivers. Because of this the majority of foreign teachers living in China will pick up some Mandarin skills during their time in here. Whilst some will learn enough to cover their daily needs others go a little further enabling them to converse with the locals. I really do recommend learning as much as possible as life in China can be very different if you’re not reliant on other people as many new arrivals at the beginning, it can also be easier to make friends. From my experience I don’t think I would have met the people and been to the places I have if it wasn’t for making an effort to learn the language. Mandarin is a tonal language so it can be very easy to make mistakes, especially when constructing long sentences but I’ve always found Chinese people to be patient and willing to offering assistance throughout my time here so my advice is to be confident and just go for it because the worst thing that can happen is maybe a few people have a little chuckle at you.

Local dialects provide quite a stumbling block when travelling to different provinces in China and even Chinese people have difficulty understanding each towns own unique dialect. It’s not just differences in accents that make understanding problematic but many words are completely different. However standard Mandarin is all you need to concern yourself with as its taught in all schools/universities and is the only variation of Chinese you’ll find spoken on television or on the radio. It’s really only the older generations who speak local dialects regularly, even though most young people will be able to they’ll always speak standard Mandarin and only speaking their dialect amongst friends so its still relatively pointless learning the local dialect wherever you’re living in China as it doesn’t come up much.

It can be a little daunting when you first arrive in China as it’s not uncommon for people to want to speak with you because for many seeing a foreigner is still a rare occurrence. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself just looking blankly back at a local trying to start a conversation with me. Having said that it has never been uncomfortable as Chinese people are very friendly and welcoming and often try to speak English…even if all they know is “Hello” and “1…2…3”. Chinese is quite a harsh language to listen to and many people speak very loudly…especially on the phone but don’t feel you have to replicate them as you can still be easily understood if you speak a little more softly, you should hear Lloyd Shepherd…he’s a crooner.