Category: General Languages

Find out in the interview with Henry, the Chinese tutor!

Patricio: Can you tell me about what made you want to learn Chinese?

Henry: It was actually kind of random. I was taking a gap year between highschool and college and I didn’t have a lot going on, so I picked up a bunch of hobbies such as archery and Chinese. I found a really good Chinese teacher and I really enjoyed learning a language in my free time. I was learning French in high school, but I really struggled with that because I was being forced to learn it, but it was a completely different story when I started learning Chinese because I actually wanted to learn it. 

Did the French stick at all or did you lose it completely after high school?

I’m sure it would come back if I practiced it a bit, but I wouldn’t call myself a strong speaker. I’d say now my two strong languages are just English and Chinese.

Would you say you’re fully fluent in Chinese?

No, I wouldn’t say so. It’s a really long process and it really depends on what I’m talking about. There’s so many words to learn that if I’m speaking about an area I’m not used to talking about it can sometimes be easy to phrase things weird. I’m pretty comfortable going through life just with Chinese, I’ve done that both at the Middlebury Summer Program and when I studied abroad in Taiwan. 

Can you tell me more about the Middlebury Summer Program?

It’s a program I did when I first started learning Chinese. It’s 8 weeks over the summer where basically, starting from zero, you sign a language pledge to only speak Chinese. It was a pretty interesting experience because even though it’s pretty academically intense, I found it really relaxing because there were no expectations other than just socializing in Chinese. I had a lot of fun doing it and I think it’s a great program, and everyone from my group went from being level 1 Chinese to fully being able to live in China and Taiwan afterwards. 

You mentioned that you studied abroad. Can you tell me more about that?

I did my first year at Reed, and I decided I wanted to major in Chinese literature, and really before I could get into that I felt like I needed to live somewhere where they spoke the language. Especially because at this point I had only been learning Chinese for a year and a half. So I went to Taiwan for the academic year through the ICLP, the International Chinese Learning Program. All of my classes were Chinese learning classes. The main goal was obviously improving my Chinese, but it was also just such a great experience to live somewhere else and talk to people and stuff.

Did you experience any culture shock while living in Taiwan?

I feel like people ask this a lot, but really no. I feel like it reasoned with my expectations of what the experience was going to be like. And it was in a lot of ways very similar to the US. Especially Taipei. It’s very safe, comfortable, and the food is great. I never had a moment where I felt uncomfortable, it was very cosmopolitan. There wasn’t a lot of shock. There were definitely barriers. In the first couple of months I had to figure out when it was appropriate to have a conversation with people because obviously I wanted to practice. There’s a lot of difficulties in communicating, but never to an extent where I felt very out of place. 

So I remember you mentioned that Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet, and I was curious about how the language works. Could you explain how Chinese is written and read without an alphabet?

Yeah, I’m not a linguist and there’s definitely a specific term for it, but essentially each character is monosyllabic. The meaning and the sound are separate, so you can look at a character and there’s no definitive way of how it will be pronounced, and you also have to know like a thousand different characters, as opposed to the 26 we have to know for English. 

Note: it’s called a system of ideogrammatic characters

Well that sounds very difficult to learn. Do you have any tips for people who want to learn Chinese?

You definitely need to set a routine. Otherwise it’s so slow. It’s a balance of finding new tips and tricks to learn the language and then actually just spending a lot of time learning it. If you just go head first with no plan you’re probably going to waste a lot of time. There’s a lot of hours you have to put in. One of my teachers always says that to achieve proficiency you need 2200 classroom hours, as opposed to 600 hours needed for a native English speaker to learn Spanish. I think you just really have to have a passion for learning it. In my experience, the people who do the best at learning a language are those who aren’t seeing it as a tool to learn, but those who see it as something fun and interesting to do. Then you should go to tutoring, office hours, language scholars, language houses, which are already five ways to go speak it outside of class. 

Ok two more questions. Do you have a favorite word in Chinese?

I have a favorite phrase. Can I go with that?

Yeah of course go with the phrase!

It’s 江山易改本性難移 (jiāngshānyígǎi, běnxìngńanyí). It literally translates to it’s easy to move mountains and rivers but it’s hard to change your nature. 

In what context would you use it?

You wouldn’t find people going around saying that, but I just think it’s a true statement! You go through life facing all these hard challenges and then you have the simplest thing about yourself that you simply can’t change. 

 Do you watch any movies in Chinese and if yes do you have any recommendations?

 Yeah I watch a lot of Taiwanese new wave cinema. A City of Sadness is one of those movies Americans might know if they’re into film, and it’s great. But there’s a couple of really interesting movies that are less common. One of my favorites is Cape No. 7, which is the highest grossing Taiwanese film domestically. It captures the island vibes and the influences in Taiwan. And recently there was a really good movie about a family and queerness called Marry My Dead Body. It’s a comedy but it had some touching moments.

And then books, I started reading Dream of the Red Chamber, which is this 2500 page book about the downfall of a rich family. I’ve had a lot of fun with that one. 

Ok great thank you!