That Chinese text book I was talking about

In my last post I mentioned a text book that I bought to help in learning Chinese. It was recommended to me by my Chinese teacher. I’ve been looking through it and it’s a very simple and logical read with lots of pictures. I like it – although admittedly it was picked out from a rather narrow selection in a book store in Chinatown here in Vienna. All the others were Chinese books for people with German as a first language, this is Chinese for people with English as a first language.

The ISBN of the language book, which is called Practical Spoken Chinese – with a big red 1 on the cover, presumably donating my level – is 7300042627.

Like I said I bought it directly from a high-street store, and when I tried to find a link to Amazon I didn’t have much luck (which is a shame, because I’m in their associates program, although that has never made me any money). I did however find a link to this Chinese language learning text book, (for children actually), here.

One of the main reasons I’ve become, quite suddenly, interested in learning Chinese is the written language. I think it’s quite beautiful and I want to be able to include it in my creative work, which includes 3d and Photoshop images, and know roughly what it means.

ma, ma, ma, ma

I’ve just had my first Chinese lesson – where else, but a Chinese restaurant – and it was actually fun. Learning language in a restaurant makes things a lot more fun than in a classroom.

The first Chinese word I learned was “ma”. Apparently ma can mean mother, ma can mean dope, ma can mean horse and ma can mean telling off. A very versatile word. It just depends how you pronounce it.

As I was saying ma over and over again with my teacher the waiter came over, said “Ma, ma, ma, ma.” and presented us with complimentary alcoholic mango drinks. You don’t often get that in a language lab. I guess we reminded him of his kindergarten days and he wanted to let us know.

I also have my first Chinese text book for learning the language now. It was picked out for me by my teacher, in close consultation with the ladies who run our local Chinese book store here in the Vienna. It comes from San Francisco and it’s absolutely aimed at school kids. It is full of illustrations and concentrates on language that is used in everyday life. I like the look of it, especially the Chinese writing – which I intend to master by the way.

During the lesson I also found out that tea is called cha in Chinese. But of course I already knew that, being an old fashioned guy who still remembers grandma asking for a cup o’ cha. It’s nice to find that even such a new and strange language has such a familiar word.

It’s time to learn Chinese

I don’t know anything about Chinese right now, but I recently got an intriguing offer. I was offered the chance of a language exchange. I’ll teach English in return for being taught Chinese. This is very early days and I’m excited. So lets see how it goes.