Chinese Language by a Spaniard

If there is any really annoying thing to the foreigner visiting China for the first time that is the total misunderstanding the tourist is going to live. Once you get off the plane the linguistic landscape changes totally. Only commercial brands reminds you that you still stay in the Earth and not in other planet. Fortunately they have understood the necessity of writing bilingual signals, and picking up the luggage is as easy as in Madrid is.

The Chinese language as we learned the following days is virtually impossible to write for foreigners and even difficult for Chinese people. The «talking» affair is subject of discussion and some authorised voices say that mandarin is speakable for most mortals. I don’t agree. I mean, it’s impossible. The skill of these people to pronounce at the same time the finest sounds as well the most guttural shouts I’ve ever heard is out of my brain capacity.

So, the easiest things a tourist needs to know, such like good morning is a complex exercise of tongue acrobatics, where ups and downs of entonation are useless because anyway you are not going to be understood. The solution for the desperated traveler is opening a fantastic app on the iPhone which plays a loudly and clear translated mandarin message.

For sure there is people who tries successfully to express their deepest thoughts in Chinese, but for those are not blessed with this gift, fortunately technology is there. In fact we had a Chinese lesson at Jiatong University which serves for this purpose, distinguishing effectively the able ones and the disables. Through a methodical way of teaching the teacher tried to teach us the rudiments of the language. As I’ve said previously skills were tested here and spaniards kept their tongues in a non stop challenge.

Finally we have the alphabet, and excuse me for the correction but Chinese scripture has not a canonical alphabet, there is no corresponding sounds to letters because they don’t have letters but ideograms. A long stay living teacher here told us newspapers are unaffordable for kids because of the multiple number of ideograms, and writing them is even harder.

To summarise we are facing a totally different language which envolves complex sounds and more complex scripture, and, although we have done our best, honestly this language makes you feel as a extraterrestrial in your own planet. Anyway we have some days ahead to change this; who knows? Perhaps one of us comes back to Spain as a Chinese language expert.

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