Chinese

Sorry I haven't written in so long, partly the reason for this is because classes started on Monday. I'm taking four classes, Chinese Modern History, Cultural Currencies (it's a Litt class), International relations and Chinese 1.

So far I think I'm going to like all my classes (I'm yet to have my International Relations class), nice part about the Chinese school system is every weekend is a three day weekend (no classes Friday).

My most intense class by far is going to be Chinese, while my other classes meet for only three hours a week, Chinese classes meet eight hours a week, plus two hours with a tutor, plus the homework, which is not easy. Everyday we are quizzed on the homework from the night before which is made up of characters, and recognition of syllables and their tones. The reason why Chinese is so difficult to learn is because first of all there is no alphabet, only the characters. Each character is it's own word (although parts of characters can go together to make up similar words). Also Chinese uses tones. There are four in Mandarin (five technically but the fifth one's neutral so I don't count it), other variations of Chinese (Cantonese for example) have as many as nine tones. So depending on how you say the same syllables determines what word you actually say. For example the syllable "tang" have four different meanings based on how you say it.

So needless to say I've been spending a lot of time practicing characters, listening to CD's and meeting with a tutor that they give each of us. Fortunately tomorrow they are taking us to Nanjing about four hours from here. It is the old south capital (nan- south, jing- capital), should be pretty cool, although the weather may not make it as pleasant (It might snow).

I'll try to write again soon, hope all it well.

-AL