Why I Suck at Chinese

  You might have expected this, given that I celebrate Chinese New Year, but my ethnic group is Chinese. Thus, my mom has tried to teach me Chinese many times, usually during the summer, when class is out and I have more free time. This usually ends up in vain though, for a multitude of reasons. 

 Firstly, I don't really have a reason to use the Chinese I learn in these lessons. Given that I live in America, which is an English-speaking country, I don't tend to meet many Chinese people, (or many people in general, given the pandemic) and most of the time I either don't need to talk to them, or said Chinese people have learnt English anyways because of where we live. And though my parents tend to speak Chinese at home, they can still speak English so even if they say Chinese to me, I can say English right back to them with no problem. This means is usually forget most of the Chinese I've learned by next summer. 

 Also, our method of learning isn't particularly great. To describe it, it's like listening to a Chinese audiobook, but Dora the Explorer occasionally interjects to ask you what the next word was, and berates you if get it wrong. And just like audiobooks the new words go through one ear and right back out the other. The only way for me to actually recall a Chinese word is if my mom pays special attention into getting me to learn that words, and even then I still tend to forget them. So as you can see, not particularly great.

 It doesn't help that Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn! Not only are there millions of unique symbols you have to remember, instead of just 36 of them arranged in different orders, but there are so many little details you have to perfectly place, and for some reason you have to put your streaks in a specific order! In letter-based languages, they don't give a flying crap about what order you put the lines in your e in, as long as they can read it. But in Chinese if your line isn't collateral with your three, or if you draw the mini-square before the big square can devour it, then you're wrong and the corpse of Qin Shi Huang will come alive, and send each of the terracotta warriors to your address to spank you or whatever. And that's not even talking about the codswallop that is pronouncia- and oh, we've just received word from Qin Shi Huang that it's actually codswallop not codswallop and that codswallop means that you haven't given me your tax returns yet, and there are more terracotta warriors coming to your house. 

 So, I'm gonna go grab the garden hose to arm myself, and I'll see you next blog.