70 minute car ride to the subway for a 12 minute ride to my destination. The photo above is on line #2 inside the line 4 loop... and that is when rush hour is beginning to wane. I could actually stand with my feet at shoulder width apart and my briefcase on my shoulder this time. When it is bad, you have to stand with your feet together and your bag at your feet. At those times, you have to get over your fears of mass humanity and rapid transmission of disease through the air.
Any way, I had a nice meeting and went to my usual spot for lunch after I have a meeting there:
Yep, that's a flame grilled hamburger.
Now on to the language part of this. If you are not into learning a new language or grammar, bail out now -- you've been warned.
I am quite happy with the level of verbal communication I can accomplish. If you want to learn Chinese, I highly recommend Flunez. On my first trip to China I could say a few lines, but this program served as an awesome base. Soon, I expect to take it up a notch and get some specific business Chinese training... we'll see how that goes. I guess I understand about 60 to 70% of what is said to me in a restaurant or store. Comprehension drops to less than 5% when in a business meeting.
So, I have gotten to the point (which I have said before) that I must learn to read this language. My handy cell phone dictionary allows me to draw in characters and get the definition.
For this lesson in how Chinglish is formed, I want to focus on Burger King's tag line: "Have it Your Way." This is below the logo on the cup in the photo above (我选我味) for which the pinyin is wo3 xuan3 wo3 wei4. The literal translation of this is: I choose I taste.
Now we are at the problem. Is taste above a verb or a noun? I hadn't thought of taste as either a noun or a verb until I translated this, but when you think about it you realize taste can be either. So, how do you know? It's easy in Chinese -- the character is very specific -- this is a noun. (A verb doesn't make a lot of sense anyway since everyone knows you eat the hamburger.)
In English, of course, we have a problem. We would now translate this "I choose my taste". This, makes good sense (some would argue better than their English tagline, but that is done to promote a hip/rebellious image as much as anything -- and rebellion is not looked highly upon here in China -- therefore the modification).
So why didn't I know from the start to use my versus I? Simple. My is technically 我的 (wo3 de). I would think they are using the first person pronoun not the first person possessive pronoun.
And herein lies the beginnings of Chinglsih. You see, while we accuse Chinese of being very difficult, really it is in some ways easier than English. We have conjugations, verb tenses, and contractions. And China has contractions as well. In fact, I have found that Chinese want to use as few words as possible. I don't really know why, but with 1.3 billion people, I guess you have to shorten some of it if everyone is going to get a chance to talk... Hence, when trying to understand (given my need for technical accuracy) I have issues when they leave out words they consider to not be critical.
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Our driver is trying to learn English. The problem for him is that he can only communicate in the present tense. So, telling me about a problem tomorrow or in the past is impossible for him. Think about that -- only being able to talk about what is going on now.
Chinese, of course, can talk about the past and the future, but there are no verb changes -- "is" stays "is" so to speak. Is does not go from "is" in the present to "should be" to indicate future conditional or "will be" to indicate a future condition. To change the time, they just add a few words to the front of the sentence, and then continue. Really, the grammar is much easier.
The problem with listening to and speaking Chinese is hearing and reproducing the tones. (For those who are not familiar with the pinyin Romanization, the numbers after the word indicate the tone.)
The problem with reading is obvious... you need 2,000 to 3,000 down stone cold to make it on the street, and over 5000 to be college level fluent. Keep in mind that is only a starter when in traditional characters there are over 90,000.
I have lost count of the number of characters I can read. My guess is I'm over 150 but less than 200. I'm getting good enough to guess what the character sounds like even if I don't know what it means. That is great because I can look it up way faster than drawing it, but proves worthless when trying to put a string of characters together.
I'm going to keep all of my posts on this subject under the tag language barrier. I'll have plenty of funny stories (similar to the plunger) that will go into this category over the next few months, I am certain of it.
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