Tone Deaf

As you might know, Chinese has four tones: high-flat tone, rising tone, falling-rising tone, and forceful-down tone--marked by these symbols: mā, má, mă, mà. There is also a neutral tone.

When I first started studying Chinese, I felt more than a little trepidation at the thought of having to speak in "tones." But after a short time of familiarizing myself with the sound and idea of tones, the tones became much less intimidating. Most of the time, you just memorize the tone while you're learning the word and after not too long, wrong tones sound as wrong to your ear as they do to Chinese people. It's like accents and stress in English. Context helps a lot too and most of the time, Chinese people are willing to play along when it comes to listening to our "tone deaf" Chinese.

That is NOT to say that I have in any way mastered Chinese and it's tones. I still have quite a few daily frustrations when it comes to tones.

A few of my Chinese studying woes . . .

The word for "supermarket" and the word for "humid" or "humidity" are exactly the same pronunciation, just different tones. Supermarket is chōu shì and humid is chóu shī. No matter how many times I practice, I always seem to forget which word is which. "Taxi! Yes, please take me to the humidity."

The word for "book" and the word for "tree" differ only in tones: shū and shù. I'm pretty sure Katie and I both made this mistake leaving our Chinese friends quite confused at Christmas time. Today we got out our tall Christmas book and put lights and decorations on it.

Katie and I both have trouble remembering the difference between the word "surprise" (jīng qí) and the word for "relative" (qīn qi). Hi! Guess what!! I have a relative to give you!

Another pair of words that I have trouble remembering are the verbs "to drop" something diào le and "to lose" something diū le. In many sentences, both words can apply. Hey you dropped/lost your pen! . . . so I'm lazy with those words. But that doesn't always apply: Have you seen my friends? I think I dropped them.

There are two Chinese provinces that are pronounced exactly the same with only a tonal difference: Shăn xī and Shān xī. To avoid confusion, the first province is spelled Shaanxi to differentiate without tone markings. Let's hope those two provinces' basketball teams never meet. Think of how confusing the radio broadcast would get.

Last week in our Chinese class, we were talking about Chinese Dragon Boat Festival which is coming up in a couple weeks. Dragon Boat Festival is Duān wǔ jié. Katie and I were asking our teacher which day Duān wǔ jié is this year, but we got a little confused and asked when China celebrated Dòng wǔ jié . . . which translates to "animal festival." Our teacher was confused: Animal festival?? How do you celebrate Animal Festival in America? We were confused: We don't celebrate Dragon Boat Festival (thinking we're saying Dragon Boat but still saying animal) in America. That's a Chinese holiday.

One of the first things you learn to say in any language is "I don't understand." In Chinese, "Wŏ tīng bú dŏng" or you can also just say "Wŏ bú dŏng." But change it to " Wŏ bǔ dòng." and the translation comes out as "I patch/fix holes." Now, granted, context would hopefully clarify some confusion, but the idea of how many times I said, "Sorry, I'm a foreigner. I patch holes." before I realized the difference, is so funny to me.

Oh for the day when I cease fixing holes . . .