Chinese Language

Everyday in Shanghai is an opportunity to practice Chinese. On the other hand, a day in Shanghai isn’t complete without being lost in translation. No matter how many years you formally learn Chinese, nothing compares to speaking it in a real-life setting. Whether it’s accidentally ordering 6 drinks when you thought you ordered the #6 drink, or trying to ask for directions but ending up on the other side of the city, we’ve all had funny situations getting lost in Chinese. It’s important to learn how to laugh at these moments because frustration never translates well in any language. However, there are definitely days when it becomes aggravating that you can’t understand everything that happens around you. For spring break a couple of my friends and I went to Thailand. We had joked around that perhaps if a local didn’t’ understand English we could always try speaking with them in Chinese. To our surprise a great number of Thai people speak Chinese and were incredibly excited to practice with us. There were many instances where we found that it was even easier to speak with them in Chinese in comparison to English. They told us how many Chinese people come to Thailand as tourists, so some Thai people working in tourism choose to learn Chinese. It was entertaining being able to speak Chinese out of China and opened my eyes as to how many uses there are to learn new languages.
Chinese is quite a literal language, making it both very easy and very hard to guess at times what things mean. This week I learned that “tudou,” the word for potato, literally translates to earth meat.