Feature
My Experience of Learning Chinese
Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed
More than a year back, I saw an advertisement in the Daily Star. The Ad said the Confucius Institute at the North South University, Dhaka, would provide a one-month crash course for “Beginner-Teachers in Chinese Language”. I always had a knack to learn languages. So I physically went to the NSU, met the Chinese Professor, Madam Jiang Yinlian and asked her if they would be interested to take me as a “student” at this stage and age in my life! She was very nice and welcomed me to join. I applied and became one of her students. I am having a fascinating experience. After successfully completing the one-month program, I became more engrossed by the Chinese language and got myself admitted in their regular paid Level-1 weekend course at the Institute. I continued through 3 semesters and now I am in Level 4.
I have been seriously attending classes, studying and practising the language. Professor Jiang has been an excellent teacher and we, a class of about 10 now (17 started), have learned quite a bit of Chinese, but it is not enough.
We are learning Mandarin. Mandarin is spoken by 80% of the Chinese people. There are more than a billion speakers of Mandarin Chinese. It is the official language of the People's Republic of China. However there are many dialects spoken throughout China and the world, but Mandarin is the most commonly used in China as well as Taiwan. Mandarin is known as “Pu Tong Hua”, literally 'Common Speech'. Besides Mandarin, there are six additional dialects in China, including, Cantonese, which is spoken in Guangdong, Guangxi and Hong Kong. There are also a number of ethnic languages, such as Zhuang, Mongolian and Miao.
Written Chinese is not a combination of letters, but pictograms and ideograms. Chinese is written in characters known as “Han Zi” Each character represent a syllable of spoken Chinese, more than 80% of Chinese characters are actually compounds of two or more characters. It is said there are more than 50,000 characters in Chinese. Over the years the characters have been simplified and now if one learns about 2000 characters, he or she can read, write, speak and understand 95% of Chinese.
In the late 50's the Chinese scholars have romanised the Chinese Mandarin. This has been done by using International Phonetic Alphabets (IPA, in Chinese “Pin Yin), which is similar to Roman and English alphabets This has facilitated learning Chinese by foreigners. So you can learn the language without even learning the Chinese characters. However, if one learns by Pinyin, s/he cannot read and write Chinese. In China they do not use Pinyin. So ultimately to muster Chinese language one has to learn “han zi” or Chinese characters.
My experience in learning Chinese has been awe-inspiring and extremely rewarding. This has been one of my best experiences in learning languages. When I started writing Chinese characters it was exciting, enthralling and stimulating. Whenever I write successfully a complicated character I feel a sense of great achievement. It is like a piece of Art. So far I have only learned 400 characters, still a long way to go, but it will definitely going to be worth.
By learning a language, you can know that nation's people, culture and history better. China is becoming a world power now. Relations between China and the world and also with Bangladesh are increasing. We have so much to learn from the Chinese people and their thousands of years of history and culture. There is no alternative but to learn the language and go deeper into the history, art, science and literature of the Chinese people. Chinese language was put into this interesting written form more than 3000 years ago and Chinese civilization is a civilization of more than 5000 years.
By learning Chinese I have felt that for Bengalees acquiring this language is not that difficult. Bangla is a very rich language. We, the Bangla speakers have a very flexible tongue. If we are attentive we can pronounce any sound. The more musical you are the better you can learn Chinese, as Chinese is a very tonal language.
Considering my diligence, interest, hard work and performance, the Confucius Institute, Beijing has offered me with a full scholarship to study Chinese in a Chinese University for one to two years. I have accepted that generous offer and I am leaving for Yunnan University, Kunming, China at the end of August, 09 hoping to become a Certified Chinese Language Teacher. This should be another extraordinary experience. Enhancing my Chinese language capacity in that environment will definitely be more exciting and invaluable.
Once I am in Yunnan University, I hope to be in touch with the readers of Star Campus through writing periodically from Kunming.
(Writer is Pro-Vice Chancellor, BRAC University
Dhaka, July 29, 2009
Email : sahmed46@gmail.com)
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