Hi there, my name’s Chris and I’m learning Chinese.
I was born in the UK, and I didn’t know anyone who spoke Chinese all the time, so being able to speak Chinese wasn’t very useful when I was growing up.
My mum is Malaysian Chinese, and Mandarin is one of the languages that many Malaysian Chinese people can speak. So she tried to teach me when I was a young child, and apparently, I learned a fair bit of vocabulary back then.
As an adult, though, I had forgotten most of it, but I could still remember how to count to 99 and say a few words such as hello, apple, horse, mother, and a few others (read the first post to see what these are!).
So that’s what I remembered from when I learned as a kid. Years later, I attended a 10-week adult evening class back in 2005, and quite frankly, I can’t remember what I learned then!
So, flash forward to 2015… This was the year I met my now wife! She’s Chinese and comes from Wuhan (famous throughout the world since 2020!).
That was ten years ago, but it wasn’t until 2023 that I decided to give learning Chinese another go. By this point, I’d been to China with my wife a few times, but still couldn’t say or understand much at all, always relying on her translation.
So I thought to myself, if I’m gonna be traveling to China a lot, it’s probably a good idea to learn it!
To begin with, I just downloaded the Duolingo app on my phone, and this is a pretty good way to get some of the basics down.
I’m still using the app now, although I am repeating a lot of earlier stuff because Duolingo decided to update their Chinese course but in doing so, everything seems a little more difficult, so when I came to do my next lesson after this update, I found it too hard and couldn’t understand much of it. So, I pretty much started again.
A year or so later, I joined an adult Saturday morning conversational Chinese class at a language school in the next town. It covers a lot of ground that Duolingo does, but I figure it’s good for practice.
I can speak to other students, and there are things I can learn there that are not at my current level on Duolingo as well.
And now, I’ve decided to start this blog, partly so I can document what I’m learning, which, hopefully, is a good way for me to study and review the Chinese that I learn, and also it’s here for anyone else who’s studying Chinese, who might find it useful.
Please bear in mind that I’m still a beginner, so feel free to comment on any of the blog posts with any tips or corrections!
Cheers,
Chris