That is what I wanted to ask! How do you guy`s get along with the Chinese language? And Qiuyan dosent want me to drive when I`m there, what`s that all about? John

Hi John,
You cannot drive in China using an international driving licence, you must first obtain a Chinese one and that isn't easy. You'll see why Qiuyan doesn't want you to drive when you arrive here. It is very cheap to take taxis whilst you are in the city. Use planes, buses or trains between cities, most of the transport is excellent and very reasonably priced.
The Chinese language is tonal but not too difficult if you have a good ear, for example, musicians are good at listening and repeating. The grammar is easier than English. Reading characters is very difficult. I've been here 3 years and cannot converse or understand most things mainly because I'm too lazy to learn and my wife likes to speak English. You should try and learn a few phrases, greetings, how much is it etc etc.
Come over here, have a good time, see what it is all about, and then consider driving and learning Chinese. You'll get much more pleasure from staying here if eventually you do learn the language.
Graham

Hi John

I have driven a car in most European countries and the States too but I never want to drive in China! You may decide this when you experience a major city there, it would be OK on the intercity motorways but city driving is defineatley not for me.
As Graham says public transport is so plentiful and cheap why get stressed out driving yourself. Even though I enjoy driving I always look forward to the break from it when I'm going to China.
As for the language I keep telling myself I must learn some but I find it very difficult, probably be easier for a younger guy. I know I would never be able to read or write but would like to be able to hold even a simple conversation. However my lack of language has not stopped me having a great time in China.
Tony

Mei doesn't drive in the city here yet as she says it is too easy to get lost. I would need her beside me in Nanning if I was driving so why bother as she can drive me! It isn't easy switching from driving on the left to right then back again. I even find crossing the road takes a bit of adjustment.
Most shop signs, bus station, railstation and airport signs and newspaper headlines are in English, as are the ATMs which just encourage one to be lazy and not learn Chinese. Even the station announcements on the tube in Beijing and bus stop announcements on the buses were in English!!!
I think Mei is slightly surprised that almost nothing in UK is available in any language other than English.
David

I suppose the same complaint can be said about us but i find the Chinese talk very quickly, I have picked up only a couple of words/phrases and how to ask for a coffee , the only Chinese i can read is Male or Female, very important not to get them confused when you need a bathroom .Another thing i get wrong is when i think the family is arguing and they are not! Cantonese has 9 tones and Mandarin 4, my wife canspeak both but mainly Cantonese. As for driving i let my wife do the steering and i sit on the back of the bike and have mild anxiety attacks!

I agree about learning a few characters, stops embarrassment. Also, you should learn a few words. A really good book to get hold of is the "Say It Right in Chinese" using the EPLS (easily pronounced language system). I got mine from Amazon for less than £5 and is easily the best guide to speaking the language. Of course you should practice with your girlfriend or wife. I'm told if you get the pronounciation wrong for beer it comes out as 'bottom wind'!! Anyway, the Chinese do make allowances for westerners.
Also, this site http://www.melnyks.com/site-map/ gives free downloadable lessons that you can put on your mp3 player.

I will be glad when the use of English/Pinyin spreads to Nanning, esp the bus stations!

Barrie

Thank`s Barrie , Ni hao ma ? That is a very helpful site .

I said to Qiuyan that I didnt know that I was going to grow up to be a china man . She said it takes a long time to be one . lol We are going to have a lot of fun with our launguage`s .

Paul

Hope I'm in the right place to ask my question, is Mandarin spoken in Nanning or is the main language Cantonese ?

TonyA

Hi Tony,
Nanning has a variation of Cantonese.
Mei had difficulty understanding the Mandarin spoken in Beijing.
Fortunately the written language appears to be the same throughout China.
David & Mei

Hi David

Thanks for your reply, does that mean that someone who could only speak Mandarin could not get by in Nanning, my daughter is studying Mandarin in Nanjing and tells me that that is the case.

Regards
TonyA

Cantonese is what most people speak in Nanning. I was told repeatedly that Nanning Hua and Guangdong Hua are not the same, but I was able to use the little Cantonese I had picked up in Hong Kong years ago. The only difference I could detect was of accent, with Hong Kong accents more metropolitan. What other differences there are were too subtle for my limited language skills.

Mandarin is spoken. It is a generational thing - the younger you are the more likely you are to have benefited from the government's one language policy. And also an official thing, so e.g. government officials and banks seem to mostly work in Mandarin. But elsewhere Cantonese seems more common and useful.

Hi Tony,
I think that in the UK it is sometimes difficult from people from say Cornwall to understand a Geordie accent and even in Scotland I sometimes find regional differences and words used in the north that are not used in Edinburgh or Glasgow. However we all claim to speak English and write the same words (mostly). The differences in China between Mandarin, Cantonese and the variation in Nanning must be similar but on a larger scale because the country is much larger with wider variations in their ethnic origins.
I'm sure that anyone having difficulty understanding Mandarin spoken in Nanning or elsewhere in China could always ask the speaker to write down what they were saying...
I wouldn't know where to start if someone spoke to me in Welsh or asked me to pronounce written Welsh... Is there a difference between the Welsh spoken in North Wales from South wales???
David

Hi David,
I am not a Welsh speaker but having lived most of my life here can say that there are quite a few differences in the meaning of the same word in the north to the south of Wales, or even the north to Mid Wales.
One exanple springs to mind the word LLARTH = MILK...N/wales the same word = YARD in the south.
I have been told by Welsh speakers from Mid wales that they have great difficulty understanding the language in the North, and Wales is such a small country.
Douglas.

Communication skills: where there's a will there's a way, as my old Gran would say.

There was this Chinese lady married to a Welshman and they lived in a little village near Swansea.

The poor lady was not very proficient in English language, even less in Welsh, but somehow she managed to communicate with her husband.

The real problem arose whenever she had to shop for groceries. One day, she went to the butcher's shop and wanted to buy a leg of mutton. She didn't know how to put forward her request, and in desperation, lifted up her skirt to show her thighs. The butcher got the message and the lady went home with mutton legs.
The next day, she fancied chicken breasts for dinner and set out for the butchers shop. Again, she didn't know the words and so she unbuttoned her blouse to show the butcher her breast. The lady got what she wanted.
The third day, she decided to make sausage and mash and again went to her friendly butcher's shop. Unable to find a way to communicate this, she brought her husband to the shop...



What were you thinking?



Helloooooooooo, her husband speaks English!!

Ni hao Paul,

I would say keep trying my friend it becomes easier the more you practise!!! I have found that continued use of pinyin and translation software has helped me pick up some basic phrases and character recognition in the last 5 month's I have been talking to Lihong. It was difficult to start with getting my meaning across but if you try different ways of saying the same thing you will find the translation software work's it out in the end and you get to recognise some of characters as you progress. It is not easy but worthwhile in the end as I believe that most people in china would be pleased that you are trying to make the effort and learn the language albeit just a few words and you will get more help and admiration for doing so.

Regards

Dale

Hi you guy's. Iv'e only been with Zeping 6 months and in that time the fun and laughter we have both had learning each others lingo is great, I have only learnt a few basics as we have been consentrating on ping's English first as it's the most important for her/us at the moment for her coming to blighty. I agree also that finding different variations of the same sentence works well also. But like I said we have great fun just in the trying, whether i will get good enough to understand anyone other than ping is another matter ha ha. lol sawted

It seems to me that Cantonese is spoken throughout the south of China, no doubt variations abound as they would in all populations. When I was in Yangshuo the local schoolteacher told me that in a village only 12 kilometres away the people only spoke their local dialect and not either Mandarin or Cantonese. He said that the people from Yangshuo could not communicate with them. A Chinese university student told me that there are foreign Mandarin speakers who teach in the University who speak better Mandarin than many Cantonese. A chap in his seventies from Hong Kong told me, through the University student, that he could understand Mandarin but his pronounciation was not good so he did not speak it.


What I have deducted with my little knowledge on China is that the Canotonese learn their own language at home and learn Mandarin at school in much the same way as the English speaking western student may learn German, French, Italian etc i. e. another Latin based language. Given that most of the schools were closed down in the years between 1967-1977 (the Cultural Revolution), many people in their forties would have missed most of their primary school education.

For example a women who is 43 now would have been two in 1967, five in 1970 and twelve in 1977. Therefore she would have missed her education from the age of five to twelve which in Australia the primary school years. She may have only began to recieve any education in 1977 at the age of twelve. How was she able to learn Mandarin? Nearly impossible given that circumstance unless she had gone out of her way and sought night classes.

I will be interested to see the comments on this from more those more experienced than me in life in China.

Marcus

For my first trip to China (Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen) I spent 3 months trying to get the tones down. I must have chaparoned too many school dances because I find it hard ti distinguish some of them. As a previous post mentioned, Getting to know a few essential words and phrases go a long way. Before my second trip which includes Hong Kong and Nanning, I'm just hoping some will understand my Mandarin.

English.....spoken the world over but it is different in each country,chinese have mandarin and cantonese but then they have all the variations,after 3 years of being with a chinese women i can only speak 10 words and that's not pronounced correctly,my thought is that as my wife lives here in the uk then she must be able to speak and read english,otherwise she would be housebound.when we go to Nanning then i take a back seat and she does everything.....sort off,her family doesn't speak english but we get on like old friends,you will find that walking down the street strangers will come up to you and try and speak english to you,great if your not in a rush.
What surprises me is that here in the uk we have chinese friends who do not speak much english,how on earth do they manage,but they do.