Wǒ huì shuō yīdiǎn Pǔtōnghuà

When V and I enrolled into “May in China” to learn Mandarin, we were just another “lǎowài” (the Chinese slang for foreigner) pair who were trying their hand at cracking this un-crackable language. The first couple of hours in the classroom literally scared us. They had Pinyins, Initial & Final tones and three full pages of words that needed to be practiced with the right tone! Apparently in Mandarin there are 4 tones for each word! But before you utter the three swear words (no no, not WTF; its Goodness Gracious Me :)) let me also tell you that in Cantonese there are about 9 tones for most words!… And 26 hours of classes later we are still struggling to remember the right tones for the right words!

This is how it sounds when I briefly introduce myself in Mandarin(Note the use of “tones” on each of those words):
Nǐ Hǎo. Wǒ Jiào Vani. Wǒ Shì Yìndù Rén. Wǒ Shì Zài Zhōngguó guòqu 2 nián. Wǒ hé wǒde lǎogōng gōngzuò zài Guǎngzhōu. Wǒ gēn Wang Tao xué Hànyǔ.

It simply translates into:
Hello. I am Vani. I am an Indian.I have been living in China for the last 2 years. I and my husband work in Guangzhou. I am learning Chinese from Wang Tao (Our Mandarin teacher Wichin’s native name). If you thought that was crazy, you must see how it is when it's written!

There are no separate words in Mandarin to discrimate genders and so a he or a she is just a plain "Ta". There are no plurals for anything too. Its always 1 pen, 2 pen or 3 pen.. and the simplicity of this language ends there.

A slight mis-pronunciation of the tones can land us in very awkward situations. For instance: If I go to a restaurant and tell them I want Jī (鸡), it means “chicken”. But if I pronounced it as Jì (妓), then I just ordered myself a “prostitute”!!
Amused? I’ll let you in to some more tone faux pas. Lǎogōng (老公) means “husband”. But if you happen to say Lǎogong (老公) it means a “eunuch”...and still if you say it as Láogōng (劳工) it means going into “labour”!!!. The word Sì (四) means “4”..but if you pronounced it as Sǐ (死) it means “death” and Sī (丝) means “silk”. Guì (贵) means “expensive” whereas Guī (鮭) means “salmon” and Guǐ (鬼)means “ghost”!

A lot of words with the same tone and the same Chinese characters can mean different things under different circumstances too, like for example the word Tái (台). This word with the same Chinese character and tone can mean “typhoon” or a “stage / platform”.

Who would have ever guessed that Ramayana is known here as Luó Mó Yǎn Nǎ and Mahabharata is Mó Hē Pó Luó Duō!

Now, to make an already complicated language more complex they have something called as “measure words” like we use in English for some objects such as a “loaf” of bread, a “pair” of jeans etc..but in Mandarin they have over a 100 measure words for a whole lot of things...even for things that don’t need them. Instead of plainly saying “two cars”, they say “two –measure word– cars”...how about that for keeping things simple.

To say this is a difficult language would be a gross under-statement. Wish I am able to learn it to make a decent conversation atleast...sigh!.

By the way, the title “Wǒ huì shuō yīdiǎn Pǔtōnghuà” means “I can speak a little Mandarin” :)