Learning another language

I learnt Chinese a few years ago (late 20s)

Had a business meeting in China, worth multiple millions, which I was informed the week before that the people in the Chinese factory refused to speak through a translator and refused to speak to anyone who didn’t directly work for my company. As it was only me and the CEO of the company attending, I had to learn Chinese in a week.

Funny how a 15% commission on a multi million $ contract can motivate...

 

That's really interesting, as in Russian there is no word for sting, so everything bites! As long as it's an animal. Nettles don't sting though, they pinch.

 

Greek is on a completely different level to Russian and Bulgarian on the spelling front, as at least once you know the Cyrillic alphabet (which is actually not very difficult), everything is phonetic.

As far as I'm aware, Greek is as nightmarish as English for the unpredictability and randomness of the pronunciation relative to the spelling of a word. So big respect for making some progress with Greek!

 

While a nice juicy cash bonus can motivate us to do most things, there is no earthly way that anyone can go from zero or basic level in a language to being able to conduct a business meeting in the space of a week. Attaining that sort of proficiency takes years, even if the language you're learning is French or Spanish. If the target language is one as alien to us as Chinese, with all of its cultural nuances on top of linguistic ones, you'd need a couple of years immersion in the country as a minimum before you could even get close to that level of functionality.

 

I was by no means proficient, but I had enough understanding to do a decent job in the meeting, I feel. I aggressively engrossed myself in the language. We got a personal tutor in for the week, who did 12 hour days with me, focussing on the topics that would come up in the meeting, along with some basic small talk. You can learn a good amount of Chinese, probably a lot more than you realise, in not much time. Chinese makes a hell of a lot of sense, when you actually study it. A lot more than Spanish or French. The myth that it’s a difficult language is quite misplaced.

Saying that... we didn’t win the contract, so maybe not.

 

Lol!

 

Recon I know what you’re trying to say here, but it doesn’t translate at all. FYI. The closest translation would be a sports team with a bull mascot.

And it’s not BS, by the way. I was able to have a decent conversation in Chinese, in order to receive requirements and deliver pricing estimates.

 

I know that Chinese is grammatically much simpler than European languages, but the flip side is the tonal system, which is immensely confusing for non-Asians. A lot of my clients deal with China, and they all say that there's a deep cultural aspect to the language - layers of hidden meaning which you can only start to decipher once you have a thorough understanding of the Chinese culture and mentality.

 

Yep, but I didn’t need much of that for my use case. I understand it a lot more now. There’s basically 4 tones that are used and can change the meaning of a word completely. The same ‘word’ can have a completely different meaning in a different tone.

EDIT: Obviously this is completely simplified and doesn’t even scratch the surface of the language nuances, but that’s how it is on a basic level.

 

Perhaps I mixed up 白 and 百 and he thought I was being racist...

 

Do you find it easy to distinguish between the tones and reproduce them accurately? My English friends who've learnt Chinese say that although it's usually decipherable from context, they still get involved in comedy mix-ups on a regular basis.

 

I don’t have a huge problem with it to be honest. Tones were the first thing I was taught though, so it was drilled into me from the beginning. I’m sure I mixed up once or twice, but overall I think I did a decent job. As I said, I was by no means proficient, but I held my own, in a steadily paced conversation. Our Chinese counterparts were understanding, which helps.

My joke earlier about 白 and 百 probably did happen though. Both are pronounced bai but 白 has an upwards tone (like asking a question) and 百 has a stepped time where it goes down then back up. One means hundred or many and one means white or snowy or a few other similar things.

 

I lived for 5 years in Berlin and got pretty good at German, building on my O Level. I could have a conversation down the pub. I then spend 13 years in Kathmandu and my Nepali got no further than ‘taxi and restaurant’. Even though my wife is Nepali. I blamed this on not being able to read the script like I could with German and that she spoke Newari with her family (I can say 2 words in Newari - the equivalents of “this tastes nice” and “I am full, no more please”.)
Now living in Georgia, I know even less Georgian. Again the script means I can’t read it and even when it’s transliterated to Roman script, how on earth do you say a word that starts with 5 consonants? Basically I know the names of Georgian foods, hello and thanks... In Tbilisi and other main tourist locations, using English is no real problem. Outside them we are down to sign language.

Tried to resurrect school boy French a few years ago before a holiday and used Babbel app. It’s not free, but I found it useful.

 

Georgian is supposed to be up there with Finnish as one of the most difficult European languages to learn. The script looks absolutely beautiful though, a proper work of art!

 

The script is beautiful... თბილისის ფუნიკულორი ... one legend is that it is based on the vine tendrils. The other legend being that they invented wine here over 8000 years ago.

 

If anyone on here watches Moto GP all the riders are fluent in 3 or 4 languages but the red bull rookies class when interviewed are faultless at age 14 to16 myself and my wife travel to a few races, Le Mans,Jerez Sachsenring,red Bull Ring Austria and manage with our little bit of German and Spanish age 63

 

I began learning Portuguese aged 64, we lived in the republic of ireland for ten years and decided to relocate. I'm not fluent as yet but manage pretty well to converse with my neighbours. You can only learn so much from books and cds, as others have said immersion is the key, using the language daily helps greatly. The problem here in central portugal is the local dialect, very different to what you hear in Lisbon or coimbra and i have to admit my memory is not what it used to be. Go for it, its challenging but enjoyable to learn a language regardless of age, boa sorte

 

Just go for it. I picked up scottish and australian pretty easy when i needed them.

 

Ausgezeichnet!