edit (the next day): the following post is a response to adrian's "should i take chinese?" post that's not here anymore. continue discussing god, everyone.

[what went well:
- almost nonexistent grammar that's really very similar to english
- most of the words and even the characters are formed parataxically, so it just makes a lot of sense - you feel like you construct words more on gut feeling than grammatical rules; also, characters that look similar tend to sound similar as well.
- sometimes convincing eunice that i understood anything she said
- and generally, it's a really fun language, i don't know how else to describe it.

what's not so bad:
- the intonations. again like a gut feeling thing - because it's somewhat musical in a sense, the sounds of words stick the way jingles on tv commercials do. plus it's what makes it all so fun.
- again the parataxis thing; you can guess what a sentence means even if you don't know all the words in it.

what didn't go so well:
- characters are so easy to forget
- characters you don't know make it impossible for you to even read a paper after six years of study, much less anything literary
- singing. how do you do the intonations at the same time?]

posted by Tae-Yeoun Keum   [11:19 PM]

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