This post also appears on my Medium blog😀
In 8th grade, my languages teacher asked us which language we would want to study for the rest of our natural lives. This was in ILA (Integrated Language Arts) class. That year, I took an intro to languages course that featured Latin, Spanish, German, and French. No Chinese language was offered.
The language that seemed to roll smoothly off my tongue and make me sound like a natural speaker of that language, was Spanish. It was musical to my ears and just so sultry. Every sentence like a poem. I chose that as my forever language, like a linguistic BFF.
Things got a bit tougher when I applied for governor’s school in my junior year. I had to respond in Spanish to questions… in Spanish, and I thought I did well, but I was competing with a student from India who spoke at least six languages, and could swear in every one of them.
Needless to say, I did not get into Governor’s school.
Still, I do not recall Chinese being offered. It was almost like Asian languages were secret, coded spells. Also, I guess I was not too interested in the language at the time.
Until now.
I am far from being able to hold an intelligent conversation in Chinese with a native speaker, however since learning the Chinese Pinyin, symbols/pictures, and learning about the culture behind the language, I can’t help but compare it to my own language, English.
As an introvert, I respect a head nod as a form of “hello”
I just learned that the most commonly learned greeting in Chinese, nínhǎo(您好) pronounced “knee-how” for hello — is not really needed when greeting someone. In fact, if you are longtime friends, or at least close, a simple head nod is fine, or you can ask them where they are going, about to do, or what will they eat.
In English speaking societies, this will be looked at as rude. Like, “How dare you not say hello? You know me!” However, if we know each other, why say hello at all? It’s taking my mind some time to wrap around this concept, but I low key like it.
Cultural Note: Nihao is reserved for our elders or people we are meeting for the first time. 🍜
Nationalities make more sense in the Chinese language
In English we distinguish people of their respective lands in a weird way.
In America, we are American.
In Africa, they are African.
Those in England, are English.
Britain are British…
Wait.
What just happened?
There’s no more -an at the end?
Why can’t Canadian be Canadan without the “i”? (Yeah, let’s share a brief LOL moment here).
In the Chinese language, things are a bit more simplified. As someone on YouTube explains — just adding 人 (rén)at the end of a nationality, takes care of it.
American= měiguórén
Chinese= zhōngguórén
Cultural Note: I’m sure there are minor variations to this depending on regions, so if you are Chinese or know Chinese, please feel free to educate, or correct me 🍜
The Chinese way of learning to say nationalities is much easier, and doesn’t strangle the meaning.
I would probably have beautiful handwriting
I may be reaching a bit here, but a few years ago I bought a calligraphy book and began writing in it using my luxurious calligraphy pens*. It was fun for a few days, but then I put it up due to work and other hobbies that took over.
People are posting “How To”: calligraphy videos and getting thousands, if not millions of hits. According to research, calligraphy or any form of writing on a sheet of paper, promotes cognitive health and memory. Perhaps having a good start at calligraphy would have been beneficial. To be fair, I’m glad I grew up during a time where learning to write cursive was the norm.
Cultural note: However, there was a time in China (specifically during the Han Dynasty), where being prolific in calligraphy was a must for men and women. Whereas today, calligraphy (and cursive) is being reintroduced via social media. 🍜
Learning Chinese can help brain function?
Did you know there’s scientific evidence that learning Chinese can help with cognitive (brain function?)
Unlike other languages like English, Chinese activates both left and right hemispheres during the reading process. I’ve written about the mysterious act of reading in general previously. It improves memory and visual-spatial skills. Likely because the Chinese use logograms and memorization of unique forms. Greater metalinguistic awareness. Since the Chinese language lacks grammatical markers, like plural and tense forms (thank God), one must rely heavily on context and think of language as a system. It’s never too late to learn Chinese or any other language. Learning is fun and essential — especially those of us getting much older. Learning something new helps prevent dementia.
Please chime in if you can think of any other benefits of the Chinese language, or if you have further information to contribute.
Thank you for reading!
*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Erica writes about the myths we are sold about work, success, and survival- and what's really behind them. She also churns out stories and poetry that pretty much reflects the same thing. Sign up for more pieces like this, delivered fresh to your inbox.
References for further reading:
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., & Freedman, M. (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45(2), 459–464. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.10.009
Koda, K. (2008). Cross-linguistic transfer in reading: The importance of linguistic distance. Language and Literacy, 10(2), 1–20.
McBride-Chang, C., Cho, J. R., Liu, H., Wagner, R. K., Shu, H., Zhou, A., … & Meng, X. (2005). What’s in a word? Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in three languages. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26(3), 447–462. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716405050247
Tan, L. H., Laird, A. R., Li, K., & Fox, P. T. (2001). Language processing in the brain: The role of the left inferior frontal cortex in reading Chinese. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(20), 11866–11871. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.211433798
