C - non-standard standard speech

D is sitting at the kitchen table right now, practicing his 普通话 using flash cards. He (ideally) recognizes the character and then practices saying the word a few times. When he says a word that uses the third tone, though, it sometimes sounds like he's burping. I'm trying not to laugh.

Learning Mandarin Chinese isn't easy, but it definitely could be a lot harder. Many of the sounds are easy for English speakers to make -- only a few are very hard to pronounce. The morphology and grammar are relatively simple compared to English. What makes learning this language hard is a) the fact that the written language consists of thousands of tiny, very abstract drawings, and b) the abundance of homonyms.

Regarding the abstractness of the characters, my Chinese character workbook tells me that this is a picture of a pig under a roof: 家

Oh, a pig! Of course! Now I see it. (In case you wondered, this character means "home." Home is where the pig is, as we all know.)

(Somewhat relatedly, D and I recently tried to teach one of our Chinese friends the meaning of the word "sarcasm.")

This is a picture of a bird flying:飞

And this is a picture of a sick person lying in bed: 疒

I never knew that a flying bird and a sick person lying in bed could look so similar. I do know, however, that if someone who died three thousand years ago invites me to play Pictionary with him, I should just say "no thanks."

And regarding the homonyms, there are 39 characters pronounced "yi" with the fourth tone. Their meanings are hardly similar; they range from friendship to epidemic disease to legendary archer. Needless to say, understanding spoken Chinese is sometimes difficult. We're still optimistic, though -- just don't ask our tutor about her level of optimism for us!