China

I've complained about learning Chinese before. Unlike easy languages (read: every other language on earth), Chinese requires several steps to memorize each word. You have to memorize the pronunciation, the tone and the character. Reading the characters is much easier than learning to write them, although with time the writing becomes easier. Predictably, one of the most frustrating aspects of the language is the characters. It's not so much that they are hard to read and write, it's that you cannot sound out characters that are unfamiliar. Signs read like this to me: Danger! Don't Touch the 鳄鱼! 警察要 Punish You Severely! I'm getting a bit better at guessing what these blank parts are, but it's still a challenge and I rely on context a lot.

Another problem I encounter when reading is that sometimes I remember the pronunciation of a character, I just don't remember the meaning. Other times I remember the meaning, I just don't remember the pronunciation. It's like this: blah, blah, blah, crocodile, blah, blah, blah. Don't know how to pronounce the word for crocodile, I just know the characters. A real example of this would be the two characters that mean something like, "don't do..." I see these two characters everywhere. Don't smoke, don't fish in the pond, don't honk your car's horn. The problem is, I can't pronounce them. I know the meaning, not the pronunciation. Some characters have phonetic parts to them, making it easier to guess what the sound might be. For example, take a look at the following characters:

方 fang
芳 fang
放 fang
访 fang
房 fang
坊 fang
纺 fang
旁 pang

As you can see, the first seven characters are pronounced "fang". The tones and meanings are different. The last character is pronounced "pang." If you saw one of these characters, you could guess the pronounciation based on the radical 方 which is found in every character (look closely). For these types of characters, the toughest part is remembering the tone. Also, some of them have similiar meanings, so remembering which one to write is a bit of a challenge as well.

Here's something that I can finally sort of read:

It reads: Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts

Literally: Mao Chairman is our heart center red sun

At first all I could read was the "Chairman Mao is our..." Later came the "red sun" part. Hopefully I translated this correctly. Who knows, it could have some other meaning that I don't understand yet, but I doubt it. My translation sounds sufficiently communist.