"The only way to begin speaking a new language is to begin speaking badly."- Greg Thomson 

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This is a lesson I wish I knew when I was younger. Both my parents are bilingual. My Dad speaks both English and Tagalog, which is the language they speak in the Philippines.. My dad grew up speaking both languages since he lived in the Philippines until he was 14. My mom speaks English and is fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). She is actually a Sing Language interpreter so she uses both language constantly. I have always wanted to know another language fluently. Growing in a home where both parents spoke mainly English this is the only language I speak fluently. I did pick up a good amount of ASL and can follow a basic conversation if it's slow. The only Tagalog I really picked up was "Halika dito" and  "baba".  "Halika dito" means come here now and "baba" means get down. The only reason I learned that is because if either my parents said either of those phrases my brother and I knew we were in trouble. I did though try  learning Tagalog a few times but always gave up. Then in 2nd grade I started taking Chinese. I was one of the best in my class. I was good at remembering what words went with what definition. Then the levy got cut for my district and I only got to take throughout 3rd grade. 4 years later I started taking Chinese again in 8th grade. I remembered most of the words but I was introduced to things like characters, stroke order, and pinyin. It was so exciting to be immersed in a new culture again. I got to grow in my knowledge of a language and culture that opened so many new doors in my life. I mostly grew in my ability to speak and understand the language. 

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When I first started Chinese again I didn't remember much. I remembered the words but not the ways they were spelled. I didn't even know you could spell Chinese words in English. I learned that there was a way to spell Chinese. It is  standard system using the English letters to show how to pronounce Chinese words and characters. This system is called Pinyin. Pinyin while using English letters to pronounce Chinese words also uses a system called tones. Tones indicate how and when you should put inflection in you pronunciation of a word. There are 4 tones in chines. These are what the look like over the letter "a",  ā á  ǎ  à. The way the tone is  angled indicated how the pitch moves. The first tone is also called the neutral tone. When pronounced you don't change the pitch since the tone is flat across. The 2nd tone is angled up like a forward slash. When this tone is used it means you raise you pitch kind of like what it sounds when you ask a question. The 3rd tone is shaped like the tip of a downward pointing arrow. Your pitch rises and then falls it sounds like a reverse voice crack. The 4th  tone is angled down like a back slash. This toned means your pitch should drop quickly. It sounds like the same as someone in English firmly and aggressively saying "No!". In pinyin the tones go above the letter where you change your pitch. Pinyin also doesn't sound the same as English. Letters sometimes make a different sound than they would in English. When we first started Chinese this was really hard to understand. One assignment we did was really help though. We got a sheet with all the letters or group of letters that made different sounds in Pinyin. Under the different letters we had to write out what they actually sounded like. For example in pinyin ei to me ay like at the of May. This sheets shows how little I knew and how much assistance I needed. Almost every class we would sing a song that had all the pinyin sounds in it. Over the course of the year we did a lot of studying and made a lot of progress.  

 

 

One thing that really helped me learn outside of class was       quizlet. It helped me learn to associate the pinyin, Chinese characters, and the English definitions quickly.  At the beginning of the year all I could really do was verbally count to 10 in Chinese and say hi and Thank you. Now I've learned over 100 words (technically over 200 if you count each number) including being able to recognize and for a lot how to write the Chinese character that goes with them. I've also learned the pinyin that goes with them and how to use these words in Chinese grammar.  This is best shown in the dialogue I wrote with a group for the learning set Whose is this? In the dialogue not only do I use over 30 characters I also have had the pinyin, the character, and the English translation on the script. This shows that I went from needing a song to helping me know pinyin to being able to carry full conversations which is a huge improvement. On this dialogue I got a 100% on everything but my grammar. This shows I still have room for improvement. 

 

In the future Chinese will most likely be a useful language rather in getting a job or even if I just want to travel there.  I've grown so much in my knowledge of the Chinese language. Now I want to grow even more bettering my understanding of the grammar and even more new words and terms.