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Karaoke Mandarinby Dina Gan
Like many people with a deflated stock portfolio, I've been feeling too cash poor to travel. So instead, I decided to use my spare time to learn a language that may help me on that future trip to China that my husband and I dream about. Or at least help me converse on visits with my in-laws beyond the simple "xie xie" after being poured tea or a hearty "Zhao!" in the morning.
Unfortunately, I am not one of those lucky Asian Americans who grew up bilingual. Even though I am part Chinese, the other part is Filipino, and I was raised speaking English, with the occasional Tagalog curse words thrown in. Although I did study French for seven years and learned some Japanese while teaching English in Japan the year after college, Chinese may as well be Greek to me. Lately I'd been seeing tons of television commercials for the Rosetta Stone, so I thought, why not? But when I received the yellow box that contained Level I of the Mandarin Chinese software, I was a tad disappointed. I thought it would contain some kind of small device that I could just jack into the base of my brain, Matrix-style. Instead, it contained a CD-ROM and a headset microphone. "Hmmm," I thought, admiring the high-quality headset with soft, cushiony ear-pads that reminded me of chocolate mini-donuts, "I guess I will actually have to speak to learn Mandarin." Installing the software took more than half an hour and used up about 600 MB of computer space. But the good thing is, you can program the Rosetta Stone's speech recognition software to recognize more than one user. You can also choose from among eight interface languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean. I wondered if I set the interface language to Italian, whether I could kill two birds with one Rosetta Stone. After setting myself up as a female English-speaking user, the software prompted me to select a course based on my learning goals. I chose "speaking and listening" because, let's face it, I just don't have enough years left in my life to learn to read and write in Chinese. The software took a few seconds to load up the topics based on my preferences. Then it was time to start my course with "Language Basics." 
Two pictures popped up, one of a man and woman. The Rosetta Stone software voice said, "Ni hao." And I repeated, "Ni hao." Then a trilling bell sounded, letting me know that my pronunciation was correct. Oh, this would be easy! On the next screen, four pictures appeared: a group of three Middle Eastern men wearing red turbans, three women wearing saris, three white men wearing flannel shirts and sitting around a campfire, and three Asian women eating bento box lunches while riding on a train. The software voice said, "Nu ren. Nan ren. Nu ren." And I repeated, "Nu ren." But nothing happened. "Nu ren," I said again, but the trilling bell didn't ring. I was confused. First of all, what does "nu ren" mean, and what does it have to do with men wearing flannel shirts or women on a train? All the pictures were groups of three. Did "nu ren" mean "three people"?
Finally, I noticed that the phrase "nu ren" appeared over the sari-clad women, and there was a fill-in-the blank space over the Asian women. I clicked on the phrase, attempting to drag it to the blank space, but an error message prompted, "Just click on the appropriate choice below. Activities do not require drag and drop." "Oh!" I thought. "Well, why didn't you say so?" I clicked on the blank space above the Asian women, and the phrase "nu ren" magically floated over to it, as a big green check mark appeared on the screen and that pleasant trilling bell sounded. I repeated this with the phrase "nan ren," clicking on the space above the three flannel-wearing campers. The next screen had two pictures: a group of three men who looked like members of the Italian mafia, and three grey-haired women who looked like they were members of the DAR. The software voice said, "Nan ren," and I tried to click on the space above the mafia men, but nothing happened. So I said, "Nan ren," and the trilling bell sounded. Suddenly, I realized that this was a voice repetition exercise. For that last screen, which was a listening exercise, I didn't need to say anything at all. I still didn't know what exactly "nan ren" or "nu ren" meant, except that "nan ren" was about men and "nu ren" was about women. The jury was still out about whether the number "three" was involved. I trudged on, and after the initial bewilderment of being thrown into a virtual language learning environment without benefit of reading the User's Guide, I became accustomed to the Rosetta Stone world of flashcard-style photographs, large easy-to-read text, and the unforgiving taskmaster style of the software voice. 
My husband happened to be walking by, and he heard me say, "guo zhi" (juice). He smiled and started flapping his arms like a chicken. I asked him to explain, and apparently, he thought I said, "guo ji," and that I was trying to say something about chickens. But the Rosetta Stone had given me the trilling bell sound, so that's all that really mattered. After all, who would know more Mandarin? The Rosetta Stone, or someone who left Taiwan when he was three years old and had the language competency of a Chinese three-year-old?
But I had no time to bicker with my husband. The software program was getting complicated really fast. Suddenly, I went from simple two-syllable words to seven-word sentences that I could only mimic karaoke-style. And I still didn't know exactly what I was saying, except that it involved men, women, children, eating noodles, drinking tea, and reading books. I was only halfway through the first lesson of Unit 1, and I was exhausted. Clearly, learning Mandarin would not happen overnight. Each lesson was 30 minutes long, and there were four lessons per unit. So, all four units of Level I would take about 8 hours to get through. And there was no guarantee that I would retain anything. I'm the kind of person who walks into a room to get something and forgets what it is once I'm there. After that first lesson, I had the opportunity to try out some phrases on my in-laws, but the only utterances I felt confident about speaking were "nan ren" and "nu ren." My father-in-law chuckled, and my mother-in-law said, "Your tone is very good." I took it as a compliment, although she was probably just being polite. Luckily, I have plenty of time to practice. One day, with the help of my Rosetta Stone, I may just get it right. |
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