I've been studying Chinese for several years now, but mostly just as a hobby. However, since
moving to Shanghai, I've been putting a lot more energy into my language studies. I can now have a simple conversation with the
dumpling guy & get the maintenance man to
turn the electricity back on in my apartment.
I'm even getting kudos from
ChinesePod, a really cool website with great langauge learning tools.
The more Chinese I learn, the more interesting it becomes. Lately, I've started to notice a very curious but common sentence structure in Chinese. Here's an example:
这是我朋友写给我的信。zhe4 shi4 wo3 peng2 you3 xie3 gei3 wo3 de xin4.
Word-by-word translation: This is my friend write give me 's letter.
More natural translation: This is the letter that my friend wrote to (give) me.
It looks like a
relative clause in English turns into an adjective clause in Chinese. Who'da thunk it?
2 comments:
Cool! Looks like you've turned the corner where you are good enough that it starts to feed on itself. That is awesome! Get good so you can teach me when i start in April 2013! I expect to be done with spanish by then, haha! :)
Got it. You're booked in my calendar for 2013 :)
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