A lesson in Chinese

Chinese is difficult because it consists of 4 different tones and 1 neutral tone. This can cause a lot of confusion on my part when I'm talking to someone because I confuse words sometimes. Native speakers do not have this problem because they can distinguish the different tones and the context of the conversation easier than I can. Here are some "almost homophones"... these are not actually homophones because they have different tones, but for the sake of simplicity to my non-Chinese speaking readers, we'll just say that they're homophones. These are words that I consistently get confused about in everyday conversations. You can imagine that this can also cause some quite hilarious situations.

睡觉 shuijiao - to sleep
水饺 shuijiao - steamed dumplings
(Oh! you need to get some dumplings, not some sleep)

联系 lianxi - to contact
练习 lianxi - to practice
(Oh! You want me to practice my Chinese, not contact the Chinese)

大学 daxue - university
大雪 daxue - snowstorm
(Oh! you mean snowstorms are really troublesome, not that universities are troublesome)

上海 Shanghai - The city of Shanghai
伤害 shanghai - to hurt (emotionally)
(Oh! you mean you're afraid of hurting them, not that you're afraid of Shanghai)

每个人 meigeren - Everyone
美国人 meiguoren - American
(Oh! You mean just the Americans, not everyone)

Not that an English speaker should be talking (pretty, like, relative, bat, bear, naval, right... shall I continue?) but it's still difficult.

However, I will say that once you learn about 2,000 characters, the language gets exponentially easier because you can mix and match the characters to form new words. For example, in English the word "toothbrush." It's a brush that cleans teeth. Now imagine if almost every word in English was a combination of two words that formed a word for a new idea or thing. And not only nouns, but verbs, adjectives, and adverbs as well. That's what Chinese is like. For example:

家 jia － Family
家具 jiaju － （lit. family equipment) furniture

运 yun － to move, to transport
动 dong － to use, to move
运动 yundong －sports

合 he - to join
作 zuo － to do, to make
合作 hezuo - to cooperate

the list goes on and on... It's fascinating, really. My one friend, Matt, would get so excited whenever we would learn new words. One day we learned that "自杀" (lit. self murder) meant suicide. He said "That's so cool!" and we were just like, Oh, Matt........

That is my rant for the day. All the shops and stores are closed for the New Year already- Nanjing looks like a ghost town! At least today, maybe that's because it snowed today and everyone is probably huddled under mountains of blankets. But also because everyone is 回家 or "returning home." Tomorrow I will go to Shanghai on the train with my friend John, who is also a year student. I'm not going to bring my computer to save myself the trouble of lugging it around, to shut myself off from the world (ahhh how nice) and to take a break from the evil time suckers that are facebook, Skype and checking my emails. When I return on February 16th, I will be sure to tell of my adventures....