Nanjing: My Mandarin

Knowing how big this world is on foot, not that it’s any smaller by motorized transportation, I’m always worried about getting lost—especially in different countries. To this effect, I always try to learn the language(s) of where I’m going, so that I’m at least able to ask for directions. To this effect, I tried to make sure I knew enough Italian when going though Italy, though hearing my accent they would always switch into English on me. And in Paris, my French, while admittedly rusty, was sufficiently fluent to get us to where we wanted to go.

So in China, I’ve been quite pleased with my Mandarin skills, because I have found that while studying abroad, my travels have improved my Mandarin just as much as my Cantonese despite the fact that in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the primary language of 95% of the population.

So going around in Beijing I recall thinking that I practiced my Mandarin a lot—and I did; however, it was very localized. It was mostly all for haggling, because I knew that there’s what I like to call an “English fee” for foreigners. When it came to the important stuff though, I found that my friend who speaks much more Mandarin with much better aptitude than me did all the talking. And it worked well—we got what we needed, and again it worked in Guilin.

Nanjing was a different case in that I was traveling in a group where I spoke the most Mandarin. I figured that it would be an experience, especially since I kept telling myself and others that I would have really had trouble going around Beijing (and again in Guilin) with my level of Mandarin.

At the train ticket counter in Shenzhen I had to buy one person a ticket to Guilin, and the guy at the ticket counter found my Mandarin so bad that he asked me if I speak English in English instead seeing that I was struggling. I didn’t even try in Cantonese because I know my Cantonese is worse and from previous experience, most of the ticket people don’t operate in Cantonese.

As foreign languages go, my speaking proficiency from highest to lowest goes: Spanish, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. On a side note, someone asked me if I conducted a conversation in Cantonese, which I laughed at, sarcastically saying that one semester of Cantonese for Foreign Learners did me so well that I could now speak it better than Mandarin.

Needless to say, my Mandarin is still way better than my Cantonese. And because I have treated Mandarin and Cantonese as such similar languages over the years, I’ve been going through sorting out the finer points of Cantonese that I totally misunderstood before taking classes.

For example, when talking about actions, soeng2 (想) in Cantonese would correspond more to yào (要) in Mandarin whereas jiu5 (要) in Cantonese would correspond to xūyào (需要) in Mandarin, with the sets meaning to want and to need, respectively. Xiǎng (想) in Mandarin means to think.

Back at the train counter in Shenzhen, I was buying the groups tickets this time to got to Shanghai South Station (上海南火车站/上海南火車站), later taking a high-speed train to Nanjing. Unlike the other time, I was able to get through the whole process in Mandarin alone. I also understood enough to grasp that we could only buy train tickets back in Shanghai.

And at Shanghai South Station, buying tickets for my two friends went even faster and even smoother. I managed to get them two hard sleepers for the way back.

The rest of the trip went along the same lines. I managed to be understood and to understand. Since Beijing and since Chinese school when in was in elementary school, I’ve come a long way.