Class is in session

Today was the first class and it was pretty interesting. I was the only American, there were two Japanese, one Korean, one Canadian, one person from Spain and one person from Thailand. Most people spoke English so that made some things easier. The teacher was late about 30 minutes so we had a chance to talk to each other. A wide range of ages in the class from 20's-40's so I didn't feel too out of place.

The teacher finally came and we started with the 4 tones and some MPS (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols). I have never heard or seen the MPS so I was definitely the slowest person in class learning to associate an arbitrary picture to a phonetic sound. I'm learning the Pinyin pronunciations on my own, but this was much tougher. Here is a sound, now remember it and apply it to this picture. I'm sure it is going to be the same with the Chinese characters for the words, but Pinyin (pseudo-English letters) seems much easier to at least "explain" to you how the sound should be pronounced. I guess I just need to spend some extra time learning these and hopefully things come together faster down the road.

The biggest benefit is that taking this class is forcing me to speak Chinese. I'm hearing more and more things from conversations and TV here so I know my comprehension is improving but I don't like going out and trying to speak it with my Chinese friends. I'm learning a lot on my own, but this class is going to help with the stuff I can't do own my own, like get feedback from others about my mistakes in tones and pronunciations.

One class down, 54 to go.

Jim