Monday, November 13, 2006

One year in, and just getting started!

It's been a year since I first heard ni hao and began the process of being exposed to a language as different from my own or any other that I know. I think however, that it is only now that a real learning process - as I have experienced it on other fronts - is beginning.

OK - I've learned the tones, how to say this and that, how to recognize a fair number of hanzi and compose a few sentence types. But really what I've been doing over these 12 months is getting a Chinese exposure. Enough so that it doesn't seem so strange anymore. Enough perhaps, to start really learning now. I hope!

My lessons continue - the class size is drastically reduced and we are trying to speak more and more. My hope is that though this process, the deeper understandings will sink in and I can start to build out a useful vocabulary.