One might think that after four years in China, I'd be fluent in Chinese.
Not so.
I enjoy studying Chinese. I really do. It's an intriguing language, with a long history, exquisite calligraphy, and billions of speakers. After years of studying Spanish, the utter lack of verb conjugations in Chinese adds some variety to my life. Some say this makes Chinese easy to learn, that it's one of the reasons the language is so logical and practical.
Those people need a psychiatrist.
Sure, one can find some examples to support the case that Chinese is logical: The character for "rest," 休 xiu, consists of a person leaning against a tree; the character for "bright," 明 ming, is a combination of the characters for "sun" and "moon;" the word for "university," 大学, da xue, literally translates as "big school;" the word for "cell phone," 手机 shou ji, technically means "hand machine" - probably the best translation for smart phones there is. These examples, however, are one tiny sliver of the Chinese language pie.
In addition to the inherent difficulty for the non-native speaker to hear and pronounce tones correctly and the existence of tens of thousands of characters themselves (seemingly abstract, albeit beautiful, and needing to be memorized one-by-one), some days I feel that, scholarly research aside, the Chinese language developed this way: The ancients were all sitting around one day with a bunch of leaves. Some guy wrote 20 syllables on the leaves, threw them in the wind, pointed to nearby things, and randomly picked up a leaf or two or three to provide the name. He mimed some actions and picked up the same leaves to name them...and so on. Thus, the Chinese language was born. There are not many single syllables (initials plus finals, without tones) in Chinese...roughly 400, see http://www.pinyin.info/rules/initials_finals.html. It's the added tones and written characters that add meaning to these utterances that all, otherwise, sound the same.
Take the title of this post, for instance - "a tall pedestrian is you" - something a friend accidentally typed on her cell phone after making a new contact. It was supposed to be, "very happy to meet you." The syllables (and word order) for both are hen gao xing ren shi ni. The problem is that the characters are different - in the former, they are 很高行人是你 and in the latter they are 很高兴认识你 - and thus, the meanings are different. In this case (though not always) the tones are different as well. For the first and only specific time, I can get an idea of what people hear when my pronunciation is off.
In theory, a difference in tone corresponds to a different character, although the popular zai, fourth tone, brings up six different characters. Just for fun, each of these, in turn, has up to nine definitions each, and can be used in eight grammatical ways. Each character can mean several different things depending on what it's combined with. Take the character 生 sheng, for instance. In one dictionary I consulted, it had 27 distinct definitions! (Not all of those seemed related, mind you.) 洗 xi can mean "to wash," "to bathe," or "to develop a photo." 馆 guan is sometimes found in one of the words for "restaurant" (饭馆 fan guan), but can also be found in some of the words for hotels, embassies, shops, and other public buildings. Keep in mind that, due to the lack of spacing in written Chinese, the only way to know if a given character is combined with the character in front of it or with the character behind it is...luck. (Ok, years of conditioning.) The serious student only feels a slight sense of accomplishment at memorizing a slew of characters.
Most characters contain a part called a radical (I can't think of a character without a radical, though I'm sure some exist) that is supposed to give a clue as to a character's pronunciation or meaning. The problem is, until you memorize it, you won't know which part of the character is the radical, or if the radical relates to pronunciation or meaning. For example, the right part of 钟 zhong indicates pronunciation (it sounds like 中 zhong) but the former character is part of "hour" and the latter character means "middle." However, the left part of 饭 fan ("meal" or "rice") indicates meaning (specifically, "relating to food") but many words containing this radical have drastically different pronunciations, such as 饿 e (hungry) or 饱 bao (full). 鲜 xian means "fresh," and consists of the radicals for "fish" and "lamb"...neither of which is pronounced "xian," and while I do hope my fish and lamb are fresh, it's not the first combination that jumps into my mind. A lot of words relating to the mouth - 吃 chi (eat), 喝 he (drink), 唱 chang (sing) - have the radical 口 kou (mouth)...but then, apparently, so does the word for "right" (the opposite of left), 右 you. "East" (东 dong) and "car" (车 che) look suspiciously similar. So do "I" 我 wo and "look for/return" 找 zhao. There are some other frustrations - like, the character for "peace" is 安 an, which is a woman under a roof. (That doesn't go over well with this gypsy here.). The character for "good" is a woman with a son (好 hao).
There are some grammar rules that seem unnecessary to someone initiated into Chinese thought. For example, measure words must be inserted between a number and a noun. These serve no grammatical function whatsoever, and vary by the nature of the object (which can also seem subjective). One uses 个 ge for people and general things (though sometimes 位 wei for people, to be formal, or 口 kou for people, if talking about how many members there are in a family - yes, the same as the mouth radical, mentioned above); 条 tiao for objects that are long and thin (also some animals); 只 zhi for objects that are pointed and thin, utensils, and some animals; 张 zhang for objects that have a flat surface; 本 ben for books (...but don't books also have a flat surface?...couldn't they be considered long and thin?)...and the list goes on.
Chinese, like most languages, doesn't always follow rules. Some syllables and characters for borrowed words are assigned based on phonetic similarity - such as the word for "Spain," 西班牙 xi ban ya...which translates literally to "west class teeth," so you know meaning wasn't the key here. (Do notice that's not the same xi as in "wash.") Sometimes, though, the literal meaning is used, such as 汉堡王 hanbaowang for "Burger King," although the "burger" part, separated, means "man" and "fortress." Sometimes things are simpler than one might imagine - the word for "computer" (电脑 dian nao) means "electric brain." Sometimes, however, a seemingly simple thing is quite complicated - for example, there are eight words for "cousin" in Chinese, depending on if said person is on the paternal or maternal side, male or female, older or younger than you, and more...Sometimes a word might make sense, but only part of it is used if another syllable is added to "clarify" something more specific - 学校 xue xiao means "school," but 小学 xiao xue means "primary school." Note the seemingly inverse pronunciation.
There are other challenges as well. If you thought reading was hard in general, there is cursive Chinese. If you don't know the calligraphic stroke order, you will never be able to recognize the cursive character as similar to the printed one it represents. Sometimes, even if you can read the character in standard Mandarin, it is pronounced entirely differently in the local dialect, which is incomprehensible to someone who did not grow up in that city alone. (Though it would be interesting, of course, to know Hengyanghua, I try to avoid confusing it with Putonghua, the official term for standard Mandarin). Even within Putonghua, however, there are regional differences in word usage - in some places, the word for "room" is 房子 fangzi but in other places, that means "house" and 房间 fangjian means "room." Now, you might think that if you were standing at the registration desk of a hotel and chose the wrong word for that area, the receptionist could still figure out what you wanted...but this is not always the case. Then, if you do know the right written or spoken word for a given thing, the corresponding written or spoken word may have absolutely nothing to do with it. For example, concerning the date (on a calendar), it is written 日 ri (which means "day") but spoken 号 hao (which means "number"), with the exception of sheng ri (birthday). My beloved 洗脚 xi jiao (foot washing) is actually only xi jiao when spoken...the signs on the establishments say 泡足 pao zu (which means "bubble foot").
I can convince myself some of these things make sense after I memorize them, if I only look at one example at a time...but it does take some convincing. I'm better than when I arrived in China, of course - much, much better. I can read menus (well...a lot of menus). I can write on a computer with pinyin and recognize the characters I want based on the list that pops up. I can travel unassisted. I can have small conversations (often the same ones, over and over). I have the script for a foot massage down. But learning Chinese after work, on one's own, even in-country, is not the same as being a Spanish major in Spain. Chinese takes time...and practice...and more time and practice. And a lot of memorizing without questioning logic...
Sometimes I miss 501 Spanish Verbs (fully conjugated and in all the tenses).
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