Whenever I become too cocky about my Chinese skills I seem to have a humbling experience: The latest took place the other week at my university. After a class where I actually understood all the major points of the newspaper articles we were reading, I headed for the book store to buy myself a ruler. …Read More
I first became aware of the enormous language gap in China three weeks into my first year, when I taught English at a public high school in northern Jiangsu. One afternoon, feeling slightly homesick, I hopped into a taxi with a simple mission: to go to McDonalds. Being completely unable to speak Chinese at that …Read More
I recently learned a neat new word in Chinese: è¯æ„Ÿ, literally “language feeling”. In English, a more common translation might be “language intuition”, a mysterious ability that some seem to possess and others do not. When I tell people that I speak three languages, I often hear in response, “oh, you must have an innate …Read More
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