April 20 marks United Nations Chinese Language Day. On this day, people around the world celebrate the Chinese language. Here are two Chinese learners sharing their stories of Chinese learning!
Mike Fuksman, US: I didn't speak any Chinese at all before I came to China. But I mastered the language quickly. One of the reasons is that Chinese is direct and literal(符合字面意义的). "Elevator" is dianti-translated character by character, it means "electric stairs". However, there are plenty of strange words, such as dongxi, which means "things". If you translate each part, it means "east west". Learning to read the characters themselves has been a challenge, but it has also been fun and made my life more convenient(便利的).
Alex Tani, UK: At the age of 13, I started taking Chinese classes at school. It was a difficult subject that could silence the classroom. But when I came to China, I found the language could be fun. After I moved to Beijing, I lived with locals. As a language lover, I tried to chat with them in Chinese. We also went to KTV together.
Singing songs is completely different from taking a normal language class. But this was where I learned. With every note sung, the characters began to make sense. This was an environment that made learning Chinese fun.
