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desperanceI had occasion to speak Chinese today, I did.
In a very, very small way...
Halfway into town, I was encountered by a Chinese student, who was trying to find the railway station and going in entirely the wrong direction. As the Lit & Phil is right next to the station, and as the route from here is very direct but none the less difficult to describe, I said her easiest way was to come with me.
And then, of course, we tried to have a conversation; and when her English broke too soon I tried my Chinese, which of course broke even sooner; to be honest, I was only flourishing it to impress, and I had my eye on nothing more adventurous than "I speak Chinese very badly; let's speak English again now," where I arrived with an embarrassing rapidity. And then of course we had nowhere else to go, because we'd already broken her English. Sigh.
Still, we smiled a lot and were very scrutable, albeit incomprehensible to each other; and the least nudge of contact is a pleasure to me these days, as well as a bitter reminder that I want to go back to Taiwan again, and that I have almost entirely lost the little grip I had on a slender tentative tendril of the language. I hate that my mind is so sieve-like, that what I studied hard five or six years ago is so nearly gone already. The framework is still there, I understand it, I know how it works; but I'd have to start pretty much from scratch again, to fill that frame with anything worthwhile; and I'd have to do it on my own because my teacher's dead, and I have no impetus to do that. Only the sense of something lost, which I'm far more likely to nurture than tackle.
In a very, very small way...
Halfway into town, I was encountered by a Chinese student, who was trying to find the railway station and going in entirely the wrong direction. As the Lit & Phil is right next to the station, and as the route from here is very direct but none the less difficult to describe, I said her easiest way was to come with me.
And then, of course, we tried to have a conversation; and when her English broke too soon I tried my Chinese, which of course broke even sooner; to be honest, I was only flourishing it to impress, and I had my eye on nothing more adventurous than "I speak Chinese very badly; let's speak English again now," where I arrived with an embarrassing rapidity. And then of course we had nowhere else to go, because we'd already broken her English. Sigh.
Still, we smiled a lot and were very scrutable, albeit incomprehensible to each other; and the least nudge of contact is a pleasure to me these days, as well as a bitter reminder that I want to go back to Taiwan again, and that I have almost entirely lost the little grip I had on a slender tentative tendril of the language. I hate that my mind is so sieve-like, that what I studied hard five or six years ago is so nearly gone already. The framework is still there, I understand it, I know how it works; but I'd have to start pretty much from scratch again, to fill that frame with anything worthwhile; and I'd have to do it on my own because my teacher's dead, and I have no impetus to do that. Only the sense of something lost, which I'm far more likely to nurture than tackle.