The sixth meeting was in the theme of basic language and daily greetings. I don’t know if there is any language that is further from Dutch than Chinese, and this was very noticeable in how well my learning progress went. Trying to figure out the sounds they are making is maybe just as hard as trying to figure out what their hands do when they write. The characters they use are just as hard to create as the sounds that go with them. The Chinese language is particularly hard in the sense that the way you pronounce a sound, determines the word you are saying. The, for me, exact same sound could have completely different meanings if you don’t pronounce it correctly. And then there were certain sounds my throat doesn’t even know how to make. It was fun learning more words than the standard ‘ni hao’ that we all know, however I’m convinced that if I ever said the words they taught me to a Chinese person, they would probably have no idea what I was trying to say because of my horrible pronunciation.
When we learn Chinese, they need to learn Dutch! I think the most common thing in our pronunciation of words that foreigners struggle with is the way we pronounce the ‘g’. And there are many, MANY, words in the Dutch language that contain this beautiful sounding letter. The biggest misconception is that we say it in the back of our throat, which indeed does feel like you’re about to throw up. It is actually pronounced at the back of your tongue. This difference is something our Chinese friends couldn’t figure out either. Kind of satisfying to be honest, after us trying to pronounce sounds they had no trouble with.
I don’t know how much of it either one will remember, but I remember again how difficult it is to learn a new language.
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