Tonal Tuning - Taxi Story One

One month ago, returning from a shopping expedition, I had a small moment of grace.  I did not have a religious experience; at the contrary it was a rather a banal one. But what a big deal for me: I had my first-ever small chat in Mandarin. I had hopped in a cab with a bag of freshly made popcorn, and the driver initiated a chat. Unlike those in Montreal, Paris, Tel Aviv, New York or London, taxi drivers here are not really the chatting type. It is quite acceptable here to get in a cab, state a destination, drive in silence, and only exchange words at the time of fare paying. No weather talk or traffic comments are expected, and not only from foreigners. 

But that driver was curious and wanted to talk. He started by asking me if we had popcorn in my country. And where I was from. And how long I had been here. How many Chinese lessons have I been taking weekly. The conversation kept going for the length of the whole ride, which was a little long as I was arriving from the West side of the city. 

Don't take me wrong, I was not chatting away like an Italian. At the contrary, I was rather slow, using very limited sentence structures, and probably was very roughly clear tonaly. At times I had serious trouble expressing anything near to what I wanted to say. But the fact that I could understand most of what this guy was saying, and that I could actually find a few words to provide some answers was precious! 

It felt as if my daily one hour and half 中文课 sessions were starting to pay off. 

Then the next day, things went back in their order: another cab driver got exasperated with my poor language skills and started repeating what I was saying like a parrot, adding a question to everything (吗 ma?), indicating obviously his inability to understand me. As I could not provide him with further clarifications, he started shouting at me some ineligible things that did not sound friendly at all. I realized then that my ride with this him would not take me anywhere, so I just jumped out (fortunately we were not moving yet). That little event roughly brought me back from my little 高兴 happiness cloud. 

De Taxi Story One

One month later, with a few more characters in my pocket, I am still hoping for another moment of grace. Of course, there has been a few more of those semi-conversations, and some gained confidence at asking specific things (how much does it cost? where are you driving? I want a coffee; etc.). But in fact it feels like if the last few months have merely been an "ear tuning" exercise. I can now hear some tone differences. At last, since I still have trouble having the right one out of my mouth. I can now recognize some words when people speak around me. I can also sometimes hear those small words that are so short that you would mistake them for non-words. As an example, the word hungry is said like a "e" pushed out of your throat. It is such a strange and short sound that you could not really think it means anything. Throat clearing at its best, it could be. 

And while I am trying to express anything short of a sentence, struggling to repeat these strange sounds, or finding the right words, my poor brain runs on overdrive, so unaccustomed to the twists and turns of the language. Yesterday, in my class, my Chinese teacher ask me about a movie I had seen, the latest Woody Allen (which is a really good one actually). She did not know Allen, she wanted me to practice expressing myself. And what a practice it was: I spend almost one hour trying to explain the story to her in Chinese. To my credit, the story is a typical Allen one, convoluted and funny, but of course told in English or in French, we would have been done within a quarter of an hour.