Burning some of that midnight oil

[dieloreley]

Now that I'm prepared, I'm looking forward to the trial (non-accessable!) teaching demos on Thursday. I'm teaching my mother's dialect of Chinese. Yes, I'm teaching a language that I don't speak. I got a crash course at about 9pm tonight. *blinky* You know how they say that learning from a native speaker is the best? Sometimes it really isn't

Comments

[elvishly]

One thing I both love and hate about the "Chinese language" is that:

(a) There is no one Chinese language.
(b) You have region specific "languages".
(c) Then you have dialects.
(d) Then you have sub-dialects, and accents, and sub-accents.
(e) It's just a huge mix of dying languages, dead languages, soon-to-be dead languages, languages that only exist through the family, and languages that are taught in school and used in the media (Mandarin and Cantonese).

I love how much variety there is, and the history of how each dialect developed and progress. I dislike that you're supposed to know the big two (or one of) and have to have some knowledge on another dialect or whatever. I mean, they're not social requirements or whatever, I think it's just the confusion, and the need to try and stomp out some dialects. Sigh.

I hope that didn't sound too confusing. :P

Good luck on the class! :D

Good night. x

[dieloreley]

Chineseness for the win, yo! Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I struggle just with learning Mandarin and then there's the fact that I'm Cantonese and that Mum's Teochew, so I really should have a better grasp of those. And then the written language which is supposedly the same throughout China but if the languages are different and use different, how can you really say that it's written the same? It's really just the most powerful language trying to impose their way on everyone else and call it 'the same'. Pffft.

Thank you!

[dragonsangel68]

Good luck!

[dieloreley]

Thank you! xxx