An American Family Becomes Chinese

            I didn’t know what I started in 2004 when I decided to learn Chinese.  I knew that Chinese is a widely spoken language globally.  I knew many idiots in America thinks the world should learn English but see no need and have no desire to learn any other language.  I knew that American schools had neglected to teach me anything about China other than how to spell the words China and Tokyo.  I say that in jest because some Americans think Tokyo is in China and Beijing is in Japan.  I knew that I knew nothing about Chinese history aside from the word dynasties and emperor.

            I didn’t expect my family members to follow my lead and begin to study the Chinese language.  My granddaughter was the first, saying she want to study Chinese when she went to college.  Very few high schools in the United States teach the Chinese language.  I didn’t think my brother would suddenly start learning Chinese and now talk about retiring in China.  I didn’t think my son would think about using Chinese in business.  I didn’t think I’d become a fulltime editor.  I didn’t think my cousins would gain an interest in both becoming editors and learning Chinese.  I think I started something.

            I’m writing this blog to answer some of my relative’s questions about why I learn Chinese, how I got started, and the best ways to learn a foreign language.  The rest of this blog is in a question and answer format.  The questions were addressed to me.  The questions and statements of my relative are in italics.

            I looked for one of the three Chenglish books in print at Barnes and Noble the other day. They didn’t have one so I thumbed through the Chinese and Mandarin books and dictionaries for a few minutes while my daughter was shopping for books for her birthday. It doesn’t look like I am going to be learning a new language soon.

            The fact that an American is even looking at books about the Chinese language is surprising.  That’s especially true for those of us in rural areas away from cities.

Why did you decide to learn Chinese?

That one’s easy to answer: http://www.sedgehead.com/why_chinese.html.  In short, the American educational system failed to teach me anything about China so I decided to learn Chinese so I could ask people in China in Chinese about their culture and language.

Do you have a computer program or something that lets you type in Chinese?

Yes, and you did too.  I imagine Apple does the same thing Microsoft does.  If you go to the control panel in a Windows system and select Regional Settings and Language you can add Chinese as an alternate input of language.  By hitting control - space bar you can switch languages.  Most systems used pinyin to type Chinese.  My Chinese friends have helped me install a better system based in the Chinese language but it works the same way.  I had control – space bar to change languages.

You never did tell me what your voice recognition program was.  It seems to do a pretty good job. Do you tell it where to put in the punctuation?

I started using voice recognition software in January when my shoulder became sore and it became difficult to type.  This software was already on my Microsoft computer.  All I had to do was turn it on.  Now I speak to my computer and it writes what I say.  That is, the software recognizes my voice and likes me.  If I want to end a sentence with a period I simply say “period.”  If I want to write the word period, I tell my computer “literal period” and it writes the word period instead of putting a dot.  I have to be careful using words that might be commands.  I have to use them in groups of words and then erase the words I don’t want.  For example, I might say “file frogman base jump” to write the word file and I’ll tell my computer to “delete last three words” to get rid of the base jumping frogman.  It’s a little bit tricky but the more I get used to it the more I like it and the less I have to type.

[Concerning an editing job I sent by relative, she said ]It looks like they were really rushing that job through the power point job if they hadn’t gotten it totally translated before sending it to you and only left you a short window. How long did it take you to do it? I think the wind farm stuff is pretty interesting.

I spent about an hour on that particular project.  It went fairly quickly but like some editing jobs it was a little tricky to work with.

Now, to the group reading this on this web site.  My wife says I’m becoming Chinese.  She jokes about me getting an operation to make me look more Chinese because I talk about China and the language all the time.x