David goes to China

I'm heading off to Beijing at the end of next week and my vocabulary is a modest 150 words or so, not all of it available to me in all the forms I might need.

I can translate all of it between English and Pinyin (not necessarily with the right tones) in both directions. I can read maybe 60% in characters and write about 40%.

When I'm listening I find it difficult to distinguish some of the starting consonant sounds, so I need a lot of context or familiar content to understand spoken Mandarin.

I can speak all the words I know with only occasional mispronunciations, but I'm sure that my accent is dire and my tone is often wrong.

Now I need to concentrate on standard phrases I'm going to need -

• Please speak more slowly.
• I don't understand.
• Two beers, please.
• Where's the toilet?

# posted by David @ 10:40 am