Character-building

Hi people. Sorry about the delay. Delay no more! Yesterday the following delightful email clattered down into my inbox:

Hi Cecilie,

I'd like to start learning to learn Chinese characters. What I need is a sort of crash course perhaps. Something that helps me start. It's ridiculous not to be able to read the language. I don't know how long I'll stay in Hong Kong, but it's starting to be unbearable not to know.

I'll be slightly less busy with work between 10th May and the end of June before it all starts again in August. So I'll have between 7 and 10 Monday or Tuesday afternoons/evenings free, starting in two weeks’ time. I can find some free time between 4:30 and any time in the evening.

I'd be happy to join a group if there isn’t too big a gap in levels, or take one-to-one lessons since it'd only be for a short period of time.

Let me know if it’d be possible, when, for how much etc.

Have a good day,

Elise (Ah Lei)

See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?

No, actually, recently I’ve had a few victims (students) who want to learn the characters, and quite rightly too! What other language in the world do people start learning without having a clue about how to read and write it?

So maybe you’ve taken lessons before, the first lesson starting with the teacher saying something like: “So now you’re going to learn Cantonese it’s just a street language completely useless you should learn Mandarin instead and anyway you’ll never learn to read and write it it’s too difficult for you.”

What other language will you find a dictionary that has only the sound of the words, not how to write them? Insane? Welcome to the world of Canto.

But people, reading and writing really is a piece of cake. And now you can join the above Elise, lovely French girl, in learning Chinese characters. two crash courses of 2 hours each. That’s all you need, I promise. Wanna?

I’ve had several students who felt they were lagging behind, not making progress, not being able to speak and understand as well as they wanted to and turning into nervous wrecks when faced with Chinese people addressing them in Canto.
A few weeks of Chinese characters and: Wallop! New confidence, great strides in comprehension and speaking ability and: Can find their way around on the mainland as well as in Japan and to a certain degree South Korea.

Four hours is all it takes! Then, if you don’t like it, you can just stop.

But you will like it.