Ni hao, peng you! (Hello, friend!)

This semester, I enrolled to a foreign language class - FL 101 (Mandarin Chinese). It’s not a curriculum requirement for Computer Science students but I just want to learn Chinese as it is the most spoken language in the world. Might as well add more to the population…

Prior to enrolling to this course, I was looking for a tutor early this year for some basic Chinese lesson. Then, a school memo was published announcing the new course offering in Ateneo, the Mandarin class. I was surprised and delighted. Thankful, as well.

During enrollment, I definitely alloted time for this class and I am now a student learning Mandarin.

Our teacher is from Zamboanga Chong Hua High School, a Chinese school in Zamboanga City. I have friends and classmates who came from that school. I might say that they really excel in Mathematics and Math Club is the organization for those math wizards.

It’s our 3rd week now, and I still recall our first day. Personally, it was like nosebleed learning Chinese for I do not have any background about Chinese but the words “Ni hao ma?”, “Xie Xie ni” and “Wo Ai Ni”. Those are the words I learned from some Chinese films and drama series I’ve watched.

We are done with the Pinyin, which is the way to write the pronunciations using the English alphabet. I now know how to read Pinyin; its phonetics. Some are easy to pronounce and some are difficult as it requires one to twist tongue, lift it and with lots of tones to consider.

After the initials, vowels, finals and tones, we where introduced to basic daily conversational phrases like introducing oneself, greetings, and some common replies. Now, I am practicing my conversational skills in preparation for our oral and written quiz. Good luck to me!

Why am I taking this course? Well, as seeing myself in the future that I will be needing this in my career… so better learn it early than later.

Zai jian! (Goodbye!)