Pidgin Mandarin
Me: FuQuan Bei Lu. (North FuQuan Road) Taxi Driver: Shenma Lu? (Which Road?) Me: FuQuan Bei Lu, near Xiehe Lu and Beidi Lu (North FuQuan Road, near Xiehe road and Beidi road) Taxi Driver: OK. OK. (Gesticulated to me to get in). Nothing momentous, but for the first time in two months I managed to answer a question that was posed to me in Mandarin. My Mandarin classes of the last 7 weeks seem to be working as i can now catch snatches of phrases, words in others' conversations. I can also reply to simple questions beyond the artificial setting of Chinese classroom comprising me, my wife and a private tutor. Any case it was for me one of many firsts. Never in the years after college have language classes been attended so diligently. German classes didn't last more than 6 weeks though i did pick up reasonable German to get by even after the classes. Nepalese was like a amalgam of Hindi (the syntax), some Bengal...