Dreaming in Chinese

I just remember the first time I heard the book Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life,Love, And Language was in the New York Time Book Review section. Since I had the similar experience when I learned English - dreaming in English. And I am curious about how an America woman learned Chinese. So I borrowed the book from the local library and read it. It turns out a very interesting reading experience.

The author Deborah Fallows came to China with her husband and has lived there for three years. She learned Chinese language and characters based on their daily life and the culture context. She mentioned Chinese Pinyin system. There are four tones in the Pinyin system. I believe that it's very confusing to foreigners. For example, 狮，十，使，是, four Chinese characters have the same basic Pinyin letters"shi". But the tones are different. 狮（lion）is with the first tone, shī, a high tone；十（ten）is with the second tone, shí, rising tone；使 （to make）is with the third tone, shǐ, falling then rising；and 是（to be）is with the fourth tone, shì, falling tone.

I think it's also confusing if you heard the word in Chinese, like xīn. It could be the word  新，which means "new", or the word 心，which means "heart". It depends on which context the word is.

When I learned the differences between English and Chinese, I figured out that there is no space between two Chinese characters, but English words do(like "新年" in Chinese, "New Year" in English. ). Ms. Fallow also pointed it out.

The most confusing thing to speak English to me is when I say he/she/it/. In Chinese, they are three different characters 他/她/它 with the same Pinyin -- tā. As a born Chinese speaker, I don't have any problem to say them and never make a mistake on the gender when I heard the word. But once I speak in English, something happened unconsciously.If I say "she", while usually have "he" in my mind. Ms. Fallows talked about this linguistic phenomenon in her book.

Besides the above, the author explained how Chinese people say the directions, how Chinese characters are composed. Anyway, there are lots of knowledge and language learning experience we can read from the book. You also will deeply understand the culture context of China. I am sure that Ms. Fallows has already fallen in love with 按摩 and 拔火罐 of China.  

The daily Chinese:
打包 (dá bāo)：Do you do takeout?
很好 (hěn hǎo): Really good!
不可以 (bù kě yǐ ) : Not allowed
你好(nǐ hǎo) Hello
再见(zài jiàn) Bye Bye
厕所在哪里？(cè suǒ zài nǎ lǐ) Where is the bathroom?
谢谢！(xiè xie) Thanks

Good place look up Chinese Characters at this online dictionary 
You can find the book at amazon.com