Tongue dynasty

for illustration purposes only, not to be ogled at

                    I like my tongue: it's white and brown and hard. 

                 It's not anything sexual, horndog you, I'm multilingual, like many Filipinos. Yes, I am proficient in English, Tagalog and Bisaya/Cebuano. But I would like to also make it yellow; I'm trying to learn Chinese. In fact, I'm trying to learn Chinese for quite a few years now but my katamaran slacking and slothing are hindering me from having additional yabang on how smart I really am substantial progress. 

                   I think my desire to learn a new foreign language started way back in college. I had this schoolmate who kept mouthing Chinese words every chance she got. It's quite mukhang baliw  odd but impressive at the same time. It can definitely amp up one's talino/pogi/ganda points. Knowledge of a foreign language can come in handy at times: like if you want to badmouth or antagonize an buwisit obtrusive person, you can do so right in front of the idiot person without fear of retaliation---hey, it he doesn't fully comprehend what you're talking about; as a starting off point for conversation, "Ni, chi fan le, mai you (Knee chir fawn la, may yo) --- Have you eaten?", the next person asks what you just said and you're both off to a good conversation start; and for practical uses. 

                 It's this latter purpose that made me decide to try to learn Chinese more than any other language, say Spanish or French. Chinese is more practical, I believe, than Spanish or French; especially here in the Philippines and even anywhere else given the ascendancy of China in the world stage.

                    That made me eschew learning any other foreign language despite the fact that I had a close friend in law school who was quite fluent in French, she had taken lessons at Alliance Francaise , and an uncle whose a frog (that's what French are pejoratively called in Europe) Francophile because of his French education (Masters and Ph.D from the Universite du Paris). 

                          So Chinese it is. 

                   It's not an easy language. So many conjugations and phonetic sounds. And so many freaking variations! The standard Chinese is Potunghua (like our Filipino); then there's Mandarin (the equivalent of our Tagalog), Cantonese, Fookien, etc., like the Philippines' various dialects. 

                      Given the difficulty and complexity (or as Robin Williams say "It's as hard as Chinese algebra!") of the language, add to that my intermittent studying, progress is quite as slow as the brain functions of my former students  pace of DPWH construction projects. 

                      But I have been learning a few phrases and sentences here and there. There's the commonly uttered  "Ni Hao. (Knee How) --- Good day / Hello / How are you, " " Xie-xie ni. (Syeah-syeah nee) --- Thank you," and "Wo. ---I, me. "

                 My favorites: "Zǎo chén /xià wǔ /wǎn shàng hǎo---Good morning / afternoon / evening! ; "Wo bu dong. (Waw boo-doong) --- I don’t understand; Qing bang-zhu wo. (Ching baang-joo waw) --- Please help me. " It's easy to see why, wink wink, nudge, nudge.


                           I want to study more intensively and be more fluent before the Chinese arrive at Spratlys or before they buy the entire world, whichever comes first.