Ayi, Day 3 + Chinese lessons

I began twice weekly sessions with a Mandarin tutor last week. Today will be my 4th session. I think he is fantastic. He has ultimate patience with my inability to distinguish the different tones, and my constant mispronunciation of the vowels. He has a wonderful mastery of both English and Mandarin - no doubt he understands English grammar much better than I. He creates flashcards for me, and teaches me words that I find quite useful.

Both my ayi and my driver have figured out that I am taking lessons in their language, and their patience is wonderful. Our driver seems to be a man of few words. Generally, when he speaks, I have no idea what he says. But we have reached a point where he understands anything I say to him. This is not true of our ayi. She seems to be a very smart woman, and often responds to what I say - especially if I say it completely wrong and come out incomprehensible.

A quick lesson for you. Don't go speaking to your Chinese taxi driver off of these notes - I'm leaving off the tones and not explaining the pronunciation, which is rather different from English.

xing qi - the word for "week"
to speak of the days of the week, you add a number to the end of the word week, so
xing qi yi - literally "week one," means Monday
xing qi wu - literally "week five," means Friday
tian - the word for "day"
dian - the word for "o'clock"
bu lai - "do not come"
ni - "you"

What I meant to say was, You do not need to come on Friday - ni xing qi wu bu lai .
What I believe I said was, You five o'clocks do not come - ni bu lai dian wu .

So far having ultimate patience with me and my Mandarin, she quizzically asked me a long question which I did not understand at all. So, thinking my pronunciation must be the problem, I repeated myself.

You five o'clocks do not come - ni bu lai dian wu .

She quizzically asked me a long question which I still did not understand at all. This, in itself, does not bother me. I realize that she does not understand English, and still I speak when I give her instructions or ask for her help. I am sure she does the same. And living with young children, I have passed the need for verbal communication. I can communicate well with S--, who speaks no English and only understands a few basic words. So, communication with our ayi is no more difficult. Her proficiency at charades is much better than S--'s. And she clearly has experience as an ayi, putting herself straight to work with very few suggestions or instructions from me. When I am busy, she disappears. When the girls are playing, she stops to talk to them for a moment and then keeps going. She sometimes teaches them Chinese with their numbers or their animals. We seem to have stumbled upon a real winner with Xiao Wang.

We pulled out a calendar, and I pulled out my flashcards. I was eventually able to communicate to her that she does not need to come on this Friday, but most Fridays she will work for us. When we finished, she complimented my Mandarin.

ni hui shuo hen hao - You speak very well.

bu. wo shuo de bu hao - No, I do not speak well.

A full conversation entirely in Chinese. How far we've come!