Week One

Ni hao! My name is Courtney and this is my blog on my adventures through my Chinese 101 course. I decided to take this course in order to further my ability with my double major of both International Business and Marketing. I am also minoring in Spanish but I decided that two years extra of Chinese would not hurt!:) It is way more fun to learn than I thought it would be, although it is a difficult language, I'm all about having an open mind with it!

As far as my class notes go, this past week we learned something called pinyin which is basically the Chinese language's version of what we would consider english spelling. It is composed of two parts both initials and finals. There are twenty one initials with the possibility of twenty three total. These, composed with the 6 finals (a, o, e, i, u, and an u with two dots above it) are what make up the Chinese words, and help assist us in learning and reading the words with ease. Hanzi is the traditional Chinese characters, we have briefly started to learn about these, in that there are a specific order of strokes that need to be completed when writing out the characters. There are also four steps, 1) strokes, 2) orders, 3) particles- these are made of strokes and are what create the Hanzi, 4) combinations- of the particles. Lastly we learned a variety of expressions that allow us to greet our teacher and say goodbye and hello. We also learned the commands of read, speak, listen, write; and the basics of sorry, and excuse me.

Chinese although different, is not as difficult as I had initially thought it would be. I think it will be an interesting process to see, since I have already taken Spanish before and this is completely different than Spanish as far as the learning process goes. However, I am excited for the journey ahead!:)

-Courtney