In addition to my graduate coursework, I’m taking intensive Mandarin classes. The classes are excellent, and there’s been a noticeable improvement in my Chinese.
My class focuses on spoken Chinese, so I’ve been working on my own learning characters. Learning characters is nasty and not always very much fun. It makes me miss the Korean language’s Hangeul alphabet, which is extremely easy to learn…a couple of hours of study allow you to sound out any Korean word you may see.
The Korean language uses quite a few English borrow words. When these borrow words are written in Hangeul, it is easy for the language learner to make an ass of himself with them. Just after learning to read Hangeul I saw the following sign for the Seoul revival of the American music 42nd Street:
ë¸Œë¡œë“œì›¨ì´ 42nd Street
I stood on the street for several minutes, sounding it out:
“B..uh…luuh..oh…duh…uuuhh…wehhh…eeee. Buh-luhoh-duh-wehe. Buh-lohd-uh-way. Bloadway. Broadway. Goddamnit, Broadway.”
I feel your pain — taking forever to figure out a simple transliteration can make you feel very silly indeed.